Project for Waqas

Introduction and Problem Situation

Ballard Integrated Managed Services, Inc. (BIMS) provides food, hospitality, housekeeping and physical plant services for the staff and patients at the Douglas Medical Center. Barbara Tucker, the general manager for this site, has noticed that the morale of her employees has been declining for the past several months. The expected turnover rate is 55-60% annually in this industry. This rate has increased to 64% over the last four months (BIMS Part 1). The use of sick time has increased, overall performance is poor and complaints from the hospital staff are on the rise. Barbara and her management team have not been able to determine why morale is down. The exit interviews that are currently used are not pinpointing the reasons why employees are leaving.

Conclusions

The data used in the survey is beneficial to the research into why employment morale has decreased for the past several months. Therefore, a questionnaire was designed to examine dependent variable which, “is the key factor that you want to explain or predict and that is affected by some other factors …scholars have emphasized productivity, absenteeism, turnover, and job satisfaction” (Robbins & Judge p. 25). BIMS is experiencing problems with several dependant variables, the focus of this paper examines turnover, which is increasing for BIMS. Each question of the survey addresses issues that require involvement from management. Issues like whether or not they received proper training and if specific requests from employees were answered by management. All of these questions in the survey are examining a dependant variable, (e.g. turnover) directed toward the performance of management to control said in a positive manner. All of which, are important aspects that management should be aware of as well.

If managers and supervisors are not concerned about how their employees feel in the end, if they fail to delegate or use participative management to engage employees in the decision-making process the result will be a high turnover rate. Asking these questions on an anonymous basis will allow the employees to feel comfortable and give honest responses. However, one thing to consider is allowing time for employees to do the survey at work, asking all employees to participate, and collect the completed survey. In addition, some marketing research practitioners are confident with the validity of the surveys if 30% survey is completed. Encouraging employees to complete the survey on the job, this will ensure returns much higher than 30%.

The data in the research is appropriate for the study because it guided toward questionings that examine both the positive and negative impact management has on the employees new and old. Unfortunately, all of the response to the questions in the survey was negative as outlined herein above. BIMS management team has an enormous task ahead to improve morale based on the survey results.

Descriptive Statistics Analysis

Measure of Central Tendencies

1- Range 2.01- 2.87

2- Mean 2.65

3- Median 2.77

In the survey, total four questions were researched and constructed. These questions include ten morale questions and 4 demographic questions. The number of associates in the survey given was 449, but response was recorded from only 78 associates. The response rate of the survey is 17.3%. In ten of those 14 questions, there were just MCQs to choose from with options of

· Very negative

· Negative

· Satisfied

· Positive

· Very Positive

The results of the survey showed that the most common rating for each of these questions was 2 which are considered low on the scale of 1-5. Therefore, there has been a whole area and a chance of improvement. The top four questions with the lowest rankings are following:

Question 10: You do not fear that you will lose your job.

Question 01: How well re you enjoying working for BIMS?

Question 09: The Company is good at communicating.

Question 06: You are paid fairly for the work you are doing.

The ratings increase from first of these four questions to last with the top one getting 35 ratings and bottom one with 43 ratings. The middle two of them got 36 and 41 ratings.

Recommendations to Management

Barbara Tucker noticed that morale of the employees was down and turnover rates were low for the last four months period. The exit surveys were not sufficient to indentify why these employees were unhappy with their jobs. When the workers of company are not motivated to perform their jobs on the workspace, it impacts a lot the performance and success of a company. Low morale leads to poor productivity, poor performance, absenteeism, high number of customer complaints and increase in the turnover. This can only be happened due to disconnection between the employees and the company management. The continuity in this kind of trend can hurt BIMS’s chances of renewing its contract with the medical center. When turnover rates are high, it will also increase the training costs for new employees. Different proposals can be proposed to management. Here is one of the proposals that focus on five major areas.

· Shift preference

· Fair pay

· Communication

· Recognition

· Fair treatment

Shift Preference and Flextime

There are number of shifts available to cover a 24/7 position. BIMS should do its best to accommodate shift assignment preferences whenever it is possible for them. This is equally important for employees and their families. The purpose of this accommodation is to help employees maintain a balance between their work and personal lives. It will also help in reduction of sick time because number of times employees cannot reach to job because they are sick. Flextime schedule allows variations in the start time and ending time of employee’s duties. This schedule also helps employees to manage their personal life along with job.

Fair Pay

This should also be noted that salary of the employees should be evaluated based on similar businesses in the industry. This will help the management of BIMS to ensure that employees are not getting out of the industry because other companies are offering more salaries.

Communication

It has been mentioned earlier that disconnection between management and employees result in low morale. BIMS needs to take some input from the staff on the regular basis about how to improve the performance of the company. Employees working on the front lines may have good suggestions about the company’s operations. Taking feedback from employees not only increase interaction between management and employees, but also reduces uncertainty what is going on with the business making them feel that they are part of the business culture.

Recognition

BIMS management team should give special note when employees start working above or below the normal duties. It is also the company’s management responsibility to recognize the career milestones of any employee. They should take events of employee like hiring anniversary date seriously and arrange parties if possible. Cash bonuses can also be used for the employees who perform better and achieve their goals of the month well before the deadline. One of the reasons of more concentration of job recognition is to make employees feel that they are part of the business for a very long time and will stay for more time in the future. (Biro, 2013)

Fair treatment

All employees need to feel that they can visit the management at any time without facing any difficulties for complaints and grievance. It should be the responsibility of company to offer professional work environment in which each employee is treated equally.

There are specific areas revealed from BIMS survey results. Management can focus on those areas to improve morale and decrease the turnover rate. Every employee wants to be respected, want fair pay, balanced family and work life and appreciation. Happy employees will yield great results.

References

Ballard Integrated Managed Services, Inc., Part 1, University Of Phoenix

Biro, M. M. (2013). 5 Ways Leaders Rock Employee Recognition. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2013/01/13/5-ways-leaders-rock- employee-recognition/

Lind, D. A., Marchal, W. G., & Wathen, S.A. (2011). Basic Statistics for Business and Economics (7th Ed). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

McClave, J.T., Benson, P.G., & Sincich, T. (2011). Statistics for Business and Economics (11th Ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Robbins, S. P. and Judge, T.A., (2011) Organizational Behavior, (14th Ed). Upper Saddle River NJ, Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Survey Questions 1 -10

Number of Employees

Time with company

Time in months

Amount of People

Number of people per job

Questions

# of responses