Working Hours and Overtime Issues
TechnoMart has conducted a survey amongst their employees through on online questionnaire and provided the data on 400 randomly chosen employees to MDB Corporation for further analysis. The human resource department has also provided with a set of questions which interests them and hence the current statistical analysis has been conducted keeping the same into regards. This report highlights the findings of the analysis of the sample data in context of the concerns raised by the human resource department of TechnoMart.
In accordance with the data of 400 employees, it has been found that only 200 employees tend to comply with the 40 hour week policy of the policy. For the remaining 200 employees, the weekly working hours tends to exceed 40. A high variation is also seen in this regards with an employee working as low as 28 hours in a week while another working for 89 hours in a week. These observations clearly highlight the presence of an overtime issue with TechnoMart. Further, it would be appropriate to conclude that there are some employees which tend to work for unusually long hours. It is estimates that about 3% of the sample employees tend to have a working week in excess of 72 hours. These excesses are limited only to the upper end and no such problems or unusual working trends are observed on the lower end (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015). The human resource department needs to reach to the bottom of this overtime problem to resolve the same or else this could lower the satisfaction levels and productivity of employees.
In accordance with the data of 400 employees, estimation can be made that between 39.6% and 49.4% of the employees of the company tend to have a weekly working hours more than 40 hours which is quite significant and cannot be ignored. The corresponding number with regards to employees clocking in more than 60 hours per week are estimated to range between 4.1% to 8.9% of company’s total employee strength. This presents convincing evidence with regards to presence of a systemic issue at TechnoMart leading to overtime problem.
The difference between employees having union membership and those lacking the same is not reflected in the working hours per week. This is because for the two groups, there does not exist any sizable difference in context of weekly working hours as for both the groups the average exceeds 45 hours. This provides clear indication that the problem of overtime is not linked to union membership but is an organisation wide problem related to organisational practice or work culture. Further, the fact that union members do not have any significant lower working week hours than their counterparts goes against the common logic of the union having more bargaining power owing to numbers and thereby able to derive better outcomes for the members.
Union Membership and Occupational Contribution
The union and non-union membership has clear trends in case of occupational contribution. Union members are mostly drawn from occupations such as labourers and production which form the bottom rung of the corporate hierarchy. The representation of the top most hierarchy with regards to union is significantly lesser in comparison. This difference can possibly be explained by the bargaining power difference of the two groups. Union can be considered as an effective means for negotiating with the management by the employees at the lowest level since they may find comfort in numbers unlike the professions that are comparatively higher on the corporate ladder.
The trend regarding employee satisfaction is also clear as the non-union members have a higher satisfaction levels and lower dissatisfaction levels in comparison with the employees who have joined union. This observation is rather confusing as unions are typically supposed to present the grievances of employees and thereby lead to better terms contributing to higher satisfaction. One possible explanation in this regards is offered by the distribution of occupations of the two groups. Since the union members tend to have representation from the lower rung of corporate ladder who might have higher dissatisfaction levels as compared to those on the top, hence satisfaction levels for union tend to be lower than non-union.
The above discussion of the statistical results clearly highlight that in terms of work hours per week, union membership does not have any noticeable effect. However, participation of employees in union has a strong occupation linkage with unions drawing more representation from certain occupations particularly production and labourers. In comparison of the satisfaction levels, non – union members tend to be ahead when compared to union members which partly might be on account of their respective occupational composition.
A host of variables have been considered using appropriate statistical measure so as to determine the underlying association with pre-tax income. These include all those variables which empirically are known to influence the pre-tax income and have numerical values. The relevant variable which tends to have the closest relationship with pre-tax income has been identified as EmpYears which tend to capture the total years of full time work since the age of 16 for the given employee (Hair et. al., 2015). This does not come as a surprise since the effects of different variables can be reflected in EmpYears. For instance, EmpYears would be able to capture age which should be equal to EmpYears plus 16 years. Further, EmpYears would also capture the impact of the time that the employee has spent in TechnoMart coupled with possible promotions also if the underlying employee has an average level of performance.
Employee Satisfaction
The pre-tax income and EmpYears have a positive relationship implying that both variables tend to move in the same direction. This clearly is not surprising since people with high experience tend to draw a comparatively higher salary. Having said that, it is imperative that other factors also play a crucial role in pre-tax income determination and those cannot be ignored. An apt example of the same can be the employment level since there would a difference in pre-tax salary of manager and labourer which would persist despite the experience. The relationship between EmpYears and pre-tax income is at best moderate only considering the pre-tax income would be driven by a host of other factors such as skill, education, promotions etc. (Hillier, 2016).
The given sample data of TechnoMart employees has been used for estimation of average age which is pegged between 38.37 years and 40.45 years (Flick, 2015). This would indicate that the employees of the company are not very aged and the concern regarding retirement seems misplaced. It would be fair to conclude that the current employees at the company still should continue to serve for the company for more than a decade before there are woes of retirement.
Also, the sample data analysis provided estimates of the average experience of all employees to range between 7.84 years and 9.49 years (Hair et. al., 2015). Considering the average stay of 8-10 years in the company renders support to the fact that retirement is not a looming concern. Taking the higher end of the estimate would imply that retirement is a concern only for employees joining the company around the age of 50. Thus, it would be appropriate to draw the attention of HR department away from any retirement concerns and hence postpone any recruitment drive for the time being.
The claim of the union in relation to the loyalty of employees has been supported by the sample data provided since it would be appropriate to conclude that the average period of employment for the employees is expected to be higher than 7.5 years which is the industry average. This to an extent can be explained by the high satisfaction ratings that company tend to give their employer. However, when the same claim was test for the two genders, the loyalty claim was passed for males but failed to pass for the females. Further investigation by the HR department needs to be taken so as to analyse the issues being faced by the female employees which is having an adverse effect on the loyalty of the female employees and may also lead to under-representation of females at senior organisational positions.
The union claim regarding union members on an average working for not less than 45 hours has not been supported by the statistical analysis performed on the sample data. Thereby, it would be incorrect to conclude that on an average the union members would work for atleast 45 hours each week.
- Population Heterogeneity – The sample size has a direct relationship with the heterogeneous nature of the underlying population. A lower sample size would be required to represent a homogeneous population as the number of critical attributes would be limited. This is not the case in a heterogeneous population where a larger sample size assures a representative sample (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015).
- Margin of Error – The researcher has to decide the accuracy required in making the estimates. If a higher accuracy in drawing conclusions about population based on sample is required, then a larger sample size would be suitable. On the other hand, a lower sample size can be selected if comprise on accuracy may be made (Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman, 2014).
- b) The sample size has been computed using the factors that have been outlined in the above discussion. For the computation, the margin of error has been taken as 1.5% and the minimum sample size required comes out as 1038. Considering this figure, it is apparently clear that the sample size of 400 which is currently available is unsuitable. It is highly likely that such a small sample may not be representation and hence potentially leading to unreliable conclusions about the employees at TechnoMart (Flick, 2015).
Conclusion
Based on the above discussion, a major issue which requires immediate attention of the HR department is the acute overtime problem. The union membership does little to alter the working week hours in any significant manner. Further, the union members are in general less satisfied than those who are not union members. EmpYears has emerged as the variable considered to be most significant for prediction of pre-tax income. The fears of the HR department regarding employees heading their retirement age does not seem true. The sample data provided does not support with regards to union claim on weekly working hours along with female employees loyalty. Besides, the sample currently being used by the company seems too small and hence to enhance reliability of results obtained, a higher sample is desirable in future surveys.
References
Eriksson, P. and Kovalainen, A. (2015) Quantitative methods in business research. 3rd ed. London: Sage Publications.
Flick, U. (2015) Introducing research methodology: A beginner’s guide to doing a research project. 4th ed. New York: Sage Publications.
Hair, J. F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A. H., Samouel, P., and Page, M. J. (2015) Essentials of business research methods. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R. and Friedman, J. (2014) The Elements of Statistical Learning. 4th ed. New York: Springer Publications.
Hillier, F. (2016) Introduction to Operations Research. 6th ed. New York: McGraw Hill Publications.
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