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Preparing to Conduct Business Research: Part III The dilemma facing XYZ Employment is the cost of providing Workman’s Compensation Insurance and the costly nature of its claims. All companies that have employee require this costly, yet necessary standard. It is provided to protect hard working employees in difficult circumstances. While most times it is a legitimate claim, fraud does occur. XYZ would like to eliminate the preventable claims and fraudulent collections. XYZ is making all efforts to reduce this cost by the significant amount of 40% by yearend.
XYZ Employment intends to discuss the significance, scope, magnitude and feasibility of a solution to this outrageous associated cost, through various methods of research. This will include compiling specific research questions, hypothesized issues and their causes, XYZ’s specific plan for research, variables to consider and action plans as a result. Management has hypothesized that by changing various methods utilized within the company today it will have significant changes in safety, therefore preventing accidents and claims.
Other hypothesized issues may be poor housekeeping, mental distractions, not having proper training manuals, ignoring safety procedures, or even being over confident. By looking back through previous claims, management can identify the troubled areas and where accidents occur. Once the trends are identified then the appropriate measures can be taken to change them. For example, the first problem identified within the company was the lack of proper procedures being followed by some employees on the job, resulting in either an accident on themselves or a fellow co-worker.
This opens the door for more questions such as, are these accidents from a lack of proper training or from shortcuts being taken. The research questions are a very important process in this issue. The research questions state the business objective and are more specific, allowing management to make the decision (Cooper & Schindler, 2011). It is also important that the research is defined correctly because it can be very timely and costly for the company such as the case of XYZ Employment agency whom is looking to decrease cost on worker’s compensation. Below are a few of the research questions to consider.
These questions will allow management to determine what can be done. •Should XYZ Employment change the orientation process? •Should XYZ Employment visit each client on a daily basis? •Should each new employee provide restriction information before taking an assignment? •Should assignment jobs be more specifically detailed to employees? •Should clients provide safety process? Each of these four questions will allow management to begin the research process. The process will consist of breaking down each question individually and researching them. The first two questions allow XYZ Employment Agency to consider making changes.
The next two questions involve more from the employee’s side of this dilemma. Finally, the last question is getting more safety information from the client, which includes any company safety programs, training and so forth. All of these questions should allow management to come up with an effective cost preventative program. There are variables to consider when doing this research: loss of work time when someone is injured, the cost of replacing that employee as well as covering them on the compensation laws and lost profitability because of the excess of accidents.
As defined above with the proper research questions we can identify each of these variables and their conclusions. With the first variable, loss of work time, we are looking at a job not being completed according to the contracted time that XYZ Employment has set forth for the client. With proper training and specific task assignment one can assist in allowing the job to be complete as well and as safely as contracted and allowed. With the second variable, we look at the excess cost of covering the employee while on leave as well as the cost of replacing that employee on the job, essentially paying two people for one job.
This hurts the bottom line as well as the safety marks against XYZ Employment. This brings us to the final variable, lost profitability because of the above stated issues; this will damage the bottom line and can be minimized with the correct positive outcomes from the research and application of new and improved policies. In using statistical research, we would use the exploratory method, as we are starting with a base number of accidents, but the research is into the why and how. To delve into this would be a process of exploration looking into variables that are independent of the accidents.
Items to be looked at are hours worked in shifts, proper training, company status, as well as paid leaves in excess of the accidents. By looking at the options available for study, we are able to sample and study each attribute pertain to each accident. The Who, What, When and How so to speak. When you start a new job, there should always be some type of orientation so that you will know the company policies. You are shown a number of videos that will inform you of how to do your job without getting hurt. You are shown how to wear our safety belt and safety goggles.
Many companies have posters up in the buildings throughout, for everyone to see, and understand what should be done. When signing your new hire paperwork there should be a form for you to sign acknowledging that you understand what is read, and understand the consequences of your actions and what will follow. You should also be trained by a senior employee, that has been there for a number of years, on how to do the job correctly and he or she will teach you the do’s and don’ts of not getting injured on the job. It is the company’s obligation to all new hires to show them the ropes of their company.
It is their responsibility to make sure that they understand the company policies and to have their signature on the addendums that are in the employee packet. By effectively identifying the questions, we are able to determine the type of research that is needed in order to answer the questions effectively. The research can include looking over previously filed claims, talking to employees, and observing their actions to see if there is anything unsafe that needs to be addressed. Variables also need to be taken into account prior to beginning research.
These variables could include the cost of replacing an employee and the loss of profitability due to employee’s being out due to injuries. Researchers must keep in mind the variables, both dependent and independent, as well as the question they are trying to answer when performing research. This will allow us to ensure the research performed is proactive in finding solutions to alleviate XYZ Employment Agency high cost of worker’s compensation. In the first part we explored the workman’s compensation problem with XYZ Employment, and hypothesized on what the possible issues may be causing company employees to be involved in harmful accidents.
In part two, we will explore the proper research methods to utilize, and the research methods that will not help develop the protocols needed. Lastly, we will determine which instruments will best benefit the research method chosen. It would seem that a possible course of action is to survey the employees through various interviews in order to determine the cause of the accidents. However, the inherent problem lies with the memory of the employees and their recollection of the events that transpired before the accidents (Cooper & Schindler, 2011).
To solve this dilemma, management can use a qualitative research method by looking through all the old accident reports and worker’s compensation claims. Compare these factors with time cards and monies paid from the human resource and accounting departments and we have all the information needed to determine the greatest problem areas. It is also imperative to review training records. Has the employee received vital and correct training for the job he is doing? Is it a job that requires certification? Is that certification current? Does retraining need to occur?
Once identified, a new design can be formulated to help deter accidents in the future (Cooper & Schindler, 2011). By quantifying accidents, on a numbering scale we can see which areas are more prone to accidents. Further numbering of types of accidents and injuries sustained would also help identify areas that may need further exploration into new methods in which the employees can safely do their job. Lastly, using the same instrument to quantify the money spent on worker’s compensation claims will show management exactly where the greatest problems areas are (Cooper & Schindler, 2011).
By reviewing and utilizing the structures of the quantitative research, we would be able to determine cause and effect of certain job accidents and situations. By asking the appropriate questions, the research will benefit XYZ Employment in the long run, for training, retooling and employment longevity. XYZ Employment deals with many different companies and different types of positions. Although companies provide detailed job duties the best way possible, employees can still get hurt on the job. The sampling method best fit for this situation would be a probability based sampling method.
This type of method is based on a controlled procedure assuring the selected population gets a nonzero chance (Cooper & Schindler, 2011). The best way to conduct the probability sampling method would be to survey employees from all companies and not just picking one or two companies which may show some bias in the statistical analysis. Finally, the probability based sampling method was also the best option in this issue because it will influence the costs for the company, which is the second highest after internal payroll. Although his method is known to be more costly, it is well worth it for XYZ Employment to spend on the best research possible. The sampling frame is where we will be deriving our samples from for the research. For this we have chosen our online employee scheduling board. The online scheduling board will provide us a detailed outline to what people are on what jobs and how long they were there. Each sample will be identified by name, employee number, and job function performed on each job. Providing us with a clear picture to whom did what, where, and why.
Each job will be separated by a specific sales order number that provides the researchers a way to gather additional information related to those jobs. This will allow the company to review the entire population with in there company. This sampling frame will allow the company to look further into each job and gather more specific information if needed. They will be able to separate each job and review the personal with-in allowing the further use of more advanced sampling frames when needed.
By allowing the company to distinguish between each job separately they will be able to ensure each element of the population is present only once in each job reviewed (Cooper & Schindler, 2011). Determining the size of each strata in which to study (and sample) is one of the more difficult steps of the exploratory process. One does not want to choose a sampling size too small that it does not efficiently represent the strata and overall population. It is also in the best interest of the research to keep the margin of error as small as possible.
Since each strata has a different amount of accidents reports, both small and large amounts, we simply choose to pull 25% percent sampling size of each strata. This will give us a decent look at ? of each strata and not provide an over load of work in the process. Deciding on this sampling size remains simple as 25% changes within each strata, and it supports the more efficient proportion stratified sampling method (Cooper & Schindler, 2011). The proper test to be used with these nominal samples is the non-parametric tests. We have chosen to use a non-parametric test because it has fewer and less stringent assumptions.
This test will result in a lower chance of the possible threats to the validity of the test results. The results efficiency is also higher than that of the parametric test. The non-parametric can often achieve efficiencies as high as 95 percent. The overall analysis and presentation of the data recovered is perhaps the most valuable portion and if presented correctly, most effective at finding a solution to XYZ Employment Agencies dilemma. According to Cooper & Schindler (2011), Multidimensional scaling (MDS) seems to be a sufficient fit for XYZ’s research study.
XYZ has followed 15 of their own client companies against 15 clients of a competitor to reveal of the amount of claims is industry, company or position related. MDS assists in revealing relevant information, in otherwise difficult to measure circumstances. The overall presentation of our research team’s finding will be an oral presentation, in order to address questions and adequately discuss facts. It will be accompanied by a refined power point presentation complete with the raw data and elegant graphics displaying our analysis.
In conclusion, XYZ Employment Agency has been facing growing cost due excessive and expensive, Workman’s Compensation Claims. Their purpose is to significantly reduce these claims by 40% at yearend. In order to do so, the board has researched the significance, scope, magnitude, and feasibility of find a solution to the dilemma. The board selected to research this dilemma has developed the hypothesis, “What is causing claims to rise and how do we prevent it? ” We have included a strong probability based sampling method in which we have surveyed many employees and clients.
Our overall data analysis approach is a multidimensional scaling method also known as MDS, which allows for effective comparison of opinions and statistics. Our final results reporting with consist of an effectual oral report accompanied by an elegant power point presentation in a meeting style setting. XYZ is extremely aware of ethical codes and conduct in reporting its findings to reduce claims by 40% at year-end. References Cooper, D. & Schindler, P. (2011). Business Research Methods. (11th Ed) New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.