Introduction
Employees who exit a company at the firm’s request and those who leave on their own equally influence disruptions in work team dynamics, unit productivity, and operations. Both types of turnover can affect the organization’s operational costs as employees’ exit after significant investment in staff training and development would mean a financial loss for a corporation. Moreover, excess workforce turnover will affect the latter’s general performance and is a sign of other challenges it is expected to face in the future. The successful management of turnover is vital as it helps companies achieve their objectives, mission, and vision. This paper aims to expound on the concern of employee turnover in a small company and examine the main reason for the organization’s challenge.
Research Method
An interview method would be appropriate for the research as it will ensure all members’ involvement and sharing of opinions. Management issues include poor employee selection and hiring process, lack of company growth and progress, overworking employees, and work-life imbalance. Exclusion of staff in a crucial decision-making process, lack of appreciation and recognition, poor work relation culture, and low training standards could make an employee voluntarily quit the company. Qualitative research interviews are in-depth and elicit detailed feedback from the interviewee (Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p. 152). Thus, interviewing former and current employees of the organization would provide preliminary information crucial in identifying and solving the problem.
Research Instruments and Validation
Tools of Research refer to the most appropriate method of data collection within a given area of study. Interviews, questionnaires, and observational surveys are applicable and convenient research instruments in small companies (Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p. 152). The tools will help the company achieve a conclusive result on the factors influencing its underlying concern on staff turnover. Validation refers to data collection and analysis to determine the accuracy and dependability of the research instrument used. The method of validating the chosen tools depends on scale, reliability, and validity and involves various steps.
Firstly, face validity involves two separate groups that are experts in the survey or specific research. In the turnover situation, involving top management like the CEO of a company with similar challenges would be beneficial. The questionnaires would be passed to the CEO for review and to determine if the questions could extract useful answers to help solve the problem. The second peer to review the questionnaire would be a question and grammatical expert, who will identify and correct errors that could lead to misleading answers. Such a person could be a committee member or from relevant grammar professional from an authentic institution. Secondly, the piloting test of the questionnaire includes randomly sampling the target subjects and presenting them with the questionnaires for filling (Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p.156). In a turnover problem, sampling a few former employees and giving them the questionnaires would highlight the method’s validity. Piloting helps to guide if the intended questions in the interview could be appropriate.
Additionally, the third step of validation involves the clearance of the collected data. After entering the spreadsheet’s collected data, the team as a commission would rephrase the questions to identify if they could still match, also correcting errors in the questionnaire as per the scale provided. Loading and continuously running the questionnaire in the Principle Components Analysis (PCA) would help identify hidden issues that were not asked but are crucial in noting the employees’ loyalty and behavior (Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p.156). It will enable the organization to get a comprehensive result on the underlying concerns and the expected future challenges.
Further, the whole questionnaire should be reviewed to ensure the consistency and accuracy of the responses. The answers should have a specific flow and pattern to have restricted solutions to the intended purpose. Some respondents could digress from the requested topic and indulge in irrelevant issues that could mislead the commission, thus conforming to the internal consistency to identify and correct any inconsistent element in the questionnaire.
Finally, validation of the data is taken through the revision process where the commission reviews the whole process to determine if the questionnaire would be dependable to achieve the intended purpose. It also helps to eliminate irrelevant questions and replace them with more relevant and direct ones. Although some questions could only need adjustments and minor corrections to fit within the used scale, such items need to be highlighted and handled separately.
Data Analysis and Presentation
Questionnaires and observations are the research commission methods, and therefore, qualitative data analysis would be appropriate. Firstly, transcribing will be effective for the analysis and presentation of the collected data, which is always unstructured and of no meaning to some extent. Hence, the raw data should be converted into a readable and understandable form. The commission settled on computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software to convert the unstructured data into readable and interpretable information ( Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p.162). Secondly, organizing data involves the commission realigning the collected data as per the objective question of workers’ turnover so that it would be tabulated and correctly match with the relevant information provided. Organizing data will ensure that it is provided to the full extent and utilized for maximum output. The answers provided by the interviewee are rematched by relevant questions in case they were not answered as per the item. Moreover, coding is essential during the analysis and presentation of information. The data should then be split into concepts, patterns, and properties for research efficiency. In-vivo coding should be applicable in an interview as it uses the correspondents’ words to code the information to it clear and understandable by all ( Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p.163). Finally, the validation of data is the final stage in the information analysis procedure, during which the accuracy and reliability of the data are checked to produce consistent and dependable outcomes.
Presentation of Data and Skills to be Applied
The commission should table the data in graphs, tables, and charts. The number of employees leaving each month within a year would be easily identified in the graph. Charts would show the rate at which the hired employees are likely to quit and how long they would stay in the company. The table could show the name of the former and current employees interviewed. Also, the management should apply the following skills to get the desired results. The administration should ask questions and get as many answers as possible, note down crucial issues, organize all provided data, and compare the notes with other relevant questionnaires ( Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p.165). Managers should also be open to accommodate all opinions, including the divergent ones, as well as gather and properly arrange similar questionnaires for references, while the presenters should be eloquent and tidy and all suitable materials used during a presentation organized in order.
Handling Questions of Ethics in the Research
Ethical issues involve subject rights and freedoms during and after research. Company turnover could touch on very incriminating issues connecting powerful top managers that the correspondent could feel insecure about exposing. In case the correspondents are afraid and fear profiling by other similar companies, anonymity, and confidentiality would be more appropriate ( Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p.165). The commission should inform the interviewee of the study’s purpose and ask for consent before proceeding with the interview.
The integrity of the interviewer and interviewee should be upheld and respected. The commission members’ conflict of interest in the research should be shelved to avoid prejudiced outcomes that could provide misleading findings. The entire project should be premised on the research legislation and guidelines, while the data provided should be handled with many precautions to ensure the correspondents’ intended information is precisely captured to avoid misquotation or reporting unintended information (Nelissen, Forrier and Verbruggen 2017, p.166). Ethical issues are critical in the research study, and the commission should observe to prevent harming or damaging the subjects’ reputations which could lead to legal problems. Therefore, it should ensure that its integrity and legitimacy remained unquestioned to be accepted by both parties.
Problems Associated with Research
The company commissioned the team to research the high staff turnover; although the team could be highly prepared and determined to carry on the task, some unavoidable challenges could occur. Firstly, the interview method preferred by the commission could be time-consuming and expensive for a small company. The process could be flawed with biases as personal prejudice could cloud the interview. Former employees could be bitter and resentful, thus providing unjustifiable responses. Out of fear, the interviewees are more likely to conceal critical information. Conversely, the questionnaire could provide dishonest answers to taint its name or vindicate top management (Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p.166). The unanswered questions hinder the gathering of critical information. Understanding and interpretation often differ; thus, the results could be skewed.
The research committee, is likely to identify internal organizational problems such as less training of contracted staff, exclusion of employees in critical issues, skewed hiring leading to role mismatch, lack of staff recognition and appreciation, insufficient growth and progress in the company, overworking employees without proper compensation and poor labor laws unsafe working environment. Employees prefer to work in companies that create a conducive and challenging environment. Challenging tasks expand employees’ thinking capacity, thus promoting sustainable development.
Company privileges and benefits such as insurance cover and salary bonuses increase employees’ morale to perform delegated duties. Experienced and productive employees are interested in insurance cover and pension and prefer to work in companies that benefit. Conversely, young professionals are concerned with gaining relevant skills and knowledge to build on their expertise ( Nelissen, Forrier, and Verbruggen 2017, p.168). Thus, working in an environment that encourages employee training and supports further studies would be ideal. All these issues are real are likely to be identified by the research commission. Similarly, the company’s inadequate funding, interpersonal conflict of interest among the committee members and legitimacy of the report could be raised if the process was not fair and just, especially to the subjects.
Conclusion
Staff turnover is a key concern in the business industry, both local and international, and there are multiple ways in which companies can prevent it. However, future research in this area will enable organizations’ overall commitment and their relationship with the turnover contract. Therefore, staff turnover is a business concern that still needs further intensive research to determine the challenges associated with staff turnover. Further research will aid in the establishment of effective policies to deal with the issue.
Reference List
Nelissen, J., Forrier, A., Verbruggen, M., 2017. Employee development and voluntary turnover: Testing the employability paradox. Human Resource Management Journal, vol. 27, no.1, pp. 152–168.