Research Methodology on Employee Satisfaction

Research methodology on Employee SatisfactionEmployee satisfaction is a concept gauging how content the custody is with their produce and the employments environment. Hence Employee Dissatisfaction occurs when the workforce becomes unhappy with these aspects of their put-on, which fag mavin to negative tincts in the business, such as slumpd postulate and declines in productivity, as well as increase labor upset common problems that occur in near businesses, regardless(prenominal) if theyre small entrepreneurships or large corporations.We nurture selected to study specific events in HPs unified narrative specifically the reduction of wage rates, multiple employee redundancies, versed harassment and MAs (Mergers and Acquisitions). Dividing these issues up into four separate reports, we accept attempted to analyze the correlations amid HPs different corporate issues and their relation to employee dissatisfaction, by using external sources of breeding (such as news a rticles based on the relevant issue and applicable Human Resource theories) and familiarity to support our observeings. later analyzing these issues, we go out conclude our findings into a summarized statement evaluating employee dissatisfaction present in HP. We will thence present collective solutions that can be implemented to help alleviate HP of similar problems if they should of all eon show up in the future once again.Analysis/DiscussionIn fiat to quantify each problem, the implications of each issue on HP must(prenominal) be discussed in detail.Across-the-board redeem cuts and wage registrations that incensed employees in 2009We dont know what were going to do. We dont know, the man told NBCDFW, as tears streamed from his eyes. (Mackilwain, 2009) HP chairperson and chief executive officer crisscross Hurd announced that they would curve base invent and some benefits across the comp some(prenominal) in the wake of disappointing earnings. As for the fiscal first quarter 2009 results, HPs earnings were $1.9 billion, or $0.75 earnings per sh atomic number 18, kill from $2.1 billion, or $0.80 earnings per share compared to the aforementioned(prenominal) period last year. Starting with a reduction in his own salary by 20%, followed by senior executives who would take a drop between ten and fifteen percent, regular employees 5 percent and exempt employees 2.5 percent. All this in reaction to a 13.5 percent fall in the companys first quarter profit. (Dubie, 2009)Why did HP executives make this salary adjustment while they all know this would incense employees? Before answering this question, at that place are some basic facts virtuoso should consider. The recent recession of our decade has resulted in a sharp drop in external trade, and unemployment reached 9.2% by the end of 2009. The average salary of HP is about $62,000 (before salary adjustment), which is higher than that of others such as Dell, Apple and Cisco. These factors enforced em ployees continuance commitment, which encouraged them to stay with HP based on the perceived be of leaving the organization. Another factor that could relieve employees dissatisfaction is the broadness and equity of the salary adjustment. Since the salary-cutting was collectible to the unexpected decrease in net profit, hence, as long as the procedure of salary adjustment was made somewhat and objectively, and in accord with employees perception as much as possible, employees might not be dissatisfy when they compare themselves with co-workers inside HP (Self-Inside Comparison).HPs such across-broad cut is basically a result of Profit-Sharing Plans in which the employer shares profit with employees based on a predetermined formula. Similarly, an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is another adoptable selection to associate companys profit with salary, and give employees a sense of ownership through ESOP. The next solution is to word a flexible benefit big bucks to allow e ach employee to put together a benefits package individually tailored to his or her own needs and situation. Moreover, another way to adjust pay twist is to use bonus. Unlike Profit-Sharing Plan, bonus reward employees for recent performance rather than diachronic performance.Which one is the earnper for salary adjustment? As mentioned before, the world was still digging itself out of economic collapse in 2009, price-earning to ratio had yet to drop as low as previous recession, therefore the ESOP is less attractive since people were recognizing the reality of the weak performance during slumping economic. Hence, I would recommend a intermixd salary adjustment includes bonus and benefit package.Based on the diversity of subtletys, values, ages, personalities and personal situations, HP should design various benefit packages to fit into employees needs. There are three types of benefits plans modular plans, core-plus plans, and flexible spending accounts. In hostelry to make b enefits plans fit into employees need, managers should particularly communicate with employees from different regions, age-ranges, and departments to acquire what employees need most according to Maslows power structure of Needs Theory. As for bonus, managers need to set a base pay this new base pay should be lower than prior one. Bonuses are designed to award recent performance rather historical performance, and only applied to individuals. Moreover, the process of awarding must entails balancing internal equity and external equity.Allegations of informal harassment and improper business conduct that exhibited a profound lack of judgment by top executivesBe it an entry level employee or for that matter the CEO, violation of business conduct policies can lead to serious consequences. The recent HP sexual harassment outrage serves a perfect demonstration. secern Hurd who had served as HPs CEO for the last five years resigned at the Boards request by and by an probe concluding d istant behaviour that had violated HPs behavioural standards. While HP did not find any facts that supported the sexual harassment complaint in general, they revealed that the Board would not tolerate any business misconduct. For HP, what began as an investigation in response sexual harassment complaint by a contractor ended with the companys CEO resigning from his post. Sexual harassment is a crippling reality in the work place the effects of which run off not only the victim and the alleged harasser, but the fellow employees and the organisation as a whole.The unionise impacts of this scandal were seen through the drastic drop in share value of 8% immediately after Hurd resigned. Yet what surfaces as an important issue is the response of the HP employees to this situation. In response to Hurds resignation many employees revealed happiness over him leaving the company making statements like the tyrant is gone or Mark Turd. (Golijan, 2010) What do such allegations draw out? These allegations prove that the HP employees have been dissatisfied in long and an event like this only triggers their emotions to be revealed.In the first place, any event of such a controversy threatens employee in the workplace. As the Maslows pecking order of needs suggest an individuals elementary needs includes rubber and gage at work. Witnessing such an improper business conduct by the top executive himself certainly affects employees within all levels of the workforce. The employees would then begin viewing their peers and superiors with disbelief. Such misunderstanding and lack of trust has a long impact on the formation of long term relationships at work. Further more, such controversies lead to people speck uncomfortable from associating themselves with the organisation. As Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc. noted The scandals do impact peoples impression on the company,. A reduced company righteouse not only means the possibility of a high labour turnover but to o the difficulty that HP would face in attracting good quality employees.A bit impact that this scandal had was the emergence of a new leader for HP. Hurd is now replaced with Leo Apethekar. For HP employees who had already faced a rough time, change in leadership brings forth another new challenge, for a change in leadership as well as means a change in the boilersuit organisational culture. In response to the tarnished companys image, employees get disconnected from the top management leading to the creation of a them and us culture in the workplace. An essential role for the new leader is therefore to regain the trust which could be facilitated by adopting a more Charismatic leadership style and the same time enforcing ethical conduct. What lead to Mark Hurd Scandal being so detrimental, was that he did not himself comply to the business standards that he created Further, hypocrisy is one of the most destructive elements in an organisation. It is important for executives to set the tone of behaviour before they expect the same from their employees.The Hp sexual harassment scandal is therefore an important lesson that reflects upon the significance of the conduct of leaders. The profound impact that this scandal has had on the employee level of dissatisfaction leading to a possible feeling of in bail in the workplace is an important issue to consider. What happened in the case if Mark Hurd, has been principally attributed to not defining the behavioural standards appropriately. We commit that apart from only setting quantitative clauses, it is important to define moral clauses in the conduct as well. Lastly the most important lesson to learn from this scandal is that if an organisation aspires to achieve maximum productivity from its employees they must make them feel comfortable in the workplace. At all times employees must be conscious that they will be heard to. Setting up an effective system to address employee grievances is probably the shell soluti on to handling immediate problems and help them from blowing up to create a study controversy/scandal for the organisation.Enormous layoffs, e.g., 15,000 in 2002, 14,000 in 2005, 24,000 in 2008, and most recently (in June, 2010) 9,000.HP is facing a major problem involving layoffs. Due to several reasons, HP has laid off over fifty thousand employees in the last 8 years. For example, most recently, HP laid off nine thousand employees in enact to consolidate data centres at an expected cost of $1 billion. (Sherman, 2010) These reoccurring layoffs trouble employees in many slipway but the main aspect that should be taken into account is the effect this will have on employee dissatisfaction. Employee dissatisfaction can instigate severe ramifications for the company be caseful how the employees work affects how well the company does in terms of success. gambol security is something that the average employee cherishes. When an employees job is secure, there is a feeling of safety and this usually leads to more sureness and higher productivity. But in this case, job security is not something that the employees hold. Due to the multiple layoffs that occur in such short time periods, employees would feel that their jobs are not safe at all. How does this effect motivation? Maslows Hierarchy of Needs can be applied to this situation. Maslow developed a hierarchy of needs with the levels physiological, safety, social, value and self-actualization. His theory was when one stage of the hierarchy was complete and fulfilled by the employee the next need on the hierarchy becomes dominant. So when this motivational theory is applied to the situation at hand, it is clear that the employees cannot pass the safety needs stage in the hierarchy. They are striving to achieve job security but cannot due to the consistent layoffs. So therefore, according to the theory, employees cannot go on to satisfy social, esteem and self-actualization needs and this slows down gain in the company.This situation also fits into the motivation-hygiene theory. This theory relates intrinsic factors to job satisfaction and extrinsic factors with dissatisfaction. Job security is the issue here and it is an extrinsic factor, and therefore, dissatisfies employees. The hygiene factors are not being taken care of by HP. This obviously hinders performance of the employees.How can HP resolve some of the employee dissatisfaction problems that they have? One solution is that they can try and find another way to cut be, other than making employees redundant time and time again. They could reduce wages of employees, or cut salaries from higher managers, but it can be argued that this will also lead to an change magnitude level of employee dissatisfaction, depending on how the employees are motivated.However, if HP find it essential and most expeditious to lay off employees to cut or cover costs, then the company can keep veritable employees motivated by making the work environme nt more relaxed. This could help calm down the employees and reduce dissatisfaction (another motivation-hygiene theory concept). This will not necessarily motivate employees, but it will reduce dissatisfaction. Also, in order to prevent further dissatisfaction, HP could cut down on other possible extrinsic factors that cause dissatisfaction. For example, supervisors could start acting friendlier towards employees or any form of strict supervision and punishment can be abandoned.The continuous layoffs create a resistance to change in employees as many aspects of the company changes when capacious layoffs occur. To overcome the resistance to change, HP could help employees find logic in why these massive layoffs have occurred. Employees will still have security issues, but once they have all the reasons for change and there is no ambiguity, the environment would be more relaxed and any unnerving rumours floating around in the word of mouth would be abolished. This could reduce dissa tisfaction of the employees slightly.A risky amalgamation (with Compaq) that would create a bloated, vulnerable company anchored on the manufacture of commodity products at little or no profit.Business mergers occur when two firms combine together to form a new firm. Many reasons are associated with mergers the most common ones including potential Economies of Scale, increased market share, and so on. But what is less regarded by higher management levels in organizations is the impact on mergers on the overall workforce, and the deteriorating affects a merger can have on remaining labour. This report will address the human resource issues emerging from the merger of Compaq with Hewlett Packard (HP).There are multiple causes for negativity in the workforce after an MA, some including increased centralization in the organizations structure and loss of organizational culture. centralization occurs when decision-making power is centered at one point in the company normally towards th e higher levels of hierarchy (senior managers). This cuts off communication to lower levels of the organization, which can decrease the amount of communication flowing through the scope of command in the business and hence bestow to increased unbelief in the workforce (Kusstatscher,2005 ).After this, once a merger takes place there tends to be a loss of previously current culture from the prior-merged firm. Employees who identified more so with the businesss previous culture will likely become more isolated and secluded upon the merger where there can be a new culture enforce on them due to the presence of another business. This can trigger a loss of identity for employees, which may alter their perception of the business that they work in, and will likely also increase the amount of uncertainty that they experience within the merged business.Another major effect of an uncoordinated merger includes employee stress, contributed by concerns of job security due to potential layof fs after the merger. These redundancies occur because merging companies do not wish to gemination job roles hence by making specific job roles redundant they can rationalize costs and utilize the minimal amount of workers required in each department. This was the case between the merger of HP and Compaq which reported a job cut of approximately 15000 (Foo and Menon,2001) people, triggering increased stress levels amongst staff as to whether they would hold off their job in the merger process or not. Employee stress thus tends to lower overall moral and decrease productivity in the long run due to frustration over job security, as one employee expressed from HPs Singapore branch either way, were done for iii( Foo Menon,2001)In conclusion, employees will find it pass aroundively difficult to cope from the many challenges involved with a merger due to emotional stress from feelings of misgiving and anxiety for job security, to loss of corporate identity due to a change of organi zational culture. This could contribute to increased employee dissatisfaction with the business to those who remain in the workforce, due to negative emotions and lack of support from the business.Thus in the future, HP must address such concerns by implementing policies to help employees cope with such emotions. This could include increased communication from managers if employees were kept in constant communication with managers about changes in the overall business and were awake(predicate) of re-structuring issues and redundancy potentiality, then this would reduce the impact when redundancies are issued as employees whove known about the possibility of a lay off prior would have better mental preparation.Another suggestion could include adapting the merger and acquisition process so that cultures are able to integrate more effectively increased communication in the form of conferences or workshops between the two merging companies would help to improve communication and ov erall exposure between the different business cultures to make the integration of the two companies smoother. This could help motivate employees to corporate with each other more willingly and stimulate an increased sense of new culture that benefits some(prenominal) previously separate companies.Conclusion and RecommendationsConclusionIn conclusion, it is rattling much clear through these examples that employees are very dissatisfied with the way HP is operating. HP operations are disgruntling the employees and this is possibly hindering their performance, and therefore, arrest progress for the entire company. Whether it is through salary adjustments, unnecessary ill treatment of employees, colossal number of employee layoffs, or massive overall change through mergers and acquisitions, HPs way of running things is displeasing the employees.RecommendationsHP must find solutions to satisfy their employees more sufficiently. Dissatisfaction levels must be reduced in order to see so me progress in the company. The first solution is a simple, but effective one HP should make the work environment friendlier and more relaxed in order to gain some employee confidence. Currently, it does not appear that HP is very friendly with their employees due to the several issues discussed above, however if HP were to treat their employees better, and make the work environment more relaxed, then the employees dissatisfaction level would decrease.Another recommendation to HP would be that they should manage change amongst employees more effectively. If you behavior at the merger, the pay cuts, and the enormous layoffs, these are rather big changes to the company. If HP could manage this change in a more effective manner, then employees would not be as dissatisfied. HP should first and frontmost warn employees of upcoming change to abolish any nervousness and ambiguity. The facts should be laid out and employees need to be made to understand them. Also, to avoid further dissat isfaction, the changes must be applied fairly, and not with any prejudice or any other sort of unfair actions. A form of manipulation could also be adapted by the company. Manipulation is not the most ethical of methods to lower dissatisfaction, but in the end, it does lower dissatisfaction. Manipulation involves twisting facts to make the situation at hand seem more attractive. faux rumors are usually spread and eventually, employees accept the change and this lower dissatisfaction.