Business Research Applications: Using Surveys for Employee Feedback

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I can't prepare the paper for you, but I will provide in detail how research is used to solve a serious problem in a firm. I will use two scenarios and show how quantitative, online data collection is a wonderful way to efficiently conduct research within an organization.

Imagine you work for a firm that seems to be suffering from a high rate of attrition (turnover). The company can't seem to retain employees past 5 years. Every time a person leaves the firm, it is a costly and timely endeavor for the firm to recruit a new employee and fully train them. A secondary problem results in the fact that the talent pool is smaller, and thus it makes it hard to find people to promote internally.

So you were commissioned (as the market research director of the firm) to set up a quantitative study to understand why employees were leaving.

As a competent researcher, you acknowledge the importance of several key elements when beginning a new research initiative.

You firstly realize the importance of anonymity - employees need to be able to freely speak their mind without having any fears that they can get into trouble. Thus, you decide to implement an online survey, and send the link out to all employees in the firm. You inform the employees that they will not be known by name; however they will be assigned a random number. This will protect their ID, and allow them to speak honestly.

Next, you decide on the main topics that you want to cover in the research. The goal is to understand attrition. You then need to formulate clearly written, unbiased questions to get the opinion of the employees.

You can ask a variety of types of questions such as:

Rating scale questions: On a scale from 1 to 7, where 1 is very unsatisfied, and 7 is very satisfied, how satisfied are you with your job?

Closed ended questions: Out of the following benefits, which attract you the most: Overtime pay, higher salary, bonuses, and sick days?

Open ended questions: What might make you think of switching jobs?

Once you formulate your questions, you can program it into the computer to randomize the order of the questions to avoid any bias (another trick you learned in class). As well, you want to make sure that the survey is ...