Measuring Employees' Job Satisfaction and Stress Level

You are the president of a medium size marketing research and management-consulting firm. ZYX Inc has hired you for a new management-consulting project. After interviewing the top management at ZYX, you have made the following notes:

1. ZYX Inc is a publicly owned electronics-manufacturing firm with over 1,500 employees. The company was started in 1965 by its current president and CEO Bob Imdaman. ZYX went public in 1981 and its stock trades on the NASDAQ.

2. For the past 35 years, ZYX's offices manufacturing plant was located in Thousand Oaks. Last year, the company announced that it will move its entire operations to Irvine, where it has been able to secure a lease for a larger facility that can accommodate all its future expansion plans more cost effectively than its present location. The company moved its operations to Irvine six months ago.

3. According to Pat Reyes, VP of Human Resources, the news of the move was poorly received by the employees and her office received over 300 complaints the day after the move was announced.

4. A recent management audit of the company revealed that absenteeism and the number of sick leaves has tripled since the company moved to Irvine. The number one stated cause of sick leaves was stress-related ailments.

5. According to Don Rosenfeld, head of the personnel department, turnover rate at the company has doubled in the past 4 months. Since most employees at ZYX have been there for a long time, Don complains that it will be very difficult to replace those employees and train the new ones. This could have an adverse affect on the company's bottom line.

6. Paula Richardson, VP of marketing has told you that he had personally spoken to a number of employees who had left his department and had been told that the main reason behind their departure was poor job satisfaction.
Bob Imdaman has told you that he wants your firm to find out what is going on in his company and what recommendations you will have for him. He has also told you that you should conduct your own investigations without anybody interfering with your efforts. Finally, he has said that although he does not want to stick his nose into your business, you really should look into his employees' job satisfaction and especially stress levels since he does not want any frivolous lawsuits.

Accordingly, you have developed a questionnaire that measures one's stress level and job satisfaction. You have also asked about the respondent's demographic characteristics (i.e., occupation, income, education, commute time, and gender) as well as their view with respect to the company's recent move. You intend to do a complete analysis of this data (use the data in the Course Materials folder).

References
Case study and accompanying documents used by expressed permission from Professor Farzin Madjidi, Pepperdine University, on January 6, 2006.

? The problem statement
? Statement of purpose (objective)
? Three research questions (at least one must examine a relationship between job satisfaction and stress.)
? Identify all variables you will be measuring in your study and state their level of measurement: attribute (nominal, ordinal), or variable (interval, ratio)
? For the three research questions stated, identify the dependent and independent characteristics (if appropriate).
? Fill in all parts of Phase I