Research proposal to understand why the management of Crystal Mountain produces such high staff turnovers, particularly with young adults and teenagers.
2. Background
Crystal Mountain is an Amusement Centre and Museum consisting of departments such as; crystal and mineral store, crystal mine gallery and museum, animal park and roller coaster, and their very own café called, ‘Café on The Rocks’.
Located at 80 Candia Rd, Swanson in Auckland City, Crystal Mountain is owned and operated by the Nogueira family. The organization is managed by the owners, Sandra and Abrelino Nogueira. This is managed with help of their children and mainly, oldest daughter and son in law.
The older staff members work alongside the family in the other departments and have all maintained their jobs long term. Management occurs the continuous problem of hiring younger employees for Crystal Mountains low-level staff roles. It was more common in the first level roles; retail assistants, café assistants, park assistants and waitresses that were hiring for employees around the age of fourteen to twenty-five.
These low-level roles are often short-term roles as employees eventually leave after a period, resulting in employee turnover. It is normal for this position to be short-term for workers as they either; were only working casually for the experience, income or because they eventually evolve into a higher position. In this case, Crystal Mountain occurs this problem too often with staff working in low-level positions. Occasionally the more experienced staff in these roles would get put in higher management positions of administration and other management positions when these roles needed filling.
3. Problem
Finding a solution to why Crystal Mountains management continues to replace low-level staff members resulting in high staff turnovers with employees.
a. Purpose of the study
Previously being employed with Crystal Mountain has triggered me to raise the question of why management constantly replaces low-level workers. I felt as if they were more concerned with work productivity to get results, rather than their concern for our staff. The objective is to determine Crystal Mountains high staff turnover. I will conduct three different methods of both qualitative and quantitative data to gather relevant information. The purpose of this study is to determine why staff turnover is high in low-level roles, particularly with young adults and teenagers.
1.Exit interview report (Achievers, 2016)
2. Survey current employees (Achievers, 2016)
3.Prepare analyses of staff turnover according to department, position and compare to the organization with industry competitors, businesses with similar characteristics or to employment trends in your area (Mayhew, 2018)
b. Research questions
1. Is there a relationship with the age group to high employee turnover?
2. What are the key factors that influence employee engagement in relation to employee turnover?
4. Scope of the study
The scope area of this study is a Museum and Amusement Park, on the hills of Swanson in Waitakere City. This research analyses the problem of high staff turnover with low level employees in medium to large sized firms. Since Crystal Mountain is a Amusement park, to get accurate results to indicate which staff are leaving their jobs I will be investigating each department individually. This will focus on employee turnover relating with employee engagement at Crystal Mountain. The questions I will be researching is;
1. Is there a relationship with the age group to high employee turnover?
2.What are the key factors that influence employee engagement in relation to employee turnover?
The common factors of encourage enagement that reflect how employers value their employees according to Heryati R (2018) are; Career development and opportunities, flexibility of work hours, fair pay structure, adapt a learning culture, involve culture diversity, transparency and honesty, autonomy, inspiration, communication, employee recognition, healthy relationships. To answer my research questions, I will use these factors that influence employee engagement for my survey. The average budget to carry out this research, could range from little costs if use of existing resources is used which could potentially increase costs of weekly costs.
5. Relevance of the study
The relevance of the study is to improve Crystal Mountains high staff turnover in low-level roles. When a business occurs staff turnover regularly, it can have a negative impact on the business. Turnover for employees in New Zealand does also put the economy in position of hardship. For example, across international business over in the U.S according to Julie Moreland (2013), staff turnover is costing the U.S economy roughly $370 billion a year.
The internal stakeholders involved in this problem are the management and first level roles of staff at Crystal Mountain. Management needs to have a basic relationship with employees to be able to get any engagement with staff. As employers’ roles usually rely on work production of employees, they should maintain a positive relationship to provide a healthy working environment. By management meeting the basic needs of employees, they should create a well working team to support the organisations success. Employees engagement refers to employees ‘extra time, effort and initiative to contribute to business success’ (Micheal Page Team, 2015). It gives the employees the sense of purpose by bringing the energy, passion and enthusiasm in their work productivity in their role. Employee engagement contributes to providing better results to the customers as well as the organisation.
For Crystal Mountain to reduce their staff turnover with employees, they must increase employee engagement by improving their management staff’s leadership styles as a manager with employees in first level roles. Managers in a leadership position should inspire their employees by role modelling good leadership, this will contribute to creating a desire to succeed as team and individual. By providing training opportunities for employee’s development, will encourage them to using those skills when advancing to higher roles or jobs. It is important for a manager to reinforcement of employee’s importance to the organisation, allowing them to see the connection which incorporates their contributions in the direction of success within the business. Employee engagement in the business can vary on numbers of factors such as the wages of employees. To intrinsically motivate employees, their efforts should be rewarded by acknowledging work produced. This should boost performance if Crystal Mountains employees if they feel their efforts are recognised.
6. Research design
a. Type of study
Applied research
Applied research involves scientific study which research determines to fix practical issues. This type of study plays a significant role by solving problems that occur regularly and effects ‘life, work, health, and overall well-being.’ (Cherry, 2018 ). This theory of research is often used to figure out solutions for day to day issues and ‘develop innovative technologies (Cherry, 2018 )’. In this case, I will be using analysing Crystal Mountains, employee engagement in relation to high employee turnover in order to carry out applied research.
Descriptive research
Descriptive research method meaning of research is the development, checking and evaluating real life scenarios also using the survey method. Common data collecting included methods such as; questionnaire, interview, and observation. (Hale, 2018) Descriptive research is divided into different methods based on how the data was gathered. For my type of study when referring to descriptive research, I will carry out the ‘survey method’ (Hale, 2018). This type of study involves people participating to complete questions asked by interviews or provided survey with a questionnaire. Once respondents have completed the questions asked, the researchers conclude their own answers using the answers provided. Questions used must be structed and written clearly to provide a good understanding and so it can be easily comprehended. I will apply the survey method as part of my descriptive research by collecting my data using interview reports, questionnaire survey and observation of NZ businesses statistics.
b. Data collection
1. Exit interview report (Achievers, 2016)
Collecting data from exit interviews reports is sourcing secondary research from Crystal Mountain’s previous employees. An exit interview report should be conducted by someone who does not have a relationship with the departing employee, this should be available from Crystal Mountains Human Resource Manager. Once gaining access to these documents, it should be a quick process depending on how long it takes to receive from management. The main idea of this interview is to gain feedback to determine the reasoning for the employees leaves to help improve certain aspects of the business. To benefit the most from this interview, you should ensure employees ‘feel free to disclose their real reasons for leaving.’ (Achievers, 2016). It also proves important to interview third parties with the organization, such as; contractors, builders etc. Gaining feedback from stakeholders allows another inside view of your organization from a new perspective.
2. Survey current employees (Achievers, 2016)
Data collected by questionnaire survey will provide primary research, investigating current employees of Crystal Mountain. Giving staff the opportunity to speak about their concerns and providing us with feedback, will allow us to get a better idea of staff turnover within each industry of the business. Using an existing survey online (Bhat, 2018) I will use these questions as a template to gather the data (see ‘12119108Questionnaire’ attached). Investigating current employees working for Crystal Mountain, allows the organisation to get a clearer understanding of why employees leave which should reduce staff turnover. This should be handed to employees over a week’s period after the H.O.D has completed theirs to avoid any input for H.O.D. Employees should be selected based on their experience from HOD, starting with the most experienced staff. It would be best to provide them with the survey to only respondents willing to participate to avoid any bias feedback. The survey should be given before their first work shift, allowing them to be able to think clearly. Getting employees to complete this individually will avoid any influence and opinions from others when filling out the questionnaire. In order to do this, it will require roughly 20 minutes of employee’s time and will need to ask permission from management before conducting the surveys during work time. The resources needed to carry out the survey can be found in Crystal Mountain in the administration department. Resources include; printing paper of the survey and a writing device to fill it out. These costs could cover in the stationary budget, which should only cost a small fee and will avoid any big costs.
3. Prepare analyses of your turnover according to department, position and business sector then compare your organization with industry competitors, businesses with similar characteristics or to employment trends in your area (Mayhew, 2018)
This data collection will use secondary research based on similar organisations and business competitors within the same area. I will prepare to analyse each department on their own rather than the business, since the productivity of staff could vary to each department. The ‘Café on the Rocks’ café, will be compared to other cafes in the hospitality industries around the Auckland area. The museum will be compared to other small museums and galleries across the North Island. The outside roller coaster and amusement park will be compared to other amusement parks that also offer animal interaction, across New Zealand. Crystal Mountains store itself, will be compared to other popular stores selling jewellery and precious stones across different towns of New Zealand. I will compare Crystal Mountains data with statistics against other popular medium to large sized amusement parks in New Zealand. The resources needed for this only consists of a device to connect online, where I can find the data for which will benefit me by costing nothing financially. To find New Zealand employee turnover average, I will source this existing secondary research using online NZ statistics (New Zealand Government, 2018). Since the research data for this is already existing, the amount of time it should take to gather all data will depend on the documents I can source online.
c. The sampling designs
For the questionnaire survey I will be sampling a group of people from the NZ population. The population of people that will be analysed, will be from the staff at Crystal Mountain. There is no convenience to analysing the whole team as it costs too much time. To get accurate results, the survey will be filled by each head of department who will allocate the other two surveys to their employees. They must hand out the questionnaires to the most experienced staff of; one middle working management role (Supervisor, chef) and first level employees (waitress, kitchenhand). Choosing one employee from each position in the hierarchy, this will provide us with results over various positions within staff. I will carry out probability sampling to come up with the most accurate results for my questionnaire survey. This will consist of all four head of departments, four in eight staff working in middle management, and four out of the sixteen staff in low level working roles. The probability of the sampling consists of; 100% of H.O.D, 50% of middle management staff, 25% of first level working roles. This will gather 42.8% of Crystal Mountains staffs feedback, provided from the most experienced employees in each management position.
d. Methods of data analysis
To analyse the data I will be using a hybrid approach which will use both qualitative and quantitative data to gather relevant information. I will conduct three different methods of; surveying, interviews and observation. To carry out the exit interview I will be analysing the data using a qualitative approach, which will enclose reports from Crystal Mountains ‘Exit Interviews’ answered using a questionnaire. Which data will be indicating the reasonings to annual leave of previous employees whom have left their job at Crystal Mountain.
To analyse the second method of surveying, I will continue to use qualitative data approach. I will provide a questionnaire from a probability sampling for the existing staff members of Crystal Mountain. This approach will analyse the organisations current employee engagement based of feedback given.
The final data analyse will conduct a quantitative approach as I will be using numbered statistics’ and graphs from other organisations to compare with Crystal Mountain. This will allow me to compare Crystal Mountains current statistics with other industries, providing me with quantitative data.
7. Time frame
The estimated time frame to complete this research proposal to present to Crystal Mountain will approximately take up to 10 weeks. Over the 10-week period, a weekly report will be conducted to check the progress of the tasks. This will help to ensure tasks are on track and according to the schedule.
