Productivity started at 200 units produced per employee, and our goal was to produce 225 units per employee. During year one, productivity went from being as low as 196 in quarter two and as high as 201 in quarter three. It leveled back to the initial 200 units at the end of quarter four.
To increase productivity, we included a vacation/ personal/ sick day to their benefits during quarter two. The reason for why this would improve productivity, is that it would allow the employees to have a better work/life balance and allow them the option of taking an extra day off if they either need or want to. Every quarter we have been making sure to fill in all job positions where there have either been resignations or more workers needed. During one of the quarters, we did short staff some of the job level one employees, because it would have been too expensive to hire all the new hires required. We also did this because we imagined that it would increase morale if employees were allowed to work some overtime hours. We will continue to fully staff our employees and offer them overtime for at least one quarter of the year. Layoffs could potentially happen during this next year; therefore we might slightly understaff our employees by one or two people should the issue arise. The reason for this is so that we do not risk having that cost which will hurt morale by not offering enough hours to everyone and in turn will result in lower productivity. The Safety and Accident Prevention Program contributed to the increased productivity by allowing more workers to be at work without having to worry about potential dangers in the workplace. This can be seen through a significant decrease in absenteeism throughout the year. Our absenteeism numbers started at 493 employees and dropped down to 353 employees by quarter four which is a 28.4% decrease.
While these factors have the potential to improve productivity, it is clear that we did not perform as we had anticipated in our initial goals. Our productivity remained relatively static around 200, this means that all our efforts did not really improve productivity. To fix this problem something needs to change. We should have invested more money in benefits early on. While it is suggested to not go over $350,000 in one quarter, benefits are a different story; Benefits can be expensive and can force you to spend over $350,000 in an individual quarter, but they are worth the risk because they do not facilitate change instantaneously. Investing in them early on gives way for greater potential on improvements down the road, especially since benefit costs are absorbed by the firm after the initial offering. While we did not invest in benefits early on, we would like to get our benefits up to tier three next year.
a) Clearly explained how your Year 2 decisions worked out in terms of (1) productivity at the end of Year 2. address the specific HR practices you have used to reach those results for the productivity?
b) Clearly explained what you would do differently knowing what you know now and how that would affect productivity using specific HR practices (i.e., you need to be very specific as increasing vision plan, introducing or spending more funds on HRIS programs, etc.).
c) Used regression analysis and include include analysis output.