HRM FPX 5122 Assessment 2 Leadership and Culture Survey Development HRM-FPX5122 Developing an Effective Workplace
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Leadership and Culture Survey Development
Power Manufacturing Company (PMC) specializes in producing both cordless and corded power tools. The company operates manufacturing facilities in four U.S. states and two distribution centers. Recently, PMC has experienced an increase in employee turnover at two of its manufacturing plants, rising from the typical 3-4% to 15% and 18%. In response, the company conducted a pay survey, which revealed that compensation at these facilities was competitive with regional pay rates. Despite this, the high turnover persisted, prompting PMC to initiate an employee engagement investigation. During the initial phase, the company identified several issues to explore.
The identified issues included compensation and benefits, peer relationships, plant management, supervisory management, job meaningfulness, and job training. Various methods were considered for investigating each issue, and ultimately, PMC chose to conduct a survey. The company decided to begin its employee engagement investigation by distributing a survey focused on leadership and workplace diversity and inclusivity culture. This essay outlines the process of developing and distributing the survey.
Survey Development
A survey is a collection of items designed to gather information from respondents. Surveys serve multiple purposes, including program evaluation, assessment of changes in attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge, decision-making regarding a product, and understanding people’s perspectives. In PMC’s case, the survey aims to understand employee attitudes and beliefs concerning workplace culture and company leadership.
Creating the questionnaire is a crucial stage in the survey development process (Pew Research Center, n.d.). The process involves multiple stages, each requiring careful attention. The first step in designing a questionnaire is topic identification. PMC has already identified workplace culture and leadership as the topics to be addressed in the survey. Question wording is critical when designing a questionnaire (Pew Research Center, n.d.).
Corporate survey questions typically take two formats: closed or open-ended questions. Closed questions offer a predetermined set of answers for respondents to choose from (Edwards, Thomas, Rosenfeld, & Booth-Kewley, 2012). These questions are popular in organizational surveys because they are quick to complete and cost-effective. However, closed questions can limit employees’ ability to fully express themselves, which may result in the collection of incomplete information (Edwards et al., 2012).
HRM FPX 5122 Assessment 2 Leadership and Culture Survey Development
In contrast, open-ended questions allow respondents to express themselves freely. Responses to open-ended questions are often narrative, although some may be answered in numerical form (Edwards et al., 2012). The advantage of open-ended questions is that they enable respondents to answer from their frame of reference, facilitating the discovery of information that might not have surfaced otherwise. However, open-ended questions require more time to respond to and analyze, as respondents do not follow a standardized format (Edwards et al., 2012). Therefore, the current survey uses closed questions with a differential scale.
Additional guidelines were followed when formulating the PMC survey. These guidelines include keeping one idea per question, ensuring that questions are short and straightforward, avoiding ambiguity, and using appropriate language. It is also important to be specific, avoid bias, and refrain from using double negatives (Pew Research Center, n.d.).
Another important aspect of questionnaire development is the order of the questions, which can impact the results. The placement of questions at the beginning of the questionnaire can significantly influence how respondents answer subsequent questions (Pew Research Center, n.d.). It is recommended to start the survey with engaging and simple questions to capture respondents’ attention. Demographic-related questions should be placed at the end, as some respondents may feel unfairly targeted by these questions (Pew Research Center, n.d.). Placing demographic questions at the beginning may discourage respondents from completing the survey. Consistency in the survey format is also crucial to ensure that respondents do not feel like they are answering different questionnaires (Pew Research Center, n.d.).