Data Analysis Essay On Employee Demographics And Associations At SuperPart.

Overall Employee Age Profile

At the last Executive meeting, I was most interested to hear that the data your division recently collected from a random sample of 400 of our employees is now in a convenient database, and ready for analysis. I have a number of interests to be addressed, in order to construct a profile of our employees and to assist in Human Resources matters. These are as follows:
1. An overall view of an employee’s age at SuperPart
I am interested in the age demographics of our employees. There are various reasons for this. One is to predict the potential retirement rate, as this impacts on our superannuation funding and skill base, as people retire and leave the company.

Another is to establish if SuperPart is attracting enough younger workers, while another is to see if the spread of ages allows for people progressing through the stages of middle management. Accordingly, a general summary of age, of all our employees, is required, for presentation at the next Executivemeeting.

2. Exploring Associations
I am also interested in how age relates to some specific factors for our employees. In particular, does there appear to be any relationship between an employee’s age and:
(a) Occupation within SuperPart
(b) The number of hours worked
(c) Before?taxes Income
On the basis of the above, provide a brief summary how the factors compare.

3. Differences in levels of job satisfaction
Since the introduction of the national government’s new Industrial Relations laws, the Executive is particularly concerned about the level of contentment and discontentment of our employees.
(a) Can you please provide a summary report on worker satisfaction atSuperPart?
(b) Is there any difference in the level of job satisfaction and union or non?union membership? (I am interested in those employees who say they are satisfied in some way or other with theirjobs.)
(c) Are there are any differences in hours worked based on job satisfaction? Can you provide me with a brief summary of which employee groups are working the longest hours.

4. Worker Retention
As well as retirement, management is also worried about employees leaving for other reasons. A recent industry?wide survey suggested that 10% of employees anticipate leaving the industry in the next 2 years. If this figure is true at SuperPart, some managers have predicted that the company would lose 1000 or more employees. Are you able to work out the chances of this occurring?

5. Union Memberships
You may not be aware, but union membership at SuperPart has never been high. Nonetheless, in the last enterprise bargaining agreement we agreed with the unions that a range of issues such as work hours and job satisfaction would be investigated for all employees. To assist in this goal, and to analyse the extent and role of unionisation in the company, I would like information on the features mentioned below.(a) What is the estimated average working week for all SuperPart employees? What is the estimated average working week for union members? For non?union members?
(b) Can you provide me with an accurate estimate of the total number of non?union members across the whole organization who would work more than 40 hours? Likewise, how many are working more than 50 hours?
(c) There is some speculation that the non?unionised workers work on average more than 45 hours per week. Is there any way of confirming this?
(d) A recent survey of manufacturers showed that the proportion of unionised staff nationally was at least 20%. I suspect that SuperPart would be on the ‘low?unionised’ side, compared to the country overall. Am I correct in saying that the union is wrong and their membership is below 20%?

6. Future Surveys
One of the company’s overall goals is to reduce the average working week and increase the level of job satisfaction. Next year, we intend to perform a follow?up study on these variables in particular. Say we wished to estimate the average working week for all employees to within one hour and the proportion of satisfied workers for the whole company to within 1%, will a sample size of 400 be large enough?

In line with the tour request as per the memorandum on August 24, the data analysis of the sample data which our team had collected is completed. In this analysis, a host of statistical tools and techniques have been highlighted in order to draw reliable conclusions for the organisation as a while. The first aspect which has been observed is the high concentration of employees in the middle ages especially ranging from 30 years to 50 years. A worrisome aspect is that the proportion of young employees especially in age group of 18-25 years seems lacking. Also the underlying relation of occupation, weekly work hours, before tax income with age has been explored but is found to be without any statistical significance. A positive aspect for the company is in the form of high satisfaction level which has been observed. Also, the satisfaction level does not tend to vary in a statistically significant manner with unionisation. Further, the hours of work per week is not related to the underlying satisfaction level of employees. Like the industry, going ahead, it is expected that the company also would face attrition concerns for which suitable measures need to be introduced by the company. The claim in relation of non-unionised workers giving weekly hours in excess of 45 hours has not been found true. Besides, statistical support has not been found for the unionisation level to be lesser than the national average level. Further, it is estimated that the overall sample size which equals 400 employees should suffice for future survey requirement to be fulfilled.

The detailed findings of the statistical analysis in relation to the various issues raised are shared below.

1. Based on the statistical analysis highlighted in the attached excel, it is apparent that the mean employee age for the sample is 39.41 years. But since the various age groups belonging to different ages is essential for your analysis, usage of quartiles is preferred. As per this, about one-fourth or 25% of employees have been found to be less than 32 years in age. This statistic along with the high mean employee age hints at the inability of the company at attracting young aged employees between 18-25 age group. This is also supported by about one –fourth of employees aged between 32 and 38 years. Also, the distribution of age has a positive skew which further hints at the presence of exceptionally old employees but no such indication occurs for very young which is a concerning factor.

Also, it is noticeable that half of the sample employees have their ages between 32 years and 46 years and most of these would be found in the middle management causing some crowding.  Considering that three-fourths employees in the sample set are still less than 46 years, hence retirement should not a major concern for the company. Clearly, many of the employees are still pretty far from their retirement age and hence managing and nurturing the existing talent would be more pivotal. However, the young employees must also join the organisation and it needs to be a key focus are otherwise the career progression would typically be difficult especially on account of similar age levels of a host of employees. Also, it seems quite strange that there is so much under-representation of the young people and clearly relevant steps need to be taken in this regard as this should be a priority area moving ahead.

Associations between Age and Specific Factors

2. The key concern is to highlight the relation of age with some particular variables.

a. The association between the occupation and the employee age is not very significant. This is quite evident from the age distribution of those workers who are working as labourers. It may be expected that considering the strenuous nature of the job, it should be dominated by young people but this is not the case as contribution of sample employees in 18-31 age bracket and 44-56 age bracket is almost the same.  Also, the representation the age group 44-56 has a very low representation in terms of roles related to management which is surprising. Therefore, the above evidence clearly reflects absence of any clear trend with regards to age and thus occupation seems to be determined by the underlying skill rather than age.

b. A weak but negative association is observed between weekly hour worked and employee age. As a result, it indicates that the hours that the employee work is independent of the age to a large extent as other factors would be considered more pivotal such as the workload, manpower availability, cost considerations and the underlying productivity level.

c. There is a weak positive association observed between the variables of interest i.e. the employee age and the income before tax. This is quite expected since occupation and age were not related and hence senior management are not manned by employees higher in age. However, it is noteworthy that experience does matter and leads to higher salary with indifference to the underlying profession to which the employee belongs. Hence, to an extent there is an expectation that the age would have a positive influence on the salary levels of the employees. Having said that there are other more significant factors which drive salary and thus reduce age to a relatively insignificant variable.

3. (a) The employees at the company seem to have a very high satisfaction level. The given sample represents that about 46% employees display a high satisfaction and 43% display a moderate level of satisfaction with the company. Thus almost 90% of the workforce of the company belongs to satisfied category which is a big positive for the company as it would enable higher employee productivity and reduce attrition related costs. The employees who are highly dissatisfied with the company tend to comprise around 4% of the total sample strength. But, the company needs to make proactive efforts in order to resolve certain genuine issues that these employees may have so that the morale of the workforce remains high.

(b)  On the basis of the relevant statistical tool, it has come to light that job satisfaction is not significantly driven by the employee unionisation. This is very positive for the company since if an employee is a member of union, it does not imply that he/she would be more satisfied. This clearly highlights that management is fair in dealing with employees which is why the employees do not necessarily have to join the union to put their point forward. The management is cognisant of the benefits of a satisfied workforce and thus aims towards the same.

Differences in Job Satisfaction

c) It does not seem that there are any significant difference in the satisfaction level of employees who tend to have different weekly work hours. This is testimony to the fact that higher satisfaction level is not derived from fewer amounts of work hours but from other aspects related to the organisational culture and management policies as a result of which the employees are satisfied even after working for long hours.  This is clearly a big positive for the company which it can leverage for creation of a competitive edge over peers.

4. Based on the information provided, attrition may be a grave concern for the industry going ahead with an estimated 10% attrition rate. In wake of this concern, the objective is to analyse the likely chances for the company to also face such a concern arising. Based on the current employee strength of 9800 employees, more than 980 employees leaving the company would amount to an attrition rate in excess of 10%. Based on the computations in excel, it may be concluded that there seems to be a 25% chance that more than 1,000 employee would leave the company. Clearly this poses a significant risk to the business operations in the form of loss of talent. Hence, it is essential that the company must introduce incentives particularly in form of share options with lock in period which would be available over a long time frame so that there is lesser attrition. Additionally to make up for the loss of talent, the manpower planning must be performed by the HR so that there is no shortage of trained manpower.  Also, the key reasons behind employees leaving the organisation would also need to be explored so that appropriate corrective measure can be taken to the extent possible to address the concerns of the employees who wish to leave

5. a) In line with the sample employee information, estimates for the organisation have been obtained using the inferential statistics. It can be concluded with 95% certainty that mean weekly working hours for all employees would occupy a range of 44.45-46.42 hours. However, in relation to the non-unionised employees, the corresponding range works out as 44.44 – 46.54 hours with 95% certainty. In relation to the unionised employees, weekly working hour range works out to be 42.34 – 47.95 hours with 95% certainty. It is apparent that the range of unionised employees is higher than their non-unionised counterparts which may be attributed to a larger value of variance for these employees.

b) The given sample data has been used to estimate with 95% certainty the weekly hours worked on an average for different values. The non-unionised employee proportion who tends to clock more than 40 weekly hours is expected to range in 40.55%-51.29% with 95% certainty. Also, the non-unionised employee proportion who tends to clock more than 50 weekly hours is expected to range in 15.36% - 23.92% with 95% certainty The above proportions clearly indicate that more than 55% of the employees who are not part of the union tend to work in excess of 40 hours on a weekly basis.

c) The given claim has been examined through the lens of inferential statistics by considering the available sample employee data. The claim about non-unionised employee given weekly hours in excess of 45 hours has been found to be statistically insignificant. Therefore, the sample data does not provide enough statistical evidence for the claim to be supported and hence it would be rejected in light of the available evidence.

d) Using the provided sample data, the key aim was to determine unionisation level in the company and thereby comment on the senior management claim of unionisation being lower than the national average in case of the company. But the statistical evidence in this regards does not provide sufficient evidence to support the claim made by the management. Hence, it would be correct to conclude that unionisation levels in the company are comparable to the national average and cannot be concluded to be significantly less.

6.The least amount of sample size that is required is primarily driven by three main aspects namely, the dispersion in the underlying quantity to be measured, margin of error desires along with the confidence level. As per the sample information available, for weekly hours estimation to be within the desired limits, it is estimated that atleast 388 employee sample data is required. However, for meeting the determination of relevant proportion, the sample requirement as computed through the same formula is must higher, Therefore, based on the computations, it would be fair to estimate a 400 employee sample size may not suffice for the future research considering the desired accuracy in estimation.