Factors Affecting Employees Productivity In Coca-Cola Co.

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Master in Business Administration

MBA

Factors Affecting Employees Productivity

In Coca-Cola Co.

Supervisor:  Dr. Fahoum Shalabi

Prepare By: Firas M. Absa - Student No: 1115079

Year 2011

Table of Contents

Part One: Research Problem

  1. Introduction
  1. Preface

Businesses live and die by productivity. A productive company has lower operating costs and can sell its products or services at lower prices, bringing increased volume and profits. Employee productivity is a key to organizational success and to a country's economy.
Employee productivity may be hard to measure, but it has a direct bearing on a company's profits. An employer fills his staff with productivity in mind and can get a handle on a worker's capabilities during the initial job interview. However, there are several factors on the job that help maximize what an employee does on the job. While employee compensation affects productivity, some factors may boost output without costing the company anything

  1. Research Problem

The general manager of Coca-Cola Company has noticed a move back in number of produced units during the last six months, so he proposed to make a study about the factors that may affect employees’ productivity and how to enhance their capabilities to increase production volume.

  1. Data Gathering
  1. Collecting Primary Data

After I have been asked by the general manager to investigate in this problem, I started to collect general and basic information about the company. The information was obtained through conducting a small meeting with the general manager, reading the company policies and procedure manuals, asking informal questions to a sample of employees at several levels especially whom involved directly in production. This collection of data was informal and with minimal preparation to have a general idea about this problem and to enhance the overall understanding of the problem.

Up to this point I had a better idea about Coca-Cola Company, such as the industry, average production volume in the company, HR policies & procedures, salary scale, and minimum education level required for each job. This information is considered a preliminary idea about the factors that may affect the employees’ productivity.

  1. Literature Review

Productivity is a very wide field to study. Based on the previous researches and case studies, productivity has been the most popular subject to focus on due to the huge number of factors that might affect it. However, there are some main factors that affect employee productivity more obviously and directly than others. After reviewing many recent researches and books, the most applicable factors that might affect employee productivity are found to be the following:

  1. employee’s satisfaction
  2. Training.
  3. Education level
  4. Sex
  5. Age
  6. Technology availability.
  7. Motivation
  8. Commitment
  9. Climate
  10. Company system
  11. Feedback
  12. Role of supervision or management.

According to (Hammer2000; Marini 2000; Denton 2000) “Employees that are satisfied and happy in with their jobs are more dedicated to doing a good job and taking care of customers that sustain the operation”. Job satisfaction is something that working people seek and a key element of employee retention. Through this review, these factors will be highlighted and discussed to conclude a solid ground of theories that would help in later decisions.

        

Referring to the second factor “Training”, today, more and more employers understand that, far from being a frill, good employee training is necessary to a company’s success. According to Holzer, Block, and Cheatman (2001), “provision of training will intrinsically motivate employees because the training will help them accomplish the tasks with better efficiency”.

A university graduate holding a baccalaureate or master's degree has been a sought commodity on the job market. To the general public the assumption is that more schooling means better jobs (Solmon 1981; Hanoch 1967; Schick and Kunnecke 1982; Stafford 1984; Glenn and Taylor 1984). It is assumed also, that individuals with a master's degree generally perform better in a managerial position than do those with a bachelor's degree, and that the individuals with a business degree will perform better in a managerial position than do those with a non-business degree.

Many scholars and practitioners have been interested in understanding the relationship between education level and productivity at work. At the outset, it must be noted that the term "productivity" is a very difficult term to define and measure. Given this difficulty the task of trying to establish a relationship between education level and job productivity is even more difficult. There have been few empirical studies conducted in this area, and the few published ones have been subjected to criticism.

Wise (1975) examined whether there is any relationship between the quality of one's college, one's academic achievement in that college, and the eventual job productivity. He also questioned whether or not such a relationship was causal in nature.

Aging may affect productivity levels for various reasons. On the one hand, older workers are thought to be more reliable and to have better skills than average workers. On the other hand, older workers have higher health care costs, lower flexibility in accepting new assignments and then may be less suitable for training (Barth et al., 1993). Age alone is found to be a poor predictor of employee performance. There are wide variations although older employees are generally considered to be more consistent, cautious, and conscientious. Furthermore, older employees have fewer accidents and they are less likely to quit, thus reducing hiring costs (Garibaldi et al., 2010).

It is difficult to establish how age itself affects employee productivity not only because productivity is highly employee and sector-specific but also because of convolution of age, cohort and selection effects as mentioned.

 The fifth factor we are focusing on in this study is the employee’s gender and its relation to employee productivity. Gender issues related to the differences of male and female were pinpointed in decade of 1950s, but highlighted as an important issue in management and organizational studies in between 1980s & 1990s. The duration between these two periods recognized the gender effects in different studies. Hearn & Parkin (1987) emphasized on female issue in those organizations who are dominated by male. Gender is defined as; “Gender comprises a range of differences between men and women, extending from the biological to the social” “Discrimination is treating differently on the basis of sex or race” (Word net web) on the basis of above definitions we can conclude that basically gender discrimination is preference of one gender upon other.

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 The gender discrimination may exist in various dimensions which include hiring discrimination, differences in salary and wages, discrimination/differences in promotion and inequity related to different goods and facilities provided to different gender. Employee is a back bone of the organization that performs critical tasks for the survival of the organization and employee productivity affected by gender discrimination. Therefore this study is designed to investigate gender discrimination and its effect on employee productivity.

Technology availability: The growth of innovation in the economy, since the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, has seen likewise a great gain in the productivity of ...

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