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 the average employee as the capacity of labor has increased exponentially. The effects of different technology on employee productivity are enormous and worth noting in any economic account of the way that people live in the modern world. The effects of technology are often unnoticed due to their intrinsic nature.
Technology that helps automate processes will help reduce the workload for employees, freeing them up to work on other projects and assignments. New computer programs and software packages can help collect and analyze data that would normally go unused or would take employees a good deal of time to extrapolate. New technology can also be used to help improve work processes and in turn increase productivity for both the employee and the business.
The ability to keep up and use technology to your advantage requires the ability to identify possible uses for each technological advance. Some technological advances may prove cost-prohibitive for some small businesses. In addition, business owners must evaluate the potential benefits of each new technology. This evaluation should shine some light on the possible benefits it will provide to both employees and the company.
Motivation is another factor playing an important role in a profitable organization. The ways to get employees motivation with its different types can be vital for the betterment of the employees’ usefulness. Every type of the motivation has unique effect on performance of employees. To get the best performance from employees, there needs to be some sort of motivation beyond the weekly paycheck. Motivation can come in the form of financial incentives, the opportunity to get involved in company projects, a career path that leads to management and direct involvement from management into the daily tasks. Effective motivation can create a productive work force, but a lack of motivating factors can leave employees searching for reasons to give their maximum effort.
Commitment: Employees that feel as though the company has made a commitment to employee success tend to perform better, according to Personnel Systems Associates. Commitment means offering a competitive rate of pay and benefits package, offering assistance in paying for employee's higher education costs, developing a regular training schedule that keeps employees updated on company changes and gives pertinent information for employees to do their jobs and upgrading equipment to make sure that employees have the most efficient technology available to do their work. Commitment shown by the company is returned in the form of commitment from employees.
Climate is another factor having effect on the performance of employees. This shows how they are satisfied or dissatisfy with the job and its working environment. It will also discuss how the people are treated and valued in their working place? How they are respected and how their issues properly considered, even any small or a large issue.
A system is necessary for performing the required work at any level of the organization and the employees have to follow the set procedures and there may be a difficulty in accepting the standard procedures.
Feedback and its way of getting the same will also be very effective to get the employees for their performance. If the feedback is taken properly and required changes provide according to the need of productivity. In this project it will be discussed to find the effectiveness of this factor in employee’s performance in any organization.
Role of supervision or management is also a very important role in getting the success of profitability of the organization. This have a critical role as the decision making and implementation of the useful decision is the major part of the supervision and management.
- Problem Definition
- Problem Definition
As a result of reviewing all the previous literature done by different researchers, it is obvious that everyone highlighted and concentrated on specific variables to see (what exactly causes and affects employee productivity). From my point of view, I have noticed six variables being more important than the other variables that are mentioned and reported in most of the studies. The six variables are employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, and technology availability. These variables may be good reasons that enable the studying of the productivity problem in the Coca Cola Company.
- Problem statement
Here and at this point, I am now able to define this problem of the company employee’s productivity. The problem statement can be:
"To what extent do employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, technology availability affect the employee productivity? "
- Theoretical Framework
- Variables Framework
In order to realize the variables that are seemed to be important to this problem, these variables should be mentioned.
- The Dependent Variable
In this case, there is one dependent variable which is Company Productivity .This is the variable that we is being investigated although this research.
- The Independent Variables
After conducting the literature review, it is recognized that many variables are affecting productivity, but due to the increased accuracy and reduced cost, this research will concentrate on six independent variables. (1) The first variable is employee’s satisfaction, (2) the second one is training, (3) the third one is education level, (4) the fourth one is sex, (5) the fifth one is age, (6) and the six variable is technology availability.
- Variables Design & Relationships
From my point of view, I expect a relationship to exist between productivity and the six independent variables (employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, and technology availability).
This design applies the variables framework along with the relationships between these variables in a way that clarifies the demonstration of these variables altogether.
Independent Variables
Dependent Variable
- Hypothesis
After I had identified the important variables and established the relationships among them through the theoretical framework, I have to test whether the relationships that have been theorized do in fact hold true through following the formulation of the following two hypotheses.
The type of hypothesis that I will use is the Null hypothesis and the Alternative hypothesis.
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The Null hypothesis states:
Ho: There is no collective effect by employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, and technology availability on employee productivity.
Ho: μ (employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, and technology availability) = μ (productivity)
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Where the Alternative hypothesis states:
Ha: There is a collective effect by employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, and technology availability on employee productivity.
Ha: μ (employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, and technology availability) ≠ μ (productivity)
Part Two: Research Design
- Methodology
- Purpose of Study
Depending on hypothesis, the purpose of this study is a Hypothesis- Testing, as to find if there is a relationship exists between the six independent variables and the dependent variable, in order to find if those variables affects the employee’s productivity or not, this is a good indicator for us to know how to increase or investigate the employee productivity.
- Type of Investigation
We have six variables and we are trying to study their effect and relationship with the dependent variable. So this study is a correlation not causal. Because we are trying to study if there is relationship between the employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, and technology availability on employee productivity.
- Researcher Inference
The researcher inference does not exist because this is a correlation field study.
- Study Setting
This study is done in a non-contrived setting as it is a correlation and does not need to change the environment or modify any of its elements.
- Unit of Analysis
The Unit of Analysis is Coca cola Company, including its departments that will complete the questionnaire as a whole, consistent one unit.
- Time
This study is a one-shot as the data collection needs time but the analysis is done once after the data collection ends.
Add that regression and correlation analysis will be used to accept or reject these hypotheses.
- Population and Sample
7.1 Population:
The target population for this study consists of all the company employees. This population is very large and it is difficult to be studied because the number of the company employees is more than 40, and it’s obvious that it will take time and effort to study each of these employees added to the fact that it’s cost a lot of money.
7.2 Sample:
Since the population is large and also hard to be investigated due to the long distance in time and probable loss or inaccuracy of previous information, the solution here is to take a suitable sample out of this population. This sample consists of 40 employees from several units and functions and that especially departments related to production lines in Coca Cola Company.
The selection of this sample will be done randomly; this means that the 40 employees will be this sample on a predetermined basis but randomly.
After studying this sample, collecting the data, and analyzing the results, I will be able to generalize the findings of the study on the population because this sample is part of the large population.
7.3 Questionnaire
Before distributing the questionnaire, two semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were done with four Sales professionals. The four professionals were identified through convenience rather than random sampling due to lack of time and money. These interviews helped in setting the questionnaire questions.
7.4 Questionnaire Design
The questionnaire is made out of 8 questions written in English.
Question 1 is about the month of filling the questionnaire and is nominal scaled.
Questions 2, 3, and 4 are about the sales, the price and the adverting respectively and are Ratio scaled.
Questions 5 and 6 are about the salesmen, where question 5 and 6 are interval scaled, using the numerical and itemized rating scales respectively.
Question 7 is about the selling policies, and is nominal scaled.
Finally, question 8 is about the political and economic situation introduced as the operational variable containing 10 statements. This question uses Likert Scale and is interval scaled.
- The Goodness of Measures
The questionnaire was reviewed by Dr. Fahom Shalabi and Dr. Samir Bidoun from Birzeit University. They adjusted the questionnaire to fit best in the Palestinian community.
8.1 Validity
There are two types of validity: content where the questionnaire is tested whether it covers the studied variables through getting help from a hand full of professionals. The construct validity is whether all the items of the questionnaire are related to one core issue.
8.2 Reliability
Two types of reliability tests are applied:
- Stability reliability test where a test-re-test is conducted after launching a pilot questionnaire and testing in with a trial group of companies in Ramallah and from the same industry as Coca Cola Company. The stability reliability coefficient obtained is (0.95), which is an acceptable stability of measures.
- Consistency reliability test is calculated and resulted in a Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient of 0.704 that is higher than < 0.6 (reliable).
When proved to be valid and reliable, the pilot questionnaire was distributed among Coca Cola Company’s employees.
8.3 Data Analysis
In this research we use statistical analysis tool which is “SPSS 17”. Data collected through questionnaires then entered to the SPSS.
- Data Collection Method
The questionnaire was the main tool chosen to collect data from Coca Cola Company. The 40 questionnaires were distributed and collected once a month. The response rate was 100% since all the questionnaires were collected and no missing information in the 40 sample was detected.
Part Three: Statistical Analysis
- Statistical Analysis
Data were entered and analyzed using SPSS software. To examine the collective effect of the independent variables altogether (employee’s satisfaction, training, education level, sex, age, and technology availability) on the dependent variable (Employee’s Productivity), the multiple regression analysis technique was used.
- FREQUENCY:
Part Six: Statistical Analysis and Results
Regression analysis used in this research to test the effect of all independent variables together (price, advertising expenses, sales policies and political situations) on the dependent variable which is sale volume. In this research
See table 1:
* Which means that all independent variables are entered and no variable removed .
See table 2:
* Notice the R –value equal 0.885 which is a relatively high percentage, explaining correlation between the independent variables together with the dependent variable is equal to 88.5%.
* Notice the R Square – value equal 0.784 which means the variables collectively illustrate large portion of the research or 78.4% of change in dependent variable come from the change independent variables that determined in this research and the remaining percentage is the effect of other variables not included in the study.
See table 3:
* Notice the Sig- value equal 0.000 which means significant level < 0.05 so we reject (Ho) zero hypothesis and accept (Ha) alternative hypothesis , this ensure the strong relation ship between the independent variables together and the dependent variable.
See table 4 :
* Notice the Sig- value for political situations (Q5), advertising expenses (Q2) and sale policies (Q4) equal 0.000, 0.003 and 0.035 respectively .
which are significant level < 0.05 , so this ensure the strong and significant effect of these independent variables on the sales volume.
* Notice the Sig- value for price (Q1) equal 0.280 , which is significant level > 0.05 , so this ensure insignificant effect of this variable on the sales volume.
* Notice the Standardized Coefficients:
- Beta absolute - value for political situations equal 0.756, which is the highest value and the most variable responsible for the variation in sales volume.
- Beta absolute - value for advertising expenses equal 0.256, which is the second variable responsible for the variation in sales volume.
- Beta absolute - value for sale policies equal 0.174, which is the third variable responsible for the variation in sales volume.
- Beta absolute - value for price equal 0.079, which is the forth variable responsible for the variation in sales volume.
Part Seven: Conclusion & Recommendations
In our study it became clear from SPSS analysis that we accepted the alternative hypothesis and the most two independent variables responsible for variation in sales volume are the advertising expenses and political situations, so that we recommend:
- The company should concentrate on the advertising as main communication channel and construct it to fit the company goals through increasing advertising budget and determine it based on task and goal .
- Test the efficiency of the advertising process and make programs to support this process.
- Work to find multiple plans to deliver the goods to the consumers in the presence of Israeli checkpoints and closures.
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Work on joint efforts to achieve reconciliation and ending the division between the Palestinian parties.
- The government should focus on elimination of restrictions on the Palestinian economy and to allow the export of Palestinian goods through the work of international conventions.
- Work to promoting domestic goods by reducing taxes and distribute it fairly.
References
- Daniels, J.Radebaugh ,l . and Sullivan, D. (2009), “International Business Environment & Operations”. Prentice Hall :Upper Saddle River.
- Saxe, R. and Weitz, B.A. (1982), “The SOCO scale: a measure of the customer orientation of salespeople”, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 29.
- Cotton, B.C. and Babb, E. (1978), ``Consumer response to promotional deals'', Journal of Marketing, Vol. 42.
- Gupta, S. (1988), ``Impact of sales promotion on when, what, and how much to buy'', Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 25.
- Guenzi, P. and Troilo, G. (2007), “The joint contribution of marketing and sales to the creation of superior customer value”, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 60 No. 2.
- Lancioni, R. (2005), “A strategic approach to industrial product pricing: the pricing plan”, Industrial Marketing
Management, Vol . 34 No. 2.
- Forman, H. and Hunt, J.M. (2005), “Managing the influence of internal and external determinants on international industrial pricing strategies”, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 34 No. 2.
- Shipley, D. and Jobber, D. (2001), “Integrative pricing via the pricing wheel”, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 30 No. 3.
Appendix
Appendix A
Increasing sales in the SINOKROT Company for trade
The letter of questionnaire
This questionnaire is presented to you to complete the research project increasing "Ali Baba" sales In SINOKROT Company for Trade. Please answer the following questions carefully.
We really appreciate your great efforts…
Questionnaire No._______ Date from ………. to …………
Please fill the blanks and but a sign on your answer.
- The price of product………………ILS
- The total advertising expenses of the product……………….ILS
- the total units sold are……………….pieces
- Selling policy for the product is :
1- Giving free piece. 2- Giving coupon. 3- Make a discount.
4- Traditional.
5- But sign to give score for the following :( note: the highest score is 5“strongly agree” the lowest score is 1 “strongly disagree” ) to show the political situations.
Thank you
Appendix B
Regression analysis:
Reliability analysis:
Employee Productivity
Basic Problem Solving Procedure Outline
Our company is a family owned, nationwide grocery store chain. We have stores in 43 different states, but recently our market share has been falling rapidly. After analyzing the symptoms, we realized that we have a severe problem with employee productivity that needs to be solved ASAP.
1. Define the problem
A. The symptoms that we see that indicate the existence of the problem include: long check-out lines, unsatisfied customers, lower sales, falling profits, lack of efficiency, and lack of info structure.
B. This is a relatively big problem that affects the whole company, and is characterized by the 20% market share decrease nationwide.
C. How can our company increase employee productivity over the course of one year?
D. We agreed to use the following definition of productivity.
The quality of being productive is the rate at which goods or services are produced, especially output per unit of labor.
2. Research and Analyze the Problem
A. Productivity.
Through our research we have found that to improve productivity we need to upgrade technology, acquire a better inventory system, improve the retention rate of our employees, design a new training program with emphasis on cross-training our employees. We also need to look into reward programs for productive employees.
B. Training
We decided that to improve training we need to concentrate on cross training the employees, establishing mentor and buddy programs, as well as reinforcement classes.
C. Employee retention
Through research we found out that to improve employee retention we may consider creating reward programs, improve our benefits packages, establishing consistence pay raises that are based on performance, and profit share bonuses.
D. Technology
We may need productivity software that measures performance of all of our employees, real time reporting software, updated equipment, self-checkout equipment for high traffic stores that need it.
E. What makes productive employees?
Employees need to be recognized, appreciated, treated with respect, and valued. In training programs we need to make sure that the employees understand exactly what they were hired to do, that the employees we hire are team players that accept responsibility and do what it takes to get the job done.
3. Establish a Checklist of Criteria
A. Needs
Cost must not exceed 5 million dollars for the initial investment
Must increase employee retention by at least 20%
Must increase market share by at least 5% within the first year
Must increase customer satisfaction
Must eliminate at least 75% of the problem symptoms
B. Wants
Market share increase of 10%
Updated technology in all the stores
Increased employee job satisfaction rates
4. List Possible Alternatives
1. Using all the money on new technology in the stores, new cash registers and software, self-checkout registers, new freezers, new baking ovens, and new supplies.
2. We could concentrate on retraining our employees. Including management courses for our management, cross-training employees for several different duties.
3. We could increase supervision of the employees, increase their quotas, invest into productivity measure software and harshly punish the managers whose departments are slacking.
4. We could spend all the money on creating better benefits packages and bigger raises. This plan of action should makes our employees happier and motivate them to be more productive.
5. We could create extensive reward programs that would involve a competition of the most productive employees for expensive prizes and market-share bonuses.
6. We could dump the problem on mid level management and have them solve it on a store-to-store basis.
5. Evaluate Each Alternative
After discussing our alternatives and comparing them with our criteria, we realized that neither one of the alternatives could satisfy all of our needs. After discussing this problem among us, we decided that to solve our serious lack of productivity we would need a program that would combine the elements of all of our alternatives. We cannot just implement all the alternatives together because the cost would exceed the limit, but we can carefully select parts of all the alternatives that are most beneficial and combine them together into one.
6. Selecting and Implementing the Solution.
Our final plan is a multi-step program that will theoretically fix most of the symptoms that we are seeing now.
A) The bulk of the money will be spent on new cash registers, since most of them come with software that provides real time inventory reporting that is very important to us.
B) We will provide self-check out equipment for the stores that fall into the top 20% of high traffic stores.
C) We will concentrate on cross training our employees
D) We will install Productivity software for the stores that fall in the lowest 20% range of productivity.
E) Pay raises will be scheduled for every 6 months and will be performance based
F) The top three stores will receive market-share bonuses each year.
The corporate office will be responsible for acquiring and installing new technology and software, but the responsibility of implementing the new training programs will fall on the store managers that will frequently provide progress and improvement reports to the regional managers.