1 Create and research a business problem Team D QNT/275 October 26, 2015 Paul Hermis RadioShack in History 2 RadioShack Shack Corp.'s has been on a downward spiral over the past few years because of poor decisions made by its senior management staff. Employees rated senior management 2.2 out of a 5.0. And less than half of employees approve of CEO Joseph Magnacca (Frohlich & McIntyre, 2015). Employee comments and reviews cite low wages and poor benefits, conditions that often lead to employee dissatisfaction. While entry-level retail associates complained of inadequate hours, stating that without the hours they would not receive fulltime benefits. As for store managers, hours were long with inadequate salaried compensation. Managers complained that long hours that were demanded of them we not worth the increased salary. After $400 million loss last year - the second consecutive year in which the company has lost money - RadioShack said it could close more than 1,000 of its retail outlets this year, roughly a quarter of its U.S. company-operated stores (Frohlich & McIntyre, 2015). Despite RadioShack's efforts to remain competitive in the ever-evolving electronics industry, the retailer is nearing irrelevancy. In 2007, the Iphone came out and the business weakened during the one of the lowest points. The carriers cut back the back payments to resellers to offset the cost of subsidizing. This was the time when RadioShack began to rely heavily on sales of cellphones and accessories. At this time, due to a financial disclosure Sprint will be working with RadioShack to create the 1,750 store-within-a store concepts nationwide. As part of the bankruptcy filing, the poorly management company has set apart a $285 million in debtor-in-possession financing commitment from its current assets. RadioShack is working with their legal advisors during this difficult time. 3 As time goes into the future, we have to understand that media is our future. RadioShack was the top seller of the walkmen, CD Players, mini disk players and beepers, but it suffered from the changing of technology and consumer habits. While the Senior Lender looked over the whole scenario under bankruptcy, he wanted to keep some of the stores open and he added that it was important for benefits for employees. \"Saving the Shacks,\" RadioShack won court approval for hedge fund Standard General LP's buyout offer that will keep stores open. At this time, it is time to give their employees their benefits they deserve, their customers the best, and to bring SprintDirect2You. It is time for RadioShack to do some TeamWork. 4 References Bibliography: Frohlich, T., & McIntyre, D. (2015). America's Worst Companies to Work For. 247wallst.com. Retrieved 27 October 2015. . 1 Week 3 Team Summary Team D QNT/275 November 2, 2015 Paul Hermis Week 3 Team Summary 2 Reviews from actual RadioShack employees, emphasise the base root of low morale is due to poor leadership at both the management and executive level. Because of the stores continuing decline, to save money, RadioShack is slashing hours, staffing and inventory, leaving many stores as mere shells, according to employees. Another major issue is the continuing trend of closing stores. RadioShack has declared bankruptcy and said it would sell as many as 2,400 of its approximately 4,000 stores. The fate of the remaining stores, which are expected to close, are now largely in the hands of a bankruptcy judge. Research Question If RadioShack offered a job relocation assistance program, would you as an employee continue to work with a positive attitude until the company completely ceases its operations? Hypothesis With the continuation of the downward spiral, we would have to conclude that the employee morale will continue to drop. At this time, we would have to estimate that 95% or better of the employees on the front lines will, or, already have displayed a lack of enthusiasm towards achieving successful employment with RadioShack. We would also make the assumption that turnover will continue to rise as bad news continues to come down to their level. It would be our estimate that no less than 60% (based on 2,400 of 4,000 stores closing before the bankruptcy) of the staff is actively planning to find new employment as soon as possible. It is time to offer some incentive to keep the remaining employees on board until the conclusion of the bankruptcy proceedings. Offering a job relocation assistance program would be beneficial to the employees but we are not sure that this idea will be receptive to the rank and file. Observations without Intervention 3 If RadioShack offers the job relocation assistance program, our team will choose to use the sampling method by the participant observation. Participant observation involves implementing an intervention in a natural setting in conjunction with other quantitative data collection techniques. Observational data can help researchers evaluate the fidelity of an intervention across settings and identity when achieved. This observation is a systematic data collection approach providing feedback on how the individuals feel about the situation now and their opinion on what will happen to the future of RadioShack. During an observation, the understanding the meaning of a setting in a detailed way is valuable in this situation. This Observation would be without Intervention because of this business will be ceasing all operation in due time. Quantitative and Qualitative Data Collection Methods Face -to -face interviews have a distinct advantage of enabling the researcher to establish rapport with potential participants and, therefore, gain their cooperation. These interviews yield highest response rates in survey research. They also allow the researcher to clarify ambiguous answers and when appropriate, seek follow-up information. Disadvantages include impractical when large samples are involved. Face to face is expensive and time consuming which limits the number of samples. The web-based questionnaire is a form of personal interviewing. Employees use a computer to complete a questionnaire by entering information directly into a database. The company would send an e-mail providing an address that would take you to a secure web-site to complete the questionnaire. This method saves the time involved in processing the data. On the downside, the validity of such surveys could be questioned as employees might be in a hurry to complete it and so might not give accurate responses. 4 References (2014). Statistics for Business (2nd ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database. 5 Data Collection Methods. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://people.uwec.edu/piercech/researchmethods/data%20collection%20methods/data %20collection%20methods.htm http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/05/news/companies/radioshack-stores/ 1 Week 4 Team Summary Team D QNT/275 November 9, 2015 Paul Hermis Week 4 Team Summary 2 As we progress with our analysis of employee morale and general displeasure with RadioShack, We see that the gathering of information on what the employees expect the organization to do for them will be critical. In the following paragraphs, we will explore the many different options at our disposal to help produce the best scenario to help our employees prepare for a future that may not include employment with RadioShack. Research Methodology Objective: H01: Employees are not satisfied under the identified factors within the organization H02: Employee satisfaction does not differ regarding salary on Experience H03: Employee satisfaction does not differ regarding training opportunities on different age Groups H04: there is no difference of satisfaction between the gender groups regarding job losses Research Design: Descriptive research will be applied, which is also known as statistical research, describes data and characteristics about the population or phenomenon being studied. Sources of Data To cater the need of the research we will use primary (self-constructed structured Questionnaire) as well as secondary outside firm to provide a limited source of data. 3 Data Collection Tool A structured questionnaire will be prepared to interview the employees of the organization on distinct parameters such as: salary, job rotation, work environment welfare measures at the organization, etc. measured on Likert five-point scale. Sampling Method Since we are determined to pinpoint the issues within the Radio Shack organization, and the entire population will be sufficiently small, the research can include the entire population in the study. In a modification of Stratified sampling, we see this method as superior to random sampling because it reduces sampling error. A stratum is a subset of the population that shares at least one common characteristic. The common characteristics of our situation are the failure of the organization and eventual shut down due to bankruptcy. We will also employ nonprobability sampling with face to face conversations with employees picked in a nonrandom manner. This will allow for a more personable survey that should help reinforce the results from our Stratified sampling. Statistical Tools: The most cost effective way to complete this survey under the Stratified sampling is to provide every employee a link to the survey provided via e-mail. Each employee will be given an opportunity to complete the survey while on company time. Under the nonprobability sampling face-to-face method, We will employ an outside firm to select randomly about 10% of the workforce to interview. Results 4 In a real world scenario, we would be reaching out to about 14,000 surveys that would account for an average of ten employees per store. This is assuming that we would only survey the surviving stores just before the bankruptcy proceedings. The bar graft provided is only a ten percent sample of the workers and about a 10 percent coverage of the number of questions being applied. However, one would be able to formulate the mean, mode, median and zscore mean SA A Standard Deviation x 809 476 233 200 1400 1400 N 121.7 13 1400 D SD 28 10.4 13 25 1400 1400 z-score 2.53648 1 4.62 98.3307 7 105.538 5 55.584 5 6 References (2014). Statistics for Business (2nd ed.). Retrieved from The University of Phoenix eBook Collection database. Data Collection Methods. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://people.uwec.edu/piercech/researchmethods/data%20collection%20methods/data %20collection%20methods.htm http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/05/news/companies/radioshack-stores/