Produce a research plan that includes the following elements.

1. Organization and Problem: Concisely but satisfactorily describe the organization and the problem. An example of a problem statement is, "how to reduce burnout in UWMC's ER personnel." Several other examples of problem statements have been provided.

How can managers and student employees work together to eliminate inappropriate shift arrangements and effectively allocate human capital resources to increase employee productivity and satisfaction at Local Point?

2. OB Topics and Principles. Identify which OB topics and principles are most relevant to diagnosing and solving the problem on which your project is focused. Explain why the topics and principles are particularly pertinent.

Since our team aims to help Local Point to effectively allocate human capital resources to maximize productivity and improve student employees' job satisfaction,"Chapter 5: Foundations of Employee Motivation" is relevant to diagnose root sources of employees' dissatisfaction and provide approaches to improve their motivation and hence their behaviors and performance.Maslow's Need HierarchyTheory points out the importance of working hour flexibility and employee involvement in decision-making, and since we believe utilizing the correct decision-making models is crucial in addressing your problem, all said theories will come into play.Herzberg's Motivator-Hygiene Theory provides practical managerial strategies to eliminate dissatisfaction and motivate their employees and Equity and Justice Theories emphasize the importance of employee perception. We might also consider applying theI-Deals approach to initiate job redesign within the organization to establish effective communication systems and create efficient schedules and tasks.

Our team believes that better communication within staff teams could foster effective information flows and potentially reveal more possibilities for creating flexible and customized individual shift schedules. In"Chapter 9: Communication in the digital age", the topics of selecting theright medium and social media will help us identify inefficiencies underlying online communication platforms used by Local Point staff members and possible ways to redesign the platforms to encourage more smooth information sharing and interpersonal communication and understanding.

"Chapter 10: Managing Conflict and Negotiations" is relevant to our issue: the obvious conflict between student employees and managers at Local Point due to unreasonable shift arrangements and poor personnel management. Such conflict has seriously threatened organizational effectiveness. The topics ofdysfunctional conflictand common causes of conflict help us identify and confirm the types and roots of conflict between these two groups. More importantly, since resolving conflict is the premise of effective communication, we want to discover signs of conflict avoidance in employees in order to design better solutions that involve conflict management later. In the solution, we might want to apply the principle of creating a psychologically safe climate as well as integrative negotiation to encourage more voices and active negotiations.

In"Chapter 11: Decision Making and Creativity", the rational model of decision making and nonrational mode of decision making help us understand how both ideally and realistically managers make decisions, which could be applied to analyze managers' schedule creation process at Local Point. Also, we could use eight biases that commonly affect decision-making to identify underlying potential biases that largely cause the problem of interest, and use the evidence-based decision-making model to help managers avoid such biases and improve efficiency. Last but not least, we could learn the managers' styles of decision-making to better understand the process and make targeted suggestions.

Incorporating all the OB topics and principles above would allow us to have a comprehensive diagnosis of the ineffective shift arrangement problem and propose corresponding strategies to design solutions from aspects of employee motivation, communication patterns and conflict, and manager decision-making biases.

3. Research Methods: Detail your plan to collect the data you need to address and solve the problem. Turn in all your data collection material (e.g. your interview questions, a qualitative observation sheet, a link to your online survey, a description of how you intend to collect archival data, etc.).

• Data Collection Guidelines: Here are minimum standards for collecting qualitative and quantitative data.
  • Qualitative Data: Aim for a minimum of 5 distinct pieces of qualitative data (e.g., 5 interviews; 5 observations). I do not expect you to go over 10.
  • Quantitative Data: Aim for a minimum of 10 distinct pieces of quantitative data (e.g. 10 survey responses; 10 performance ratings). There is no upper limit on surveys or ratings, as even simple statistical analysis is very sensitive to sample size
  • *** (amy) we want to ask questions about quantitative related data

Interview Questions for Student Employees:(motivation, communication with managers, conflict of time schedules, too busy or too bored at work?)

• What roles do your manager and team play in your motivation at work?
• If you could change one thing between the way you and your manager communicate, what would it be?
• What do you do when something suddenly conflicts with your work schedule?
• What was the result of your action? If you have a problem with this result, how do you resolve it?
• Do you think the staffing is reasonable during the time you work? If not, how do you think it should be changed?
• Do you think you can get prompt feedback? Is it effective? What do you want it to be? What have you suggested? Please explain)

Interview Questions for Managers:(decision making when creating schedules, how to deal with employee's requests to change schedules, communication with student employees, conflict with students)

• What factors do you consider when making employee scheduling? What's the process like?
• What do you do if an employee suddenly tells you that they could not come to work due to a time conflict or other unexpected situation?
• Do you think it's enough to communicate with the student employee? What do you hope to do? How has this lack of communication affected your work?
• If you could change one thing between the way you and your student employee communicate, what would it be?

Survey Questions for Student employees:

• How effectively and efficiently are you able to communicate with your manager (1 being little to no communication, 5 being we talk all the time)
• Do you feel all issues at hand can be communicated on a timely basis? (1 being no response even after the issues have been resolved, 5 being constantly communicating)
• Do you believe that the local point is utilizing all of its resources correctly? (1 being No, all the time, money, and resources are being wasted on not important items, 5 being perfect utilization
• When you have to compensate during a time conflict, which plan are you more likely to give up on in favor of others?
  • Your shifts
  • Classes
  • Social plans
  • Meals
  • Study plans
  • Others
• How confident are you when it comes to standing up for yourself to address an ongoing issue (1 I keep it to myself, 5 I'm able to talk about it at any moment)

Questions:

- Make another 5 interview questions for managers

- Make another 5 interview questions for student employees

- Make another 5 survey questions for student employees

Please be more specific in make the questions!