The assignment requires you to develop an Organizational Development plan for the company. Using the information provided about the company your goal is to discuss some key ways the organisation may try to address the issue of high turnover.

In your plan you should:

Explain one or two key challenges facing the organization using the material below. There are many issues, but you should select one or two that you think are important. For example, you might focus on a lack of motivation or poor leader-follower relationships.

Offer some insights into the reasons for these challenges drawing on your background reading and engagement with module content and theory.

Make one or two recommendations,

Think about how the organisation should approach the organisational development process. Explain the limitations of your recommendation(s).

Recommendations should be on data

Company X is based in a major City in the UK. The 300 front line employees work in one of 2 areas: intelligence products and software development

Intelligence products involve the use of programmes to collect and structure high volumes of data. Employees in this department help capture and present data that is required by clients (external organisations). This includes web watching tools, which are able to capture information about how people interact with a website (e.g., where they move and click on a page). Employees also help collect market data, financial data and business intelligence. They also set up marketing automation programmes for efficient marketing campaigns. Employees working in intelligence products also conduct telephone research to verify and enhance data collected from automated techniques.

Software development involves the development and delivery of customised software to some of the word leading brands. This involves the design and development of systems and tools for merging, managing, analysing and visualising data. They also develop workflow management applications to automate tasks as well as software to integrate sales and marketing into social media platforms such as twitter and facebook. Employees in this area of the company are involved in the development of software that is used and sold by those in the intelligence products area.

In 2015, Company X had an issue with turnover. They were aware that they were losing staff at a high rate. In fact the level of voluntary turnover was around 80%. This was costing the company a lot of money as it is expensive to hire and train new staff and leads to losses in productivity. To try and address this issue, the company begun working with a University in the UK in order to research the issue further.

Within software development there are 90 employees, they work in teams of about 10 on software development projects. When working within these team they are provided with a business related issue and then design software to address these issue. This typically involves adapting previous developed software to fit the needs of a specific business. Overall, employees in this department are well educated and have high levels of qualifications, typically in software engineering, computer science, or a related discipline. They generally work long hours, often working on day during the weekend. Generally, these employees are well compensated earning salaries that are well above the national average. Turnover in this group is lower than in intelligence products, but it is still relatively high. It is very costly to replace members of this work area as they are highly skilled. The software development teams are supervised by a direct line manager. Each team has one direct manager. These managers have typically been promoted from within the software development area. Thus, the leaders typically have good levels of knowledge and expertise about the area. However, typically these leaders have no leadership experience and little training is provided. Generally, speaking people are promoted quite quickly with many leaders being with the company for just a few years as a software developer before becoming a line manager. The line managers oversee the teams and have to provide regular progress updates to those above them in middle management. Overall, the organisation has a very bureaucratic culture where strict policies are in place. As such, line managers are required to regular monitor and report on their teams. This involves daily feedback reports being provided and weekly process meetings. They are also given very challenging goals to meet. For example the timescale for the completion of projects is very tight. Many complain that the goals set are unrealistic in the time scale given

Employees working in intelligence products also work in teams, but typically see they job as largely independent of their teammates. They have individual goals to meet rather than clear team goals. Their main activities involve working with data and providing reports to their line managers. The job is often very monotonous and involves repetitive tasks such as collecting data and preparing reports. Employees of the intelligence planning department have almost no interaction with either clients or the software development teams. Employees in this area are typically young and low-skilled. They have a relatively low education level and little job experience. They work long hours for relatively poor pay, that is about the national average . The jobs are very structured and there is very little discretion in how they do their work. Many employees complain about the working hours and the difficulty it causes with their work-life balance. Their line managers manage client relationships as well as the relationship with the software development teams. The line managers have little interaction with the employees of this department except from regular electronic reports of progress. The line managers are typically much older than their subordinates and much more highly skilled. They typically come from a different socio-economic background as the front-line staff. They work closely with the top management team and have a lot of power and influence in the organisation. This is because they manage the client relationships and seek new business. Many problems have been brought to the attention of these managers over the years. An internal review of the organisation identified inconsistencies in processes, poor communication between departments and teams, and widespread silo mentalities. Overall connectivity in the organisation was seen as poor. Many staff expressed frustration that their views on how to improve the situation were not heard by those above them.

To try and understand the issue of high turnover, the lead researcher conducted an initial survey of the current employees in order to try and understand what might be leading to issues of high turnover. The survey focused on the perceptions of the front line employees from both the intelligence planning and software development departments. The following variables were collected using surveys: