Employee Morale through Employee Surveys - Research Paper Example

The researcher used a trade directory of the enterprises in Chicago and contacted a random selection of 50 enterprises. A preliminary telephonic conversation with the HR department was conducted in order to obtain permission for the interviews of the managers in the contracted companies. Several of the selected organizations were unavailable (due to a change in numbers or locations), while some of them were not interested in participating in the research. Finally, the researcher was able to obtain permission from 20 organizations that allowed for the interview of their HR managers.

The HR managers were interviewed by scheduling appointments and contacting them on the office premises. The interview method is a suitable method of data collection when in-depth and detailed information is needed and when the researcher wants to understand the situation from the point of view of the respondents (Perry and Mahoney, 2006). The interviews were facilitated by the use of a questionnaire ( see Appendix A), that contained open-ended questions. The questions were developed using the literature survey and review on the current issues in employee morale in the manufacturing sector, the reasons for low employee morale, the outcomes of employee morale and the methods of improving employee morale.

The questionnaire contained questions that specifically probed the perception of the HR managers on the role that employee surveys can play in developing better employee morale. While the questionnaire was not tested for validity or reliability using either statistical item analysis or pilot survey, it is expected that the questions are valid and helped in the collection of relevant data as the questions are rooted in the background created from the literature review. The interview responses were noted by the researcher in short-hand and later analyzed using the literature review as the framework.

The researcher employed a reflective method of analysis where the interview responses were read and segregated in terms of individual responses to each question for all of the 20 respondents.  Next, each set of response was further condensed to develop themes of answers which were presented in the form of a discussion.