With Tuition Reimbursement Programs in the Work Environments, Employees Retention Rates Are High - Research Proposal Example

Research proposal: Tuition assistance in the work place and its effects on retention Table of Contents Tuition assistance in the work place and its effects on retention 2 1.0. Abstract 2 2.0.Introduction 2 2.1.Statement of the problem 2 2.2.Purpose of research 3 2.3.Significance of research 4 2.4.Research scope 4 2.5.Research questions 5 3.0.Literature survey 5 4.0.Design of the research 7 4.1.Data collection 9 5.0. Action plan and Budget 10 References 12 Tuition assistance in the work place and its effects on retention Research Proposal 1.0. Abstract Organizations have long focused on numerous forms of employees’ benefits as a means of motivating them towards being productive. However, tuition assistance programs go beyond employee motivation to assisting employees continues with their education through reimbursement for tuition by the employer in form of books, fees, and tuition fees. For most of the progressive companies, reimbursement involves unlimited number of courses that can have direct or indirect relationship to the employees’ current job. According to a survey by Esen & Collision [ CITATION Ese05 \n \t \l 1033 ], most organizations focus on employees’ growth that takes diverse forms of education including training initiatives other than leadership training; cross-functional training; management training; and development training. However, the survey revealed that three of the least used employee development programs were job sharing, official professional mentoring programs, and job alternations. Tuition assistance programs are said to have numerous benefits like tuition satisfaction, improvement of working environment, effective recruitment tools, reduced turnover and increased loyalty to the firm one is working. 2.0. Introduction 2.1. Statement of the problem According to Jacobs [ CITATION Jac11 \n \t \l 1033 ], employees’ turnover implies the rate of employees entering and leaving a firm within the time span of one year. In the wake of a recovering economy after the 2008 economic recession, employers are experiencing high employee turnover rates. These turnover issues are beyond what employers could have dealt with in the past when recession forced most of them into downsizing and restructuring. In this regard, turnover rates experienced by most employers currently are way above what most employers consistently deal with. For now, most employers hope that the current employees’ turnover outburst is a onetime issue that will go away with the turning around of the economy. Based on natural wisdom, no turnover rate is perfect especially since good turnover for one firm could be bad for another. In addition, it is hard to define bad turnover and good turnover since different firms in different industries have their own rates. Turnover could vary within industries and depend on geography. In this case, turnover rates are just an abstract number whose value evaluated relative to other facts and numbers like unemployment rates, and local and national politics amongst other. The crucial aspect that employers need to understand in evaluating turnover is the impact arising from both internal and external factors and develops the best way to track turnover. 2.2. Purpose of research Regardless of the industry, employees’ turnover issue presents significant challenges to organizations given that human capital is central to the performance. This study focuses on understanding the employer assisted tuition and the impact it has on employee retention. There are numerous reasons why employers should focus on focus on employees’ turnover issue. These reasons include ramifications on cost, impact on overall business performance, and susceptibility to get out of control. The result is that the business ends up in a talent crisis that makes it difficult to locate competent candidate to fill the vacant positions with the best skills. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers [ CITATION Pri06 \n \t \l 1033 ], employees’ turnover results to increased costs replacing employees who have left and the cost can be as high as 60% of the salary offered to the old employee. In addition, lost production and new employee training could result to as high as 200% of an employee’s annual salary. Additionally, employees who leave their jobs due to organizational culture or relations with others leave the company in a position that makes it hard to compete for new employees and retain the current employees. Additionally, overall business performance if affected by high turnover given that the remaining employees contemplate on whether to quit or stay hence an unsure spirit[ CITATION Das13 \l 1033 ]. 2.3. Significance of research There are numerous reasons why employees leave an organization within a short period. Some of the reasons include organizational climate[ CITATION Joh131 \l 1033 ], shocks to organizational system including daily practices and routine work[ CITATION Das13 \l 1033 ], and work-commitment burnout [ CITATION Plo10 \l 1033 ]. Other cause of job turnover includes job satisfaction and human resource management practices[ CITATION Mud11 \l 1033 ]. This paper evaluates the relationship between employer tuition assistance and employees’ turnover rates within organizations. Tuition assistance by employers mostly focuses on adding value to employees by funding their education. However, this program can be expensive and result to high financial costs to the organization. Consequently, such tuition programs end up being a liability to the organization and not at all pushing towards employees’ retention. 2.4. Research scope This study focuses on the effectively plan and implemented tuition assistance programs and employee retention. In this case, effectively planned and implemented tuition assistance programs takes into account risks like assisting employees who then quit or distraction of employees seeking further education from normal jobs within the organization. 2.5. Research questions The primary question to be addressed by this study is: What do employers believe is the rational for and the implication of tuition reimbursement programs on retention. The other questions that will shape the study are: 1. What are the perceptions of employers on the use of tuition reimbursement as an employee retention tool? Why? 2. What are the employees qualities identified by employers that result to tuition reimbursement? Why? 3. What do employers believe are the employees’ perceptions of tuition reimbursement? Why? 4. What impact do employers believe tuition reimbursement has on employees’ retention behaviour? Why? 3.0. Literature survey Despite the presence of numerous tuition assistant programs, little research has focused explicitly on such programs. The two key reasons why reimbursement programs are used in organizations have however been recruitment and retention. The rationale for retention as an impact of tuition assistance in organization is the fact that training program affect worker productivity and job satisfaction hence retention. In this section, the research will offer a brief introduction to the traditional techniques related to the employee retention within organization. In addition, the paper offers details of the increased attention toward employees’ retention using tuition reimbursement and reasons why some organizations successfully implement tuition programs while others are failing. At this point, the literature review will investigate the perceptions of employers regarding tuition reimbursement and the reasons that contribute to such perceptions. In addition, the study will set out to investigate why tuition reimbursement programs offers courses for different levels of employees. Equally, the research will seek to explore the qualities of employees that make them qualified for tuition reimbursement. Some of the factors include employee’s current job position, employer’s course restriction, and employee level within the organizational structure. The literature review will also evaluate the measures taken by organizations to deal with areas of controversy that may occur when employees’ tuition assistant requests do not align with organizational goals. Additionally, employees’ limitation on the type of courses they can engage in and where they must enrol may at times offend some employees. In this case, the literature review seeks to understand the employees’ perception of the employers’ believes of tuition reimbursement. In most cases, employees tend to believe that employers offer tuition reimbursement selectively which is why the literature review will evaluate the beliefs held by employers and that influence the decision on the form of tuition reimbursement programs they can put in place. Finally, the literature review will examine the organizational tuition reimbursement programs in relation to retention. Tuition reimbursement programs’ will be compared to traditional employee retention mechanism like employee benefits, and financial and non-financial rewards among others. The literature review elaborates on the research methodology used in this paper that is qualitative exploratory study. The methodology will set out confirm that employees’ turnover rates in organizations are effectively controlled using tuition reimbursement programs by employers. 4.0. Design of the research To optimize accuracy and richness of data, and the transferability of findings, this study will use case studies from different organizations. Case studies are excellent methods to use when pursuing to appreciate the depth of the element under study. Case studies permit the researcher to familiarize with data within its natural setting thereby promoting full appreciation of the setting. The case studies will come from newspapers, magazines and other non-peer-reviewed articles. In addition, several peer-reviewed articles will be used. In addition, a survey involving two interviewees is conducted. A survey in any research is a crucial way of discovering how individuals think and feel about a given topic and why they hold convinced opinions. In this research, interviews are crucial in such that the depth of the issue of tuition reimbursement positively affecting job satisfaction and retention. In addition, the interviews are expected to offer information necessary to make informed decision-making, strategic planning, and allocation of resources. Combining the secondary resources with the survey will offer crucial information especially for organizations that are still struggling with high turnover rates at the expense of organizational productivity and products’ quality. For any research, reliability and validity are fundamental in the determination of survey content and information quality and relevance. In this survey, face-to-face interviews are utilized since a specific target population will be probed for answers while observing behaviours of the involved individuals. In order to promote tolerance of the interviewees during the interview, open-ended questions will be used. Open questions enable the interviewee to feel at ease while expressing long answers orally unlike when writing. Validity involves ensuring that the survey information remains relevant to the conclusion arrived at and that it is sufficiently accurate and complete to support the conclusion. The study has to ensure that each participant answers the elements the researcher will be looking for which in this case will be the level of employees’ retention in the presence of tuition assistance by employers. The forms of validity involved include content, internal, and external validity. Content validity will involve the use of questions that reflect the tuition assistance and employees’ retention and ensure that no relevant subject is excluded. Further, internal validity will be achieved using questions that explain the outcome that the presence of tuition assistance in the workplace serves well in promoting retention amongst employees. As a result, the questions used will focus on identifying the factors that contribute to the design of an effective tuition reimbursement program. The main aim is to confirm the positive relationship exist between independent variables like tuition reimbursement form and the desired courses, and dependent variables like the contribution of the program towards improving job satisfaction of employees in their current jobs or other jobs within the organization. External validity will be achieved by ensuring that the results can be generalized. In this case, the survey of previous research will be compared against the survey results to emphasize generalization to the population of employees in organizations where effective tuition assistant programs are in application. Reliability in this study is crucial and will be achieved by observing consistency such that all questions used will deliver the same information to the participants under similar work conditions. In this case, similarity will refer to work environments with effective tuition reimbursement programs that have been linked with improved employees’ job satisfaction, low burnout, and high retention rates of five or more years. 4.1. Data collection This process will involve examining organizations tuition reimbursement statistics and development of a profile of tuition reimbursement programs by employers through the evaluation of procedures, processes, and alternatives to tuition reimbursement on employee retention. When dealing with numbers data of tuition reimbursement programs will be examined through tabulation for cross case analysis and determination of practices and policies concerning tuition reimbursement that employers use. Two interviewees from organizations with effective tuition reimbursement programs will be interviewed and answers recorded, notes taken, and observations made on participants behaviour observed. Data obtained will then be analysed and findings compared to the findings from case studies obtained from review of previous research on the issue of tuition reimbursement promoting employees retention. The questionnaires that will serve as data collection instruments design and pretesting will minimize design flaws prior to use in the real survey. This way, any identified information gap will be rectified and the data collection errors sufficiently controlled. Results and conclusion The study findings will confirm that with tuition reimbursement programs in the work environments, employees’ retention rates are high. For the employer, effective tuition reimbursement programs involve ensuring that at the end of the training, the employee becomes more satisfied with their current job, become productive, and remain in their jobs within the organization or shift to other jobs within the same organization. In addition, the study findings will reveal that tuition reimbursement programs will contribute towards employees’ confidence in the organization, which will result to increased likelihood to remain with the organization and not run into competitors who do not support their career development. Although employees’ turnover rates considerably reduce through tuition assistance by employers compared to other employee motivation mechanisms, this does not mean completely wiping them out of the organization. On the contrary, employers offering tuition assistance programs to employees should offer other employee motivation techniques. However, tuition assistance should be implemented in such a way that it does not only guarantee retention but also works towards attracting the right talent into the organization and to the organization, this means saving the millions of dollars in recruitment costs yearly. Employers must then consider investing in programs that do not take employees’ valuable time from work for class attendance but support employee participation in work and studies especially through online classes. Employers should then limit employees’ tuition requests only to recommended online colleges and ensure that employee education is also affordable. 5.0. Action plan and Budget Budget Item $Amount Project coordination/administration and data analysis 8000 Personal research assistant 4000 Internet access 600 Overheads 200 Total 20000 References CITATION Ese05 \n \t \l 1033 : , (2005), CITATION Jac11 \n \t \l 1033 : , (2011), CITATION Pri06 \n \t \l 1033 : , (2006), CITATION Das13 \l 1033 : , (Das, Nandialath, & Mohan, 2013), CITATION Joh131 \l 1033 : , (Johnston & Spinks, 2013), CITATION Plo10 \l 1033 : , (Plooy & Roodt, 2010), CITATION Mud11 \l 1033 : , (Mudor & Tooksoon, 2011), Read More