Jeans Inc. – HPT Case Study
Jeans, Inc.
CASE SUMMARY
The case study discusses a project initiated by a performance consulting team consisting of an experienced faculty member who lead a rotating team of five doctoral students, given graduate-level credit for their work. The team set out to apply qualitative tactics to investigate the reasons a textile manufacturing company experienced a turnover rate close to 90%.
INITIAL PROBLEM STATEMENT
An increasingly high worker turnover rate of almost 90% has compromised Jeans, Inc.’s organization and performance goals. It’s become an ongoing and costly challenge with no process in place to address it. A large number in management and training roles have proven to be limited in their ability to accommodate the excessive turnover rate and train the hired replacements.
PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS
The team conducted their performance analysis in three phases to include a pre-analysis, analysis, and post analysis (and intervention). Starting with familiarizing themselves with the industry, company culture, and the challenge, the time chose a dynamic approach to collect data from multiple sources (Table 1, p. 112).
Guidelines were created and discussed to further ensure the validity and trustworthiness of the data. Data was also categorized and coded in attempts to make a less subjective interpretation. It also helped to create a unison when evaluating and during debriefing discussions.
CAUSE ANALYSIS
The team’s dynamic approach to identify causes for the high turnover rate included data collected and analyzed from observations, interviews (formal and informal), internal documentation reviews, and written surveys. To pinpoint the source of the challenge, the team looked to discover patterns in the collected data.
EVALUATION
Debrief meetings were the primary method for evaluating data. The team met to share and discuss their findings, using previously defined guidelines (i.e. categorizing) to generalize data and avoid subjectivity (a common concern with using qualitative data and research methods).
Time constraints from rotating team members and time set aside for company reviews, resulted in the intervention in phase 3 to exclude students and leave it solely to the faculty leader. The factors contributing to Jeans, Inc’s turnover rate was addressed by lowering communication constraints and decreasing the paperwork required by management that compromised their performance and availability. The team’s language barrier discovery was resolved by translating informational and instructional material to both English and Spanish.
Redesigning the company’s onboarding and training development offerings also proved to be effective. In addition to improving onboarding offerings, the company began to offer “Train the trainer” opportunities to aid the skill development of trainers. These and other actions were taken during the case study allowed Jeans, Inc. to reduce their turnover rate by approximately 24%. For a short time during the study, Jeans, Inc. saw an even higher reduction, close to 35%.
CRITIQUE
The approach taken to collect data from Jeans, Inc. employees proved to unfavorable and unintentionally suggested the challenge known to employees at any level was less accurate due to it having no “official” confirmation. This devaluing perception of the employees’ knowledge and experience, likely impacted their willingness to both provide the amount and quality of details that would make a difference in the way the team interpreted their data and made solution suggestions to Jeans, Inc.
The extent of the team’s awareness of this “off-putting” approach is unknown, however, they do share in the lessons that they’ve learned that future projects should include an analysis of various environmental factors (internal and external) influencing performance. This learned lesson inspired team members to strongly consider the impact on the quality of data gained specifically from interactions with internal sources.
NOTE: This case study was conducted by Tim Hatcher and Kit Brooks and featured in Performance analysis and consulting.
References
Phillips, J. (2000). Performance analysis and consulting. Alexandria, Va: American Society for Training & Development.