Foundation Skills in Data Analysis for TechnoMart

This report presents the findings of a statistical analysis of sample data for TechnoMart, an auto parts manufacturer. The analysis covers work hours, union membership, pre-tax income prediction, and more. Conclusions are drawn and future surveys are recommended.

FOUNDATION SKILLS IN DATA ANALYSIS
TECHNOMART
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Executive Summary
On basis of statistical analysis of the given sample data, a host of conclusions have been
drawn. It has been found that TechnoMart has an overtime employees since there are some
employees which tend to work for unusually long hours which is definitely a concern.
Further, with regards to union, there is no difference with regards to weekly working hours.
However, the satisfaction levels are higher for the non-union members. Besides, the
representation of union members is higher in labour and production department as compared
to other department. With regards to pre -tax income, years of full time work is the most
appropriate estimator from the variables presented. Also, it has been found that company’s
fear with regards to workers approaching retirement is not supported by the sample data.
Besides, the claim regarding loyalty of employees is true for all employees and males but not
females. Also, the current sample is insufficient for the overtime problem that department
aims to address in future surveys.

Introduction
A sample data of 400 employees was collected through an online questionnaire which
pertained to TechnoMart which is an auto parts manufacturer. The same was passed on by the
HR department of the company to MDB Corporation for further analysis so as to derive
meaningful conclusions with regards to key aspects indicated by the HR representative of
TechnoMart. This objective of this report is to present the findings of the data analysis in
view of the various questions that were posed by the HR department at TechnoMart.
Analysis
This section presents the findings from the statistical analysis of the sample data provided in
context of the specific questions that were raised in your memorandum.
Work Hours at TechnoMart
a) Based on the sample data provided, it has been concluded that only 50% of the sample
employees tend to have a normal working week comprising of 40 or less hours. There is a
high degree of variation in the weekly working hours of employees ranging from a minimum
of 28 hours to a maximum of 89 hours. It is apparent that there are certain employees who
tend to work for unusually long working hours. In the given sample data of employees, there
are 13 employees who tend to work in excess of 72 hours a week which would be considered
very unusual considering that the company has a policy of weekly week being of 40 working
hours. On the lower end, there is no such observation whereby any employee is working
unusually low hours (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015). Clearly, it seems that the employees
tend to work for significantly longer hours which may be a result of bad work practices or
inefficiency of employees.
b) Based on the sample data provided, estimation has been made with regards to percentage
workers in the whole company working in excess of 40 hours and 60 hours respectively. With
regards to employees in the company working more than 40 hours per week, the estimate
ranges from 39.6% to 49.4% of all the employees which is quite high. With regards to
employees in the company working more than 60 hours per week, the estimate ranges from
4.1% to 8.9% (Hillier, 2016). It is apparent that long working hours is a potential problem for
the company and underlying reasons for the same need to be explored by the HR department
so as to ensure that in the long run this should not adversely impact job satisfaction and
productivity.

Union and Non-Union Comparison
(a) With regards to hours worked, there is no significant difference in the average hours
worked for both groups i.e. those who are members of union and those who are not. Thus, it
is apparent that the problem of working for longer hours is not linked to employees being
members of union or not but is essentially a organisation wide problem. The presence of
union is not able to make any significant difference in this regards which highlights that
union has limited bargaining power with regards to Technomart.
(b) With regards to occupation distribution, it is apparent that union representation is higher
at the professions such as production and labourer where are typically at the lowest level of
the corporate hierarchy. However, the union representation is quite slim in high level
occupations such as management, professional and technical jobs. Thus, there is a clear trend
whereby the workers at the lower level tend to become union members as they believe that
joining the union would improve their bargaining power with regards to negotiating various
job related emoluments coupled with job conditions. However, the other jobs which are at a
higher level have greater bargaining power and tend to have a clear preference towards not
becoming members of unions.
(c) With regards to satisfaction levels, also it can be seen that there is a slight edge for the
non-unionised members who tend to be less dissatisfied as compared to the union members.
This is apparent from the fact that percentage of employees. To an extent this may be
influenced by the representation of the professions in unions. The majority of the
representation in the unions comes from the lower rung of the employees and hence may
have comparatively more dissatisfaction compared to other professions. However, it would
be appropriate to conclude that union in general does not lead to increased satisfaction level
From the above discussion, it may be concluded that with regards to union membership, no
significant difference is observed with regards to average weekly work hours which are
almost same for both groups. However, significant difference is indeed observed in case of
participation of different occupations with regards to union membership. About 48% of the
total union members are derived from production and labourer. In comparison, the
contribution of employees from production and labourer to non-unionised workforce is about
26% and hence significant. With regards to satisfaction also, higher level of dissatisfaction
and lower level of satisfaction is witnessed for those members who have joined union.

Pre-Tax Income Prediction
In order to find the variable that has the closest relation with the pre-tax income, statistical
analysis has been done between pre-tax income and various variables such as education,
weekly work hours, number of years of full time work , number of promotions and number of
years for which the employee has worked with the given employer. Based on the analysis, it
is apparent that pre-tax income tends to have the closed associated with number of years in
full time work since 16 years (Hair et. al., 2015). This is not surprising since this tends to
include a host of variables such as age, number of years with the current employer along with
the number of promotions assuming average performance. There is a positive relation
between number of years of full time work and pre-tax income which is not surprising
considering the fact that higher years would indicate greater experience and thus would
command a higher way. However, the relationship between the two variables is weak to
moderate since it is only one of the key determinants. This is not surprising as if an employee
with limited education works as labourer for a number of years, then also the pre-tax income
would not even cross that of a manager. As a result, for estimation of pre-tax salary, other
variables also need to be considered but one of the most significant ones is full time work
years from age 16.
Workers Approaching Retirement
Based on the sample data provided, an estimation of the average age of the employees has
been made. According to the estimate, the average age of company is estimated to lie
between 38.37 years and 40.45 years (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015). It is apparent that the
age of the employees is quite less than the retirement age and hence most of the employees
have significant amount of service left before they retire. As a result, the company should not
be worried about retirement woes leading to need for recruitment drive and instead must
focus their attention on minimising attribution which may be a more relevant reason for
recruitment drive.
With regards to employment years, it is apparent that the average number of years for which
the employees have been working in the present job ranges from 7.84 years to 9.49 years
(Flick, 2015). This also substantiates the claims made above in relation to majority
employees not nearing the retirement age. Taking the higher end of the average experience
into consideration, retirement would be a consideration only for those employees which
would have joined the organisation in their 50’s. This count would be low only thereby

reflecting that losing employees owing to retirement is not a significant concern for the
company going forward.
Union Membership
(a) Based on the sample data of employees, relevant statistical analysis has been done to
check if the average years of employment exceed 7.5 years or not. The data from 400
employees tends to lend support to the notion that the employees in the company are loyal
and hence they tend to exceed the industry average of 7.5 for time of employment at one
company. However, this is not surprising considering the high degree of satisfaction that
most employees have which would be a sizable factor leading to longer stay of employees at
TechnoMart. With regards to male employees also, the number of years with the company on
an average exceeds 7.5 years but the same is not true for female employees. This clearly
highlights that the female employees tend to stay for a lower period and it is imperative to
dwell further to find out the precise reasons for the same so as to improve gender
representation at senior positions.
(b) With regards to union members, the claim of the union regarding the working hours per
week being atleast 45 hours has not been found true. This implies that it cannot be concluded
that employees at TechnoMart who are union employees tend to work for atleast 45 hours in
a week.
Future surveys
a) The computation of sample size is dependent on a host of factors. One of these is the
underlying heterogeneity in the underlying population (Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman,
2014). For a population that is more heterogeneous in nature, a larger sample size would be
required so as to ensure that the key attributes of the population are captured in the sample
selected (Hair et. al., 2015). Another factor is the margin of error which essentially depends
on the researcher. If the researcher desires the sample characteristics to be quite accurate and
similar to population, then a larger sample size would be required. On the other hand, if the
margin of error is higher i.e. lower accuracy is desired then even a smaller size would be
sufficient (Flick, 2015). Yet another factor is the underlying accuracy of the estimates of the
sample size which is normally taken as 95%. However, a larger value in this regards could
lead to a higher value of the appropriate sample size (Eriksson and Kovalainen, 2015).

b) Based on the above factors for the given employee sample, it is apparent that to analyse the
overtime problem the current sample of 400 employees is less. Considering a margin of error
of 1.5%, a minimum sample size of 1038 employees would be required. This must be kept in
mind for future survey in order to ensure that reliable conclusions can be derived from the
employee survey results.
Conclusion
From the above analysis, it may be concluded that the company has an overtime problem
which needs to be addressed. The difference between union and non-union members is
primarily in terms of occupation and satisfaction. The pre-tax income is related to the number
of full time work years. The retirement concerns advocated by the HR department have not
been supported. Besides, the union claims have found to be false regarding working hours in
a week and loyalty of female employees. Further, in the future, it is imperative for the
company to choose a larger sample of employees to analyse the overtime problem.

References
Eriksson, P. and Kovalainen, A. (2015) Quantitative methods in business research. 3rd ed.
London: Sage Publications.
Flick, U. (2015) Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research
project. 4th ed. New York: Sage Publications.
Hair, J. F., Wolfinbarger, M., Money, A. H., Samouel, P., and Page, M. J. (2015) Essentials
of business research methods. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Hastie, T., Tibshirani, R. and Friedman, J. (2014) The Elements of Statistical Learning. 4th
ed. New York: Springer Publications.
Hillier, F. (2016) Introduction to Operations Research. 6th ed. New York: McGraw Hill
Publications.