Organizational Leadership

Southern Nazarene University

Tulsa County Information Technology Department Study

Chapters 4 and 5
A PROJECT REPORT
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY
In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the
Degree of Bachelor of Science
By
Stephen P. Clopp
Group OL7
Professor Elicia Brannon-Little
Tulsa, Oklahoma
April 5, 2015

Chapter 4
Summary of Results
The following is a summary of the data collected from the questionnaire answers provided by the members of the Tulsa County IT Department. The purpose of this project was to attempt to quantify the staff’s job satisfaction and job effectiveness ratings following the restructuring of the IT Department. The information from the instrument was grouped and averaged, and those averages were compared to the total average for all respondents in the department for each question. Included in the Chapter 4 results discussion are two figures with representations of the data, which include mean averages by question and work group, and an individual scoring breakdown of Question 9, which concerned the estimated time lost due to work environment issues. Additionally, three alternative courses of action are presented for consideration, and the possible impacts and feasibility of each approach are discussed.
Descriptive Statistical Information
The Tulsa County IT Department was restructured in September of 2014. There was no prior needs analysis for levels of job satisfaction or job effectiveness performed before the reorganization. This study was a snapshot of existing conditions as of January of 2015. The new department structure is composed of four workgroups consisting of: (a) Infrastructure, Phones, Networks, and Servers; (b) Software and Applications Developers; (c) Technical Support, Helpdesk, and Applications Security; and (d) Administrative Staff.
The research question for this project focused primarily on determining the current perceived levels of employee job satisfaction and job efficiency of the IT department staff. Since this was a needs analysis study, there was no defined independent variable. The following two dependent variables were used in the operational definitions for this study, which were self-assessments in evaluating levels of employee job effectiveness, and self-assessments in evaluating levels of employee job satisfaction. The eight questions used in the instrument for data analysis portion also appear in the table containing the data results, see Figure 3, and the entire instrument is provided in Appendix A.
The testing for this needs analysis was in the form of mean averages. These averages were calculated for each of the eight questions, and then totaled by the individual workgroups and the aggregate, so that workgroups can be compared on each question. There were also two subdivisions of questions, with four of the questions directed at employee satisfaction and four questions directed at employee effectiveness. Finally, the totals for each workgroup mean averages were summed for all eight questions, so that workgroups aggregates can be compared.
This analysis required nonparametric or distribution-free statistics because there can be no assumptions made in regard any known distribution of the data. The survey instrument was unverified and any aggregate distribution for any large population is unknown. Another factor in this analysis was that a departmental group restructuring occurred several months prior to the survey being applied, which eliminated the possibility of performing cause and effect analysis using a t-test by taking a sample before the changes. The resulting statistical analysis available was to group the respondents by work group and compare them against each other using simple nonparametric mean averaging and totaling. Future testing using the original instrument used in this research would be beneficial for further statistical analysis and comparison, having two sources of data for comparisons. Also possibly useful as completely anecdotal data for comparison, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) using proprietary instruments has reported the average United States overall job satisfaction rating over the last 10 years in a range from 77% to 86% (“2012 SHRM Employee Job Satisfaction,” 2012), which is shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. Overall Employee Job Satisfaction in the United States
Figure 3. IT Department Employee Job Questionnaire Results
In Figure 3 above, the mean averages that are above the department average for that question and indicated with a yellow background. There were some anomalies in the results that occurred when values above and below the department average were canceled by an opposite and equal number above the department average. One such occurrence of this phenomenon was in the results of Question 9, which asked the respondent to estimate the amount of lost or wasted time due to negative work environment issues, such as outdated technology, or back orders. To highlight this effect, Figure 4 (below) was created to show a detailed breakdown in individual scores for Question 9.

Figure 4. Question 9 – Estimated Time Lost Due to Negative Work Environment Issues
In Figure 4 above, the yellow background highlights all responses above 26%, which is the department average. As shown in the graphs, the positive and negative sides of the data are closely balanced for most groups. This potentially masks the severity of problems that employees may be experiencing.
Alternative Courses of Action
Status Quo. The first alternate course of action is to make no changes. Since there was not a collection of data prior to the reorganization of the IT Department structure, the impact that the reorganization has had on employee job satisfaction and job effectiveness is difficult to guage. Status quo would mean continuing at the current minimal levels of training, minimal project management resources expenditure, and minimal tools procurement with minimal focus on long-range planning. At the current levels of service being maintained by the IT Department, there would also be no dramatic change in the staffing levels; however, there are several vacant positions that have been open for several months. Some specific steps have been implemented to speed up the process of identifying, purchasing, loading, and installing new desktop computers, but analysis of options continues and that process has not been fully implemented yet as of January 2015.
With the status quo, the estimation is that the department may lack the required pre-planning required to analyze and purchase tools and licenses for the continued evolvement of the work environment, to keep pace with constant technology advances. Without looking forward, the impact on the organization could be a severe lapse into obsolete software, tools, and licenses, with no state of the art development environments for the next generation of infrastructure and websites that will eventually become critical needs to carry Tulsa County forward for the next several decades. The feasibility of this option is highly likely, requiring no additional funding, no planning, and very little new action.
Moderate Funding and Planning. The second alternate course of action is to make moderate changes in funding and planning. Since an increase in staff could significantly reduce the workload in some critical positions, this changer could potentially have a significant impact on affected employee’s workload, stress, job satisfaction, and job effectiveness. This alternative would also provide for some of the requested, optional, or advanced training, and new analysis and development tools. Moderate changes could increase the level of service and reduce response times currently being experienced by the other departments. This option would also allow most of the implementation to speed up the process purchasing, loading, and installing new desktop computers. The feasibility of this option is based primarily on funding, and the funding is affected by local economic factors such as the tax revenues. However, with the improvements in economic statistics such a new labor numbers recently released, the feasibility of this option has recently improved.
With this moderate option, the estimation is that the department may proceed with known issue in both the short term and long term, and schedule the pre-planning required to analyze and purchase tools and licenses for the continued evolvement of the work environment. Without looking forward, technology is soon outdated, out of warranty, and more difficult and more costly to maintain. Additionally, new development is often impacted or impeded by the use of outdated tools and technology, and an investment to stay current in the technology will ease maintenance and development costs in the long-term. The feasibility of this option is good, and the most necessary changes could be implemented while performing a more detailed analysis for long-range planning.
Maximum Funding and Planning. The third alternate course of action is to make drastic changes in the IT Department budget and planning capabilities. Maximum funding would allow for the implementation of new ideas, such as a re-write team for the Zulu mainframe conversion code to optimize and reduce long-term maintenance costs, and a special systems analyst or team to seek out critical needs of automation in outdated manuals systems still in use in all departments. Tools could be purchased and implemented that would help to stabilize development platforms across all departments, such a source code control and project management tools, and file storage and recovery management systems. Additional funding would allow the department to be fully staffed to handle the current workload and allow for the expected growth induced by the termination of the mainframe system. Maximum funding would allow for the full implementation of a computerized procurement, build out, and installation of new computer desktop systems and software.
With this alternative, the department would be positioned to do the pre-planning required to analyze and purchase tools and licenses for the continued evolvement of the work environment, especially for websites development, which will grow exponentially. Updating the infrastructure, staff, tools, and training needed for development could potentially make a significant difference in the ability to serve the Tulsa County departments for the next several decades with new state of the art systems to replace the obsolete or antiquated manual systems currently in use. The feasibility of this option is less likely; requiring purposeful focus on the importance of the IT Department’s ability to identify, design solutions, and implement new systems and services to other departments that are without the technology, staff or budget to design and implement those systems by themselves.
Summary
The focus of the eight instrument questions on the two dependent variables of job satisfaction and job effectives resulted in mean average scores of 74.8% and 74.4% respectively. Given the anecdotal value of 81% for job satisfaction in the United States in 2012, the scores at Tulsa county IT Department would seem to be on the low side of that normal average. What would be more valuable, would be to conduct another survey in early 2016 and determine the direction of the changes of these two important variables for this population. In Chapter 5, the researcher will discuss some of the possible meanings of these findings and make recommendations.
Chapter 5
Discussion and Conclusions
The purpose of this project was to conduct a needs analysis study to determine the current levels of job satisfaction and job efficiency of the IT department employees, as related to the status of the current working environment and recent structural changes in the management and organizational structure. This chapter presents an interpretation and discussion of the findings, including a general discussion, strengths and weaknesses, recommendations, and suggestions for future research. This benchmark of quantified morale data may be useful in analysis of the effects of future changes in department structure, policies, or other intrinsic elements of the IT Department work environment.
General Discussion and Conclusions
Typically, researchers use questionnaires to apply quantitative values to ambiguous parameters. This is often followed by in-depth statistical analysis of the data. In view of the difficulty of producing such data analysis, what was offered to the readers of the research were simple values on a scale, with the analysis consisting of gross counts averaging by question and workgroup. Included in the data supplied to management is a potentially valuable addendum that includes the actual write-in text of comments and suggestions that was supplied by the participants to the open answer essay questions. There were 52 total responses to the
three essay-answer questions, providing employee suggestions and requests for changes.
The willingness of the staff to engage in the survey was high, having 22 of 26 or 85% of the technical staff (not including Admin group) responding to the eight questions. The comments and suggestions in the essay portion had 52 individual responses from the 33 total respondents, or 52/33 or 1.57 average responses per person. Unfortunately, there was not adequate preparation time to poll the staff members before the IT Department restructuring that took place in September of 2014. Moving forward, there is now a benchmark to measure and quantify future changes, and additional statistics may be performed with two sets of data that are lacking in a single set of data.
Regarding the set of data that was captured in this research, from a synopsis of the review literature on the subject, there are a wide range of scores of job satisfaction being reported in the United States that range from worker’s satisfaction in a lull at 50% for decades, to other reports of workers that report a strong 80% job satisfaction. This difference has been suspected by some researchers to be in the difference in the number of questions posed to respondents, and the inclusion of both intrinsic and extrinsic facets of job tasks and job environment, with instruments with fewer questions getting lower overall scores and percentages. Given that the instrument used in this research was minimal in the number of questions, the numbers could have been easily skewed to the low side. However, the IT Department scored a modestly robust 74% in satisfaction and effectiveness. The downside of the reasonableness of these numbers is the fact of the mirrored offsets in the individual scores, as clearly shown in the individual answers to Question 9 in Figure 4. A nearly equal number of very low scores offset the very high scores. This result gives a pleasant overall score, but the result seems clear to the researcher that workers reporting scores of 50% job effectiveness or job satisfaction are in dire need of help and assistance. In the opinion of the researcher, to raise the job satisfaction and job effectiveness of all workers to an acceptable level, further investigation is warranted.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Study
The strength of the study was the high level of enthusiasm and participation by the technical staff and the verbose and detailed comments and suggestions. However, as mentioned above, there was one particular anomaly discovered in the data that seemed to skew the results. The anomaly relates to scores in the Technical Support group employees on Question 9, concerning the amount of lost or wasted time due to negative work environment factors. Out of the two top and tow bottom respondents, the individual scores reveal that two employees scored lost time as 0%, and two respondents scored lost time at 40% and 50%. These four scores result in a lost time average score of 22.5%, which is better than the department average. This anomaly in the mean average effectively hides the problem that several employees are having with the work environment.
This type of cancellation anomaly occurred on responses to multiple questions. There are a couple of employees in the work group in the example above that appear to have genuine work environment issues, but the problem is hidden in the average taken. This anomaly may come from the combination of workers with vastly different jobs requirements assigned together in this group. The work is performed in different environments using different tools and procedures. This particular work environment issue should be investigated or addressed using another tool or method of analysis.
Recommendations
The Tulsa County IT Department is poised to launch into a period of exponential growth of systems and services. According to The Goal Setting Theory developed by Edwin A. Locke, setting specific goals generates a more intense level of human performance than setting general goals (Locke, 1968). Even scripture says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish”, Proverbs 28:19. The data and the suggestions and comments reveal that the IT department needs to set specific goals, develop the vision to meet those goals, and create the plans for systems that will satisfy the needs of the Tulsa County departments and offices. Also needed are targeted systems analysis, tools, program management, adequate staffing, and the detailed planning to create the systems that Tulsa County will need to function in the next decades.
The recommendation of the researcher is the second alternate course of action provided in Chapter 4. The second alternative is to implement moderate funding and planning to enhance and address the issues of job satisfaction and job efficiency. Moderate changes in funding and planning could increase staff, significantly reduce the workload in some critical positions, and could potentially have a significant impact on affected employees’ workload, stress, job satisfaction, and job effectiveness. This alternative would also provide for some of the requested, optional, or advanced training, and new analysis and development tools. Moderate changes could increase the level of service and reduce response times currently being experienced by the other departments.
In defense of choosing this alternative over Alternatives 1 and 3, is clear to the researcher that the status quo needs a boost, and an influx of ideas, planning, strategies, program management, tools, and commitment to the process of doing what has to be done. The first alternative, staying at status quo, was dismissed because every day we fail to pursue the state of the art; we are becoming obsolete in our technology. The third alternative is too cost prohibitive, and to use an emotional word picture as an analogy, although we would all like ponies for Christmas, the back yard is too small.
With this moderate option, the estimation is that the department may proceed with known issues in both the short term and long term, and schedule the pre-planning required to analyze and purchase tools and licenses for the continued evolvement of the work environment. Investments to stay current in the technology will ease maintenance and development costs in the long-term. The feasibility of this option is good, and the most necessary changes could be implemented while performing a more detailed analysis for long-range planning.
Suggestions for Future Research
In this research, a useful baseline has been created in a departmental self-assessment, quantifying the current state of the IT Department’s employees’ perceived satisfaction and effectiveness. This preliminary assessment research has hopefully raised awareness, and may be used by the new leadership to target areas that could be changed to improve the job effectiveness and job satisfaction of the IT Department staff. These are critically important elements in retaining employees and improving the IT functions and services provided.
A key source of data for other research possibilities will be the open-ended essay answers, hopefully to glean further insight into problems and potential answers to problems that employees perceive in performance of their jobs. There are many suggestions from training for new technologies being used, improved communication from management, need for tools, and several additional topics that were repeated by multiple respondents. One of the main points of this research is to focus the County resources on the elements of the IT Department that will have the greatest return on investment, and the people are one of the most valuable investments.

References
2012 SHRM Employee job satisfaction and engagement. (2012). Society for Human Resource Management. Retrieved from http://www.shrm.org/Research/SurveyFindings/Documents/12-0537%202012_jobsatisfaction_fnl_online.pdf.
Locke, E.A. (1968) “Towards a theory of task motivation and incentives” Organizational
Behavior and Human Performance, 3:157–189.

Appendix A
Tulsa County IT Department Questionnaire v01-15-2015
Peer working group selection…
1. What type of work do you usually perform, supervise, or manage the most often in your normal daily tasks?
(a) Infrastructure, Phones, Networks, and Servers.
(b) Software and Applications Developers.
(c) Technical Support, Helpdesk, and Applications Security.
(d) Administrative Staff.

Part 1 – Evaluating Job Satisfaction and Job Effectiveness
Section 1 – Job Satisfaction
2. What percentage of the types of work in your job do you like or enjoy?
3. What percentage of the time are your job tasks challenging your skills to keep you interested and motivated?
4. What percentage of your responsibilities and duties are clearly defined and comfortable to you?
5. What percentage of the time does your current job seem fulfilling and meaningful to you?

Section 2 – Job Effectiveness
6. Rate your percentage of job effectiveness in your current daily role, such as analyzing, planning, executing, and follow-up in your work?
7. What percentage do you feel you are you personally up to date in the latest technology and job skills for the daily work you are responsible for?
8. Rate the percentage of job efficiency of the other employees in your work group?
9. What percentage of your time is lost or wasted due to negative issues, such as outdated technology, back orders, etc., that is reducing your job effectiveness?

Part 2 – Open ended essay answers, suggestions, or comments…
10. What is the most significant factor that is keeping you from being more effective in your job? Examples: needed tools, needed training, unclear duties, insufficient procedures, outdated equipment, etc.
11. If you could change anything about your job to make it better, what would it be?
12. Do you have any other suggestions or comments that might help to create a better work environment or improve the workflow or efficiency?
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