Human Resource Analysis - Bloggs and Bloggs

Denhams HR Consulting

Human Resources Analysis of Bloggs and Bloggs Report for Multicorp, Chicago

Stephen Denham - 08339678 10/13/2010

Table of Contents 1.

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1

2.

Body of Report .................................................................................................................... 1 a.

3.

Background ..................................................................................................................... 1 Gender Breakdown ............................................................................................................. 2

a.

Grade Category ............................................................................................................... 2

b.

Age.................................................................................................................................. 3

c.

Dependent Children......................................................................................................... 4

d.

Salary Level .................................................................................................................... 4

4.

Contract Staff ...................................................................................................................... 5 a.

Relative Number of Contract Staff Employed .................................................................. 5

b.

Termination of Contract Staff ........................................................................................... 6

5.

Payroll Costs by Business Area .......................................................................................... 6 a.

6.

Average Salary for Business Areas, adjusted for size ...................................................... 6 Retirement Package ........................................................................................................... 7

a.

7.

Staff aged sixty and over ................................................................................................. 7 Conclusions & Recommendations ...................................................................................... 7

a.

Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 7

b.

Recommendations .......................................................................................................... 8

1. Introduction The Irish Bloggs and Bloggs Corporation was recently acquired by the Chicago based conglomerate, Multicorp. Shortly after the acquisition, concerns were raised by Multicorp about the high payroll costs and gender inequality in the subsidiary.

Bloggs and Bloggs is primarily a construction company and given the current economic climate, particularly in that sector, downsizing is a real prospect.

This report makes several notable findings in relation to gender balance over a range of areas, as well as detailing the opportunity cost of the proposed introduction of a retirement package and other payroll saving measures.

2. Body of Report a. Background Bloggs and Bloggs Corporation is primarily a construction company. This part of the Irish economy was very lucrative up to three years ago1. It is now accepted that that was a bubble industry with unsustainable growth.

Since the collapse of the construction industry, Bloggs and Bloggs seem to have adopted a strategy of trying to move into different industries. Over the last two years it acquired two service companies, in commercial retail and contract cleaning.

The breakdown of its employee base can be seen in this bar chart.

Number of Employees by Business Area 600 500

No. of Employees

400 300 200 100 0

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BBC News – Irish economy goes into recession – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7635426.stm

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Clearly, the construction division still employees the most people. It is expected that since those two companies were acquired, there would have been cuts in technostructure and support staff due to economies of scale. It would be beneficial to compare the level of admin staff of all three companies before the integration so see if some processes could be standardised through the company to reduce costs.

3. Gender Breakdown Firstly, it is clear that Bloggs and Bloggs employees significantly more male than female staff.

Of the one thousand, one hundred and fifteen people employed, only thirty six percent (36%) are female. This is a significant statistic. It would seem that gender imbalance is endemic of Bloggs and Bloggs. This pie chart shows the basic breakdown of men to women.

Male to Female Breakdown

Female Male

The following paragraphs and graphs look for any significant relationships between gender and grade, age, number of depended children and salary level.

In the remainder of this section, acknowledging that there are a greater number of males than females, other parameters are adjusted before analysis. This means that, for example, it is not automatically seen that more men are on higher wages then women. The question of whether males and female counterparts are paid the equally.

a. Grade Category Gender breakdown to grade found the most significant signs of bias. As seen in the graph, a minute portion of the supervisors in Bloggs and Bloggs are female. Males dominate the higher ranks of the company. The only grades where women outnumber men are assistants and the lowest grade employees. Over thirty percent (30%) of the females in the company are assistants while only three percent (3%) of males in the company are assistants. Out of the two hundred and four supervisors, only twelve are female (six percent).

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Gender Breakdown to Salary (adjusted for employment imbalance) 35% 30% 25% 20%

Percent of gender at

Female

15% 10%

Male

5%

0%

Grade

b. Age There is a clear trend here. The number of females decreases with age. This is seen clearly in the graph below.

There are very few older employees in this work place. Such a distinctive trend does not happen by chance. This definitely seems to be some underlying culture/attitude at work here. Whether is it an Irish or company culture is beyond the scope of this report.

Gender Breakdown to Age (adjusted for gender imbalance) 30% 25% 20% Female

Percent of 15% gender at grade 10%

Male

5% 0% <25

25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 50-55 55-60

Age Group

3

60+

Unlike females, there are a large portion of males in the company of an older age. These are typically supporting larger families as described in the next section.

c. Dependent Children There are more male employees supporting larger families. This is not surprising given the small number of middle aged female employees in the company. A substantially larger portion of the females in the company are not supporting any other family members. This again is related to the fact that they mostly occupy lower age brackets. So, given the above information, it is not surprising to see that the male employees who are in larger age brackets and typically enjoy higher salaries as seen in the next section.

Gender Breakdown No. of Dependent Children (adjusted for gender breakdown) 80% 70% 60%

Percent of 50% gender with 40% No. of Dep. Children 30%

Female Male

20% 10% 0% 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

10

No. of Dependent Children

d. Salary Level Men are typically paid much more in this company then woman. Considering they occupy higher positions in the company, this is not surprising. This diagrame shows that male employees far surpass females in terms of salary. The female employees are typically younger and are not employeed in roles of higher authority or high skil.

Though this pattern is highly discernable, the evidence suggests that men and women are being paid equally in general when they are counter-parts. This is important to note. If gender inequality exists in the company, it is not easy to spot.

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Gender Breakdown to Salary (adjusted for gender breakdown)

Percent of gender at grade

50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Female Male

<200

200-300

300-400

400-500

>500

Grade This raises another question as to why women donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t stay with the company as long as men. It could be for family reasons, though this cannot be assumed. It is possible that they leave out of frustration, seeing their male colleagues get promoted past them to supervisory positions.

Qualitive research could be done on this.

4. Contract Staff a. Relative Number of Contract Staff Employed Contracted staffs represent a relatively low portion of Bloggs and Bloggs employees (only nine per cent). These staff may be more disposable then penmanent. For this reason, when looking at downsizing, they are looked at first. The folloing pie chart shows the breakdown of permanent staff to contract.

Penmanent to Contract Staff

Permanent

Contract

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b. Termination of Contract Staff The total annual salary of these contracted staff is roughly seven hundred and fifty seven thousand euro. If this package was only offered to the construction division, where contract staff account for eleven percent (11%), it could make an annual saving of roughly to €603,000.

5. Payroll Costs by Business Area a. Average Salary for Business Areas, adjusted for size This graph shows the number of employees at different pay levels when adjusted for business size. Here we have a better idea of what employees in the different business areas are being paid. Management receives most of the high pay rates unsurprisingly. The majority of cleaning staff are in the weekly €200-€300 pay bracket. Retail occupies a large portion of the lowest pay brackets, although many of them are young part time workers. Even though the Retail division employees the second largest amount of people, it would not necessarily be larger than the Cleaning division.

The Construction pays most of its workers in the €300-€400 bracket. The market price for people in this sector should be expected to drop. Eleven percent of these employees are contracted so this may be a simpler area for downsizing.

Payroll by Business Area (adjusted for size) 0.7 0.6 Construction 0.5 Cleaning

Percent of Business Areas' Employees

0.4

Retail

0.3 0.2

Management

0.1

Administration

0 <200

200-300

300-400

400-500

Salary Group (weekly)

6

>500

6. Retirement Package a. Staff aged sixty and over The proposed retirement package would be applicable to twenty-one (21) employees. This could save the company three-hundred and forty thousand euro (â&#x201A;Ź340,000) annually. This bar chart clearly shows the demographic (grades and gender) of the employees aged over sixty.

Employees over sixty by grade and gender

Number of Employees over sixty at grade

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Male Female

Grade

7. Conclusions & Recommendations a. Conclusions There is amble evidence of gender discrimination in Bloggs and Bloggs. There is a small female minority which are typically much younger, with the company for a shorter period of time, and occupy the lowest status and salary.

This report has limitations as it only looks at one moment in time so it cannot comment on how these parameters have changed over time. Are women just a relatively new addition to the work place in Bloggs and Bloggs or is there a undesirable culture in the company causing them to leave.

A relatively small number of employees in the company are not permanent. The contracted employees are generally at lower cost.

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b. Recommendations This report recommends that Multicorp induce radical changes with regards to the gender imbalance in Bloggs and Bloggs Corporation. This change must come from the top down, so the addition of female upper management and supervision.

Downsizing of the construction division could be done by terminating contracted construction staff. If contracted staff were terminated across all divisions, it would negatively impact the gender balance and be counterproductive to the equality strategy. Also, since contracted staff represent such a large portion of the Retail division, it would most likely lead to a situation of understaffing. They are also paid, on average, much less than permanent staff.

This report recommends a qualitive study into what reasons women employees have for leaving the company early, or if the employment of this level of women is new at all which would explain why they are typically younger.

Finally, this report recommends that the issue of gender balance be taken very seriously in the strategy making process in future.

Futher details of the study are available on request: Stephen Denham denhams@tcd.ie

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