Assessment Project

MGT 614

Welcome to your opportunity to perform!  The Needs Assessment Project will give you the opportunity to design a needs assessment proposal using tools and theory from the text and lecture.  You are to develop a proposal to management to perform a needs assessment.  You should view this project as a formal and professional product, so format, structure, spelling, and other facets should reflect that.  The due date is on the Lesson Plan. 

Scenario Assumptions—

• You are the newly-hired training specialist for Zerfco Products, Inc., a manufacturing company.  Zerfco has never had a full time trainer on its payroll before.  You are a salaried and exempt employee.

• In walking through the home plant and offices, you noticed some calendars displaying scantily-clad women in the break room; you also overheard some borderline racy jokes in the Engineering Department.  Zerfco had received sexual harassment training several years ago by an outside agency.  Training may be needed again, but before you recommend mandatory training for the employees, it is important to have some facts to back up the need the training.  It could very well be that training is not needed and that disciplinary action should be taken against a few employees, so don’t assume training is needed at this point.

• Zerfco employs 400 employees in three states: Kansas, the headquarters, has 60 salaried exempt employees, 50 hourly non-exempt office employees, and 100 hourly non-exempt production employees; the Missouri plant has 20 salaried exempt employees, 10 hourly non-exempt office employees, and 50 hourly non-exempt production employees; the Montana plant has 20 salaried exempt employees, 15 hourly non-exempt office employees, and 75 hourly non-exempt production employees.  The production positions cover all three shifts (day, evening, night).  Included in the staffing levels above is one human resource professional at each site.The Essay is provided by UK Assignment 

• The average wage of the hourly office employees is $9.50/hour while the average wage of the hourly production employees is $12.25/hour.

• Management does not want the weekly performance to diminish, so whatever time you provide for the assessment will have to be made up in the offices and production areas that week.  In other words, the time the hourly-paid employees are participating in the assessment will be counted as overtime.  Keep this in mind when trying to maximize data while keeping costs down.  All of the salaried employees are exempt.  You must perform the assessment on the job site; no assessments are to be sent home with the employees or completed via the computer on their own time.  

• All salaried and hourly office personnel have access to the computer network at work with PowerPoint, Word, and Excel software.  None of the hourly production personnel have computer access at work.

• Each of the three sites has a conference room capable of holding 50 people uncomfortably, 30 comfortably.  Each room has chairs and tables; many resources you need are available including a laptop computer, computer projector, screens, flip charts, etc.

Your Assignment—

The needs assessment proposal should be completed in Word.  The Project must be formatted as stated below:

• Cover sheet indicating the subject, class, your name, and date.

• The sheets that follow should have the margins set for 1.25” for left and 1” for the other three sides.

• 12 point font (preferably Arial or Times New Roman) should be used.  Bold and/or underline the section headings.

The following items must appear in this order:

• Table of Contents (immediately following the cover sheet)—do not forget to include page numbers in the table and on the pages.  I suggest you use the “Table” function for better alignment and the “Footer” commands to properly insert the page numbers on the pages.

• Executive Summary—you briefly discuss the reasons for proposing the Assessment, objective, tool(s) you will use and why, the process you will use for gathering and synthesizing the information, and the total costs.  Remember, executive summaries are brief and should be ½ to 1 page in length…strip away the fluff and summarize the information stated in the previous sentence.  There should be not be any information found in the executive summary which is not found in your proposal.The Essay is provided by UK Assignment 

• Reasons for Assessment—this section discusses why you are proposing a needs assessment.  Include your observations and the potential financial risk to Zerfco.

• Objective—what is the goal of the assessment?  This should be one sentence and does not have to be measurable or observable like the training objectives we discuss elsewhere in the class.

• Assessment Tool—describe in detail the tool(s) you will use to make the assessment.  Discuss why you are using it/them and include advantages and any challenges/problems which may occur.  Also state how you will overcome the challenges/problems.

• Process—discuss how you will administer the assessment including who, when, where, how, and the time involved.  Also discuss how you will gather, analyze, and synthesize the information.  Please think this through and even rehearse it to be as precise as possible on the time involved for everyone.

• Costs—include the time it will take for the employees involved to participate in the assessment and calculate the labor costs.  If you are planning on traveling to the various sites, include an estimate on travel and hotel costs.  Please put this in a table format.  In a separate table, calculate the time you spent preparing this actual project and the approximate time you or an HR person will spend administering, gathering, analyzing, and synthesizing the information.

• Appendix—Include the actual copies of the surveys, questionnaires, interview questions, focus group scripts, etc. (as applicable) you will use.  

• Note:  Do not provide any information about a training program.  The only thing you are focusing on is the Needs Assessment proposal.  Don’t assume that training is needed (it may be just a supervisory issue).  Again, all you are doing in this project is proposing to management that you perform a needs assessment. If you submit any kind of training or assume training is needed in this project, you will receive 0 points.

Grading—The Essay is provided by UK Assignment 

The Project is worth 50 points.  You will be graded on each of the points listed above.  Spelling and grammar are worth 10% of the grade.  If you submit this project late, the points will be lowered at least one letter grade (projects will not be accepted over one week past the due date).  I will review and respond with feedback within a few days.  You may email or call me if you have questions.  Also, feel free to use the Q&A in the discussion forum to ask questions of me and your fellow students.  Good luck!