The purpose of the study was to investigate the cost effectiveness of a human relations communications course for supervisors in a public agency using four selected indices for comparison.The subjects consisted of sixty-eight supervisors employed by three federal agencies serviced by a central personnel function. The managers supervised small work groups engaged in administrative processes and their subordinates were organized through a local chapter of a national public employee union. The supervisors were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups consisting of thirty-four supervisors in each group. Members of the experimental group were randomly assigned to three small training groups. The training groups met for eight hours during ore day for the training program.The purpose of the training was to develop and improve facilitalive communication skills for goal setting with subordinates. To analyze the effectiveness of the training program, four measures of the desired results were recorded for six months after the completion of the trainingprogram.The measures were: employee turnover, employee lateness, managerial performance ratings, and number of written employee grievances. Employee turnover and employee Managerial performance ratings and written employee grievances were used as criteria for behavioral change.For each of the criterion measures, pretraining and posttraining group means were determined for experimental and control groups. There was no significant difference between the pretraining group means. A t test was used to determine if posttraining measures were significantly different.Analysis of the data indicated the experimental group was significantly (p <.05) better on the criterion measure of employee turnover. An incremental cost saving to the public agency resulted because of the lower turnover rate. No significant difference resulted in regard to employee lateness, managerial performance ratings, and the number of formal employee grievances.The findings and conclusions of the study indicate a management training program was effective in changing an organizational variable, employee turnover, that contributed to the op-rational savings of the public agency. The lack of significant difference in other criteria suggests other variables do not change as readily. However, the study evidenced training outcomes can be measured in terms of selected economic indices.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/179738 |
| Date | January 1982 |
| Creators | Posner, Calvin S. |
| Contributors | Ballou, Philip E. |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | 3, v, 126 leaves : forms ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
Page generated in 0.0065 seconds