Report concepts and applications

marketing department has been losing, in the last period of time, well trained and enthusiastic young men, who have chosen to pursue their career elsewhere. As many of them have left after a brief period of time spent in the marketing department, the company has lost time and money invested in their training, as well as their large potential. As such, as study will be conducted to analyze the causes and propose possible solutions for this issue. The following report includes a set of data, with personnel's opinions and answers, an analysis of the data and conclusions on the findings. The last part of the report will list a series of recommendations for the company's president.

Following the recent leave of three excellent workers in the marketing department, two recently hired and one with a ten- year experience, a careful research and study will be conducted in order to evaluate why this has been happening and what solutions shall be taken in order to stop this brain exodus. The data consists of answers that the people working in the department have given to questions about their positions, their work and responsibilities within the department.

Background

The marketing department of our company has recently lost three prolific workers. Two of them were recent college graduates and had just completed the training process within the company. The other one was one of the oldest members of our marketing team, having worked as a copywriter for over ten years. His experience and commitment towards the company had always been regarded as a great asset.

The fact that the marketing department is essential for our business made us ask ourselves what was happening within the department. To me, it was clear that there was a dissatisfaction at a departmental level, because of the intensity with which people had begun to leave our company.

The hiring process could not be under scrutiny: the candidates had been personally interviewed and selected by Mr. Farnham and he had chosen the ablest persons for the job. This made me investigate what was going on at a departmental level.

The marketing department was led by Brent Morgan, former copywriter within the company that had been with the company for twelve years. An excellent professional, characterized by Mr. Farnham as being "extremely exacting, detail-oriented, and hard-working -- a real perfectionist," he has led the department for the last two and a half years.

Data have drafted a set of question for some of the employees from the department to answer. My sample of workers included Andrea Bolling (a copywriter who has been with us for five years), Denise Briant (copywriter, twelve years) and George Pierce, who was a new hire. The idea was to use for my data analysis people who had been with our company for various periods of time, in order to assess whether they were satisfied with their work, whether they would consider leaving in the next six months and whether they were satisfied from a professional point-of-view with their positions.

The facts were somewhat conclusive. All the interviewed persons have reported that they are not satisfied with their status and work within the department and that they intend to leave in the next weeks. There were several reasons they gave for this. The foremost related to motivation: all three answered that they were not satisfied with their current position because they felt they had no motivation (the new employee, for example, answered that he expected to be given more confidence on some of the projects), either financial or professional. The second issue related to the fact that, professionally, they felt their creativity was not exploited. With these facts, I am able to present an analysis of my findings and conclude on the causes of the personnel exodus from the marketing department.

Analysis

There is a single word that can actually explain what is going on within the marketing department: MOTIVATION. In order to assess what is going on at a departmental level, we should first have a brief look at three of the most important motivation theories that apply here: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the Dual- Factor Theory (Herzberg) and the Theory on the Need for Achievement (David McClelland). All three apply here.

Maslow sees an individual as having several categories of needs and satisfying them one at a time. As soon as the inferior level of needs is satisfied, the individual passes on to the next level. In our case, the employees from the marketing department find themselves on the fourth hierarchical level, that is, esteem and self-esteem. This means that they "need to be of as worthwhile by others, to be recognized as people with some value." This is clearly a problem within the marketing department. As we have seen from the research, Morgan has a centralized manner of leading the department and does not give them enough freedom to exercise their powers. All of the people interviewed have said this and it is obvious that this comes into contradiction with the workers' need to feel their work appreciated. Morgan's attitude may show them that he does not trust the quality of their work and prefers to restrict their activity.

According to The Dual- Factor Theory, the factors that cause job satisfaction are referred to as motivators. These are factors such as achievement, recognition or responsibility. In our case, none of these factors seem to be present in the marketing department. Indeed, as we have mentioned before, the employees have reported that they feel as if they are not being rewarded enough (recognition) and are not using their creative abilities to the fullest extent (achievement and responsibility).

The last theory applies best in our case and refers to the so- called need for achievement. Considering that an employee can have a high or a low need for achievement. The employees from the marketing department are obviously in the last category. They have creative abilities and are keen to exploit them and receive recognition for their abilities. Additionally, as the study mentions, "they want concrete feedback on their performance," which they are clearly not receiving from Morgan.

Conclusion

As I have mentioned before, there seem to be two causes to the departmental exodus, one related to rewards and the other to the fact that the employees feel their creative abilities are not used to the extent they believe they should be. Both of these causes relate to motivational theories, three of which are presented in the Analysis section, together with the results of the survey.