Best Companies to Work For
Ideally, everyone would like to work for a great company who treats its employees well, offers the right levels of monetary reward, staff benefits and challenging roles. Each year Fortune Magazine carries out an extensive survey of workers across a wide range of sectors to compile a list of the ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ (The Times in the UK carries out a similar survey). Many of the ‘top 100’ companies make it onto the list every year. However, the workforce is changing so the type of company who reach the ‘Top 100 Best Companies to Work For’ may also start to change.
The Millennial generation (those born between 1980 and 2000) are now the largest group in employment and companies need to adapt to this changing workforce. Millennials as workers are thought to be less concerned with monetary rewards and more interested in challenge and achieving a work-life balance. To reflect this changing workforce Fortune Magazine carried out a separate survey of Millennials in the workplace and compiled a list of ‘Best Companies for Millennials’.
Quite a few of the companies which appear on the ‘Best Companies to Work For’ also appear on the ‘Best Companies for Millennials’ list, but the lists are not identical. For this assignment, you are going to analyse data from companies on the ‘Best Companies to Work For’ list and companies on the ‘Best for Millennials’ list.
You have data on companies listed on the Fortune ‘Best Companies to Work For’ list and the Fortune ‘Best Companies for Millennials’ list. The data includes;
• The total number of employees at the company
• The revenue of the company (in $billions)
• The Industry Sector (e.g. Information Technology, Retail etc.)
• Number of Job Openings (since February 2017)
• Average Pay (the yearly salary for the most common salaried job type in the company).
• Full time voluntary turnover % (the percentage of full time employees who have left during the last year – from a company point of view, smaller is better).
• Number of Millennials (the number of Millennials working at the company – note this data is only available for companies on the ‘Best for Millennials’ list).
1) Write an introduction to the topic and the data set. Describe a business application for investigating how employees feel about their employers.
[10 Marks]
Using the Dataset – Best Companies Data
Sample Methodology
2) Take a sample of 30 rows from companies on the ‘Best Companies’ group and a sample of 30 from the ‘Best for Millennials’ group (giving you a total sample size of 60).
Describe the sample method you have used. Explain one advantage and one potential disadvantage for your chosen sampling method.
[10 Marks]
Summary Statistics
Using your sample compare your two samples
3) Calculate the mean, median, standard deviation, IQR, Range, Maximum and Minimum for the following sample data; Revenue, Total Number of Employees, Average Pay, Full Time Voluntary Turnover.
4) Interpret your statistics and discuss; do you have any potential outliers in your data? How do the two groups compare in terms of revenue? Do the Millennials prefer larger or smaller companies? Are there any differences in terms of staff loyalty (is the turnover higher for the group preferred specifically by the Millennials?). Are there any differences in terms of pay?
[20 Marks]
Graphical Analysis
Using your sample compare your two samples
5) Using the Total Number of Employees column in your sample create two box and whisker plots (one for each group). Interpret your box and whisker plots. Use your summary statistics to help you with the comparisons.
[10 Marks]
6) Using the Average Pay column in your sample create two histograms (one for each group). Interpret your histograms. Use your summary statistics to help you with the comparisons.
[10 Marks]
7) Using the Industry column in your sample create two pie charts. Are there any differences or similarities between the two pie charts that help to explain your statistics, histograms and box and whisker plots?
[10 Marks]
Further Analysis
8) Analyse at least one further column of data (you may use a histogram, pie chart or box and whisker plot or a different type of graph such as a bar chart or scatterplot).
[20 Marks]
Summary
9) Summarise your main findings and conclusions.
[5 Marks]
Presentation
There are marks available for overall presentation. Make sure your graphs have sensible titles and scales and are large enough to read. Make sure that you have structured your report in a neat and logical way (for example including section headers such as Introduction, Sampling Methodology, Summary Statistics, Analysis and Conclusion).
Include references for all background research used in the Harvard Reference format and include a copy of your sample data in a table in an appendix at the end of the report.
[5 Marks]
