PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT INTERVENTIONS: AN ACTION RESEARCH CASE STUDY

Abstract

The purpose of this action research study was to design, implement, and evaluate the impact of interventions created to solve a specific organizational problem pertaining to the Service Technicians. This problem arose as Service Technicians failed to accurately account for their time on their timecards. On further investigation, it was found that this problem occurred in 30% of the timecards. Also, the failure of Service Technicians to accurately complete their timecards appeared to be randomly distributed with no visible pattern by technician or type of job. The desired performance was that the Service Technicians fill out their timecards correctly 100% of the time, and that the customers were billed for clean-up charges, rather than billing their clean up time back to the company. This would ensure that their time on each customer service work order was accurately accounted for. By utilizing a systematic and simple approach to problem solving, the authors of the study were able to achieve significant outcomes for the case study company. The results of the interventions were positive, as the error rate was reduced from 30% to near 0. After accounting for $15,000 in expenditures for the project, the cost savings for the first year were $60,000. The return on investment was 400%.