One interesting quality management topic is ensuring quality work in crowd sourcing such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Crowd sourcing can be especially beneficial in research and developing software. Requesters can gather large amounts of data for a relatively low cost. Ensuring quality data can seem like a very difficult task because anyone at any knowledge, skill, and intent level can perform the work.
Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a marketplace for work (Amazon). It enables individuals or businesses to post tasks that they would like completed to an on-demand scalable workforce (Human Intelligence, which means that anyone can choose to perform that task from their computer that is connected to the internet. These tasks are tasks that usually involve simple tasks that require human judgement and intelligence. For instance, A9's BlockView pictures show street-level pictures of businesses and people are asked to select the best representation of the business from multiple photographs (Amazon). It seems a daunting task to make sure that the requestors are getting quality information from the tasks that they are paying people.
Malicious workers often take advantage of this and submit answers of low
quality. Most requestors rely on redundancy to identify the correct
answers, however, it is expensive to have enough submittals to ensure
the correct answer. One group worked on an algorithm for multiple
choice type work that incorporates estimating the correct answer by
getting answers from multiple workers while accounting for each workers
quality, and estimating the quality of the works by comparing their
answers with the inferred correct answer (Ipeirotis). The output of
this algorithm would be able to show the correct answer for each
question and the quality rating of each worker.
Amazon addresses the question of quality data in their Frequently Asked
Questions page for Amazon Mechanical Turk. Requestors have the option
to automatically approve work completed without viewing, automatically
approving the work completed when at least one other person has the
matching answers, and manually approving them. Requestors can also
specify that the workers complete a qualification test and they have to
meet a certain level in order to start on the work. Also, workers have
statistics associated with their account that track how many jobs they
have completed and how many of those were approved (Amazon). Amazon is saying that they do have some means of quality control, but it is up to the customer to decide on how much control they want to ensure accurate data. There could be much effort on Amazon's side for quality management.
Amazon should develop this quality management more, to ensure further quality. Amazon is dealing with hundreds of thousands of "employees" with no direct supervisor besides the rules they set in place. Amazon could try to set more rules and try to develop their relationship with their workers. It is a very difficult situation because the idea of crowdsourcing is to be able to get information from a lot of workers to get a confident answer and it is important to get quality answers, however that would increase costs and time. It would be good to use an algorithm to help ensure the answers are quality and the workers are quality. Workers should have developed profiles that give more criteria for statistics. They should also include work type and categories, as well as, some personal and demographic type of information. This could help requesters to help determine marketing strategies for different demographics, for example. The more advanced Amazon Mechanical Turk's quality management system is, the more inclined businesses will be willing to use the crowd sourcing effort to help their business.
Amazon Mechanical Turk. Amazon Web Services. 2013 http://aws.amazon.com/mturk/faqs/
Ipeirotis, P; Wang, Jing; Provost, Foster. "Quality Management on Amazon Mechanical Turk." Department of Information, Operations and Management Sciences. Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University. July 2010.
Saturday, December 7, 2013
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Employee Retention and Happiness
When searching for the highest employee retention rates, SAS is at the top of the list, and it has also been at or near the top of the list for best companies to work for many years (Fortune). Their annual turnover rate is 2-3% while the industry average is 22%. They are a successful company. SAS has increased their profits every year for the past 37 years (Crowley). This shows that a company that focuses on their employees can be a very successful company due to their employees. It is helpful at understanding how to sustain high employee retention and happiness in order to have a successful organization.
SAS has four main areas of focus to achieve employee happiness and that is valuing employees, offering perks, a culture of trust and ensuring employees understand their significance in their contributions (Lane). This happiness leads to high productivity and retention. During the economic downtown in the late 2000s, employees were concerned that there would be layoffs due to the reduction in revenue. However, SAS announced in January 2009, to all of its employees that there would be no layoffs (Crowley). Their productivity increased after that announcement, and while other companies were cutting costs, SAS's employees were working on new products. There are many onsite benefits for the employees and their familes including a massive gym, free on-site health care, deeply discounted child care, counseling for managing stress, and snacks are available for the employees during the day as well (Crowley). These and many other perks are a reminder to the employees that the company values each employee. The company works hard to have a culture of trust. They are diligent in ensuring they have the right leadership team to keep this culture of trust. Leaders must show that they naturally want to support and help people, and their role is to facilitate the career success of other employees, not their own. These leaders that help others get rewarded the most. To add to the trust, the company also gives employees freedom on the hours they work and when they use the campus services. SAS also makes sure that employees understand how they each make a difference (Crowley). This creates more fulfillment in the employees and inspires them to fully invest in their work.
The key thing to notice from SAS is that they value their employees. They demonstrate to each employee that their contribution is important to the company and the company shows that they value each employee. They show their employees that they value them by ensuring job security, offering perks, offering autonomy, and providing career planning and development opportunities. Selecting the right leadership is an important part of employee happiness because the company thrives to have a culture of trust and trusted leadership. Their leaders need to be authentic and work for the success of their employees. SAS is a great example of a company that employee happiness leads to a successful business.
"Best Companies to Work For 2013". Fortune. CNNMoney. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/turnover/
Lane, A. "SAS on Fortune Best Companies to Work For list in US." SAS Press Release. January 2012. http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/2012fortuneranking.html
Crowley, Mark. "How SAS Became the World's Best Place to Work." Fast Company. January 2013. http://www.fastcompany.com/3004953/how-sas-became-worlds-best-place-work
SAS has four main areas of focus to achieve employee happiness and that is valuing employees, offering perks, a culture of trust and ensuring employees understand their significance in their contributions (Lane). This happiness leads to high productivity and retention. During the economic downtown in the late 2000s, employees were concerned that there would be layoffs due to the reduction in revenue. However, SAS announced in January 2009, to all of its employees that there would be no layoffs (Crowley). Their productivity increased after that announcement, and while other companies were cutting costs, SAS's employees were working on new products. There are many onsite benefits for the employees and their familes including a massive gym, free on-site health care, deeply discounted child care, counseling for managing stress, and snacks are available for the employees during the day as well (Crowley). These and many other perks are a reminder to the employees that the company values each employee. The company works hard to have a culture of trust. They are diligent in ensuring they have the right leadership team to keep this culture of trust. Leaders must show that they naturally want to support and help people, and their role is to facilitate the career success of other employees, not their own. These leaders that help others get rewarded the most. To add to the trust, the company also gives employees freedom on the hours they work and when they use the campus services. SAS also makes sure that employees understand how they each make a difference (Crowley). This creates more fulfillment in the employees and inspires them to fully invest in their work.
The key thing to notice from SAS is that they value their employees. They demonstrate to each employee that their contribution is important to the company and the company shows that they value each employee. They show their employees that they value them by ensuring job security, offering perks, offering autonomy, and providing career planning and development opportunities. Selecting the right leadership is an important part of employee happiness because the company thrives to have a culture of trust and trusted leadership. Their leaders need to be authentic and work for the success of their employees. SAS is a great example of a company that employee happiness leads to a successful business.
"Best Companies to Work For 2013". Fortune. CNNMoney. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/2012/turnover/
Lane, A. "SAS on Fortune Best Companies to Work For list in US." SAS Press Release. January 2012. http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/2012fortuneranking.html
Crowley, Mark. "How SAS Became the World's Best Place to Work." Fast Company. January 2013. http://www.fastcompany.com/3004953/how-sas-became-worlds-best-place-work
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