IOP 490 Week 1 Capstone Introduction and Problem Selection Example

Half the New Agents Leave Within a Year: Choosing and Framing an I-O Capstone Problem

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

IOP/490: Capstone Project

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The student, call center and figures are composites written for a model paper; research findings come from the sources listed.

The capstone brings together what students have learned across the I-O psychology program and applies it to a real organizational problem. Choosing the right problem, and defining it well, shapes everything that follows. This paper describes how one student selected and framed her capstone.

The Student and the Setting

Tanisha Brooks is thirty-four and has worked for six years at the customer care center of an electric utility in Phoenix, Arizona, where about three hundred agents answer calls about bills, outages, payment plans and new service. She now leads a team of fourteen agents. She enrolled in the I-O psychology program to move into a training or HR role, and her manager has agreed to sponsor her capstone if it addresses a real need.

From a Frustration to a Problem

Tanisha's first idea was to "improve morale." Her capstone instructor pointed out that morale is vague and hard to change in a few weeks. She looked for something specific and measurable. With HR's permission and with names removed, she reviewed last year's hiring and separation records. Of 210 agents hired, 101, forty-eight percent, left within twelve months, and seventy of those left within the first ninety days, most voluntarily. Agents who stayed past six months usually stayed for years.

She also asked the finance office to estimate costs. Recruiting, eight weeks of paid classroom training and lost productivity during ramp-up came to roughly nine thousand dollars per departure, about nine hundred thousand dollars a year. Customers also felt the effect: centers with high turnover had longer hold times and more repeat calls.

Her problem statement: Early voluntary turnover among newly hired customer care agents, particularly within the first ninety days, is high and costly.

Why the Problem Fits I-O Psychology

Hom et al. (2017) reviewed a century of research on employee turnover, tracing its development from early studies of job satisfaction and labor market conditions through models emphasizing commitment, alternative jobs and the decision to quit, to newer ideas about why people stay, shocks that trigger leaving and the costs and consequences of turnover for organizations. They noted that turnover is one of the most studied outcomes in I-O psychology and that research has identified many predictors and interventions.

For Tanisha, the review confirms that the problem connects to well-developed knowledge, from realistic job previews and onboarding to job design and supervisor support, which later weeks will explore.

What the Records Do Not Yet Show

The HR data answer how many agents leave and when, but not why. Separation codes mark most departures as "personal reasons" or "another job," labels that hide whether people left because of the work, the schedule, the pay, a supervisor or a mismatch between what they were told and what they found. Exit surveys exist, yet only about a third of departing agents complete them, and those who walk off without notice almost never do. Tanisha notes these gaps now so that the analysis week can fill them with interviews and a closer look at timing, rather than guessing at causes from codes that were never designed to explain anything.

Narrowing Further

Tanisha considered including experienced agents who quit after several years, but their reasons, such as promotion elsewhere or retirement, differ from those of newcomers and would dilute the project. She also set aside involuntary terminations, which reflect attendance and performance policies rather than choices to leave. Focusing on voluntary exits in the first year, with special attention to the first ninety days, keeps the capstone narrow enough to finish and makes any later change easier to evaluate, since the center hires a new class of about twenty agents every month.

Stakeholders

The problem affects many groups. New agents struggle and leave; experienced agents absorb extra calls and repeatedly train newcomers; team leads like Tanisha spend time on hiring and coaching; trainers repeat classes; customers face longer waits; and the utility pays the costs. Each group's perspective matters for understanding causes and judging solutions.

A Standard for Evidence

Rousseau (2006) observed that managers tend to decide by habit, by copying other firms and by personal experience, and urged a practice in which choices rest on the strongest scientific findings, turned into principles that working managers can apply. Briner et al. (2009) refined the idea, describing evidence-based management as a family of practices that combine four sources: practitioner expertise and judgment, evidence from the local context, critical evaluation of the best available research and the perspectives of those affected by the decision.

Tanisha adopts this standard. She will not simply copy what another call center did. She will gather research, analyze her center's data, interview new and departing agents and draw on her own and colleagues' experience before recommending action.

Ninety days is the window: most agents who survive it stay for years, and most who leave are gone before it closes.

Alternatives She Rejected

Two other problems were on her list. Schedule adherence, the share of time agents are logged in when the workforce plan expects them, was below target, but the operations team already had a project on it. Customer satisfaction scores had dipped during the summer outage season, yet those dips track the weather and the volume of outage calls more than anything a capstone could change. Early turnover was the problem with the clearest data, the largest cost and no one else working on it, which made it the best fit for a five-week project with a willing sponsor.

Ethics and Access

Tanisha's sponsor approved access to deidentified HR data. Interviews with agents will be voluntary and confidential, and she will not interview members of her own team to avoid pressure. She will share results with participants in summary form.

The Capstone Plan

Week two will review research on causes of early turnover and evidence on interventions. Week three will analyze the center's data and interviews using I-O frameworks. Week four will design an intervention and an evaluation plan. Week five will present the final project to the center's leadership and reflect on the program.

Conclusion

By moving from a vague concern about morale to a specific, measurable problem, early voluntary turnover among new agents, Tanisha has a capstone topic that matters to her organization, connects to a deep body of I-O research and fits the course timeline. A commitment to evidence-based management sets the standard for the weeks ahead.

References

Briner, R. B., Denyer, D., & Rousseau, D. M. (2009). Evidence-based management: Concept cleanup time? Academy of Management Perspectives, 23(4), 19-32. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.23.4.19

Hom, P. W., Lee, T. W., Shaw, J. D., & Hausknecht, J. P. (2017). One hundred years of employee turnover theory and research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(3), 530-545. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000103

Rousseau, D. M. (2006). Is there such a thing as "evidence-based management"? Academy of Management Review, 31(2), 256-269. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2006.20208679