IOP 490 Week 5 Final Capstone Project and Reflection Example

Presenting the Ninety-Day Landing: Final Capstone Report and Program Reflection

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

IOP/490: Capstone Project

Week 5 Final Project

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

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

Four weeks of capstone work end here, in one document for the leaders of a Phoenix utility's phone center where new agents keep walking out within months. The report moves from the problem through the research, the local findings and the pilot, and its last sections look back at how the program changed the way its author thinks.

Executive Summary

Of 210 agents hired last year, 101 left voluntarily within twelve months, and 48 of them left in the four weeks after moving from classroom training to live calls. Each early departure costs about $9,000, or roughly $900,000 a year. Interviews and exit comments show that new agents meet a sudden jump in difficult calls just as they lose access to classmates, their lead and help on the floor, while being coached on speed. The recommended Ninety-Day Landing pilot spreads difficult calls over five weeks, seats each newcomer beside a peer guide, keeps new agents on day shifts with their team and delays handle time targets until week thirteen. It costs about $46,000 a year. A staggered launch across monthly hiring classes will show within six months whether ninety-day retention rises from 67 percent toward the 80 percent goal.

The Problem and Why It Matters

Early turnover strains everyone on the floor. Experienced agents absorb extra calls, trainers repeat classes, leads spend hours hiring and customers wait longer during the summer outage season, when calls are most urgent. Because most agents who pass six months stay for years, the first months are where the center gains or loses its future workforce.

What the Research Says

The literature review found that newcomers stay when they understand their role, feel capable and feel accepted, that candid previews help mainly by signaling honesty and that call centers granting agents more discretion and support see fewer quits. It also cautioned that effects of single programs are modest and vary by setting, so local evidence matters.

What the Center's Data Showed

Week 3 found that exits pile up in the month after the classroom ends, and it surfaced four themes in interviews and exit comments and wide differences in quit rates across teams, confounded by shift. The pattern fits a view of turnover in which a jarring event triggers leaving, and a view of strain in which demands outrun resources.

The Recommendation and Its Evaluation

The pilot's four components each answer a finding: graduated call types for the shock of the first live week, peer guides for nobody to ask, protected schedules for losing classmates and the lead and delayed handle time coaching for early pressure. Pulse surveys will track role clarity, confidence and belonging, and retention will be compared across staggered classes and with the prior year.

What Success Will Look Like at Six Months

Leaders asked for a plain picture of success. At six months, the plan succeeds if ninety-day retention in the landing classes is at least ten points above the same months last year and above the delayed classes, if pulse scores on role clarity and belonging rise between weeks four and ten and if process checks show that at least nine in ten newcomers actually sat beside a guide. If retention does not move but process checks show the plan was delivered, the center learns that the causes lie elsewhere, perhaps in pay or commute times, and the sensible follow-up is to study those factors instead of building a larger version of the same plan.

How Leaders Responded

The briefing went well, with two changes. The center director approved the pilot but halved the peer guide stipend, asking Tanisha to show results before restoring it. The union steward asked that experienced agents be able to volunteer for extra evening shifts before being assigned, which workforce planning accepted. The HR director asked for a three-month update. Tanisha adjusted the budget and timeline and noted that a smaller stipend may reduce the number of guides who volunteer, which the process checks will reveal.

The pilot was approved in twenty minutes; the reasons behind it took four weeks to earn.

Reflection: Evidence Over First Impressions

When the capstone began, Tanisha believed the center hired the wrong people. The data changed her mind: most new agents knew the job would be hard and many performed well before leaving. The lesson she takes from the program is to define and measure before explaining.

Rynes et al. (2002) surveyed HR professionals and found wide gaps between their beliefs and research findings on topics such as selection and the role of intelligence and personality in performance. Tanisha recognized herself in that study: before the program, she would have recommended a new personality screen. Rynes et al. (2007) also found that the practitioner periodicals HR professionals read rarely report the findings of academic research, so that research and practice develop in separate worlds. Part of her role, she concludes, is to carry findings across that divide in plain language.

Reflection: Competencies Developed

The program built skills she used each week. Courses on research methods helped her plot departures by tenure and avoid claiming a cause from the team comparison. Courses on assessment and measurement shaped her pulse survey items. Courses on organizational development and change prepared her to involve the union steward early. Cascio and Aguinis (2008) reviewed decades of articles in two leading I-O journals and found that research attention had drifted toward some topics while practitioners' pressing concerns, such as retention and workforce issues, received less coverage than their importance warranted. That gap gave her capstone a clear purpose: apply rigorous methods to a problem that matters on the floor.

Reflection: What She Would Do Differently

Skilled professionals adjust their approach while surprises unfold and then think back over the work once it is finished (Schön, 1983). Looking back, Tanisha would recruit more former agents for interviews, perhaps with a small gift card, since six voices may not represent the 101 who left. She would have asked HR earlier for shift data so the team comparison could control for it. And she would have shared preliminary findings with new agents themselves, who might have suggested remedies she missed.

Next Steps

The first landing class begins next month. Tanisha will report pulse survey and ninety-day results in the three-month update and, if retention improves, request that the full stipend be restored and the plan extended to the center's second site.

Conclusion

The capstone turned a vague concern about morale into a measured problem, a focused review, a careful analysis and an approved pilot with a credible evaluation. It also showed Tanisha how I-O psychology can serve both workers and organizations when evidence, local data and the voices of those affected guide decisions.

References

Cascio, W. F., & Aguinis, H. (2008). Research in industrial and organizational psychology from 1963 to 2007: Changes, choices, and trends. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(5), 1062-1081. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.5.1062

Rynes, S. L., Colbert, A. E., & Brown, K. G. (2002). HR professionals' beliefs about effective human resource practices: Correspondence between research and practice. Human Resource Management, 41(2), 149-174. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.10029

Rynes, S. L., Giluk, T. L., & Brown, K. G. (2007). The very separate worlds of academic and practitioner periodicals in human resource management: Implications for evidence-based management. Academy of Management Journal, 50(5), 987-1008. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.27151939

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.