Data collection techniques
Data collection has the significant role to play across the research methodology irrespective of the type of research chosen or nature of research chosen and it can be considered as the important step in the research methodology. In general the data collected for the research can be either of two types like primary sources or secondary sources or both. Primary source of information is gathered from the direct sources related to the research problem and the secondary source of information deals with the indirect sources of information that is helpful in evaluating the research. The actual primary source of information and secondary source of information used in this research as given as below
Primary source of information
Primary source of information can be considered as the direct source of information and in general it is gathered in different varieties as discussed in the previous section. The level of accuracy is more with the primary source of information as the data is gathered from the source or related source of the problem and thus the chances to gain the unnecessary data is very less.
When the primary source of data is gathered from different sources it is analyzed and reviewed to check the accuracy of the findings derived from the primary data and thus it can be considered as the key aspect across the total research. The most common tools used to gather the primary source of data include questionnaires and interviews and with this implementation the data is gathered from the respondents who all are involved in the research. The required primary source of information is gathered from semi structured interview process and the key respondents involved in this research are provided in the research sample size section of this chapter.
All the respondents are interviewed using some questionnaires and the questions are prepared in a manner that the key information related to the RBS HR outsourcing strategies is gathered from the interview process. Based on the behavior and nature of the respondents who all are involved in the research, the primary data is gathered and analyzed further to evaluate the research against HR outsourcing and this primary source of information is compared with the secondary source of information to evaluate the accuracy of the research done.
Secondary source of information
Secondary source of information also plays an important role in estimating the quality and accuracy of the research done. In general this secondary source of data is gathered from different sources like internet, articles, journals and books and the information is reviewed against the key findings from the primary source of information. Few websites and articles are used as the secondary source of information in this project and these articles are related to the HR outsourcing and the strategies followed by RBS and they are listed in appendix section. The information reviewed form these articles is compared against the primary source of information to evaluate the quality and accuracy of the research done.
Research Sample size
Research sample size is the actual size of the respondents involved in the research and in general the sample size can be chosen in three different manners like probability sampling, random sampling and non probability sampling. In this project a non-zero probability sampling is adopted such that each and every respondent involved in the research will get an equal opportunity to involve in the research. As mentioned semi structured interviews are used in gathering the primary source of data the key respondents involved in this research are two HR managers, one business development manager and 10 employees. HR managers are interviewed with the core aim to understand the key HR activities being outsourced and the level of benefits they see with this practice. Business development manager is interviewed to gather the information related to cost benefits and Return on Investment aspects while outsourcing the HR. Employees are interviewed to understand their opinion on the HR outsourcing aspects implemented by the bank and gain the knowledge related to their performance and welfare with respect to the HR outsourcing practices implemented by the RBS.
Validity of the research
Any research in general should be valid and the validity of the research should be checked before making some interpretations. In this research the validity of the research is done by comparing the key findings from the interview process with the respondents involved against the review done in the literature survey section. All the research questions identified in the introduction chapter are answered against the findings and the analysis derived is compared with the author’s opinion as given in the literature review chapter.
Findings
Findings from the interview process are included in this chapter and all the responses and views of the respondents involved in the interview are collected and given a structure in this chapter. The key respondents involved in this research are HR managers, business development managers and employees. Human resource managers are interviewed to gather the key information related to the HR activities being outsourced and their benefits in outsourcing, business development managers are interviewed in the perspective to understand the business value of the bank against the HR outsourcing and the employees are interviewed to gather their opinion towards HR outsourcing pros and corns against their performance. All the corresponding findings are listed in to different sections and a set of questions are discussed and presented as below