PSY 270 Module 8 Final Project Intervention Plan example

Keeping the Growers: An I/O Intervention Plan for Brightleaf Growers

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

PSY 270: Introduction to Industrial Organizational Psychology

Module Eight Final Project

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Keeping the Growers: An I/O Intervention Plan for Brightleaf Growers

Introduction

Brightleaf Growers, a composite indoor farm in Ohio with about 320 employees, asked for help with one problem: 38 percent of its 140 grow technicians left last year. The analyses completed over the past weeks, a job analysis, a review of hiring, appraisal and training, a motivation assessment, a survey of satisfaction and strain and an examination of night-shift leadership, show that the turnover has several connected causes. This plan proposes five interventions to address them together, with goals, a timeline and a way to know whether they work.

Organizational Culture

Brightleaf's culture explains why its problems are connected. The founders built the company quickly around a belief that energetic people who love fresh food would learn whatever they needed on the job. That belief shows in the job posting that asks for a passion for food, in two weeks of shadowing as the only training, in a single overall rating at appraisal and in supervisors who make decisions personally rather than through systems. Schein and Schein (2017) describe culture as the shared assumptions a group learned while solving its early problems, which then persist even when conditions change. The informal, founder-driven approach worked with twelve technicians on one farm. With 140 technicians, two farms and a night shift the founders rarely see, it produces hiring mismatches, inconsistent treatment and a group of workers who feel invisible. The culture that made Brightleaf grow is now the main reason its growers leave.

Goals

The plan has four goals for the next twelve months: reduce annual grow technician turnover from 38 percent to below 25 percent; reduce first-year turnover of new hires from 30 percent to below 20 percent; raise overall job satisfaction on the technician survey from 3.0 to at least 3.5, with the gap between day and night shifts closed to 0.2 or less; and reduce crop loss incidents per technician by a third.

Five Interventions

Table 1 summarizes the interventions, the problem each addresses, its evidence and its owner.

Table 1

Summary of Interventions

Note. Composite plan.

How the Interventions Work Together

The interventions follow the path an employee takes. Hiring changes bring in people suited to precise, monitoring-heavy work and show them the job honestly before they apply. The 90-day program trains them in what the job analysis showed matters most. Job redesign gives them a set of towers to follow from seed to harvest, the authority to adjust dosing within safe limits and weekly feedback on results, which addresses the weakest parts of the job's motivating potential. Night leads add the support that buffers night demands; the job demands-resources model predicts that added resources reduce strain and increase engagement (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). The appraisal uses the same six dimensions as training, so feedback and development connect. The career ladder, technician, senior technician, lead technician, gives technicians a visible future, answering the lowest-rated facet in the survey. Each intervention would help alone, but together they change the assumption at the heart of the culture: that people will simply figure it out.

Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

Two groups have a different experience of Brightleaf from the rest. Night technicians, half the workforce, have less supervision, less recognition and less contact with decision makers. About a quarter of technicians speak Spanish as their first language, but training materials, safety procedures and the survey were offered only in English. The plan builds inclusion into each intervention: bilingual training materials, safety signage and survey; structured interview questions reviewed for language that disadvantages non-native speakers; night representation on a technician advisory group that meets with the founders quarterly; and recognition that rotates across shifts. Nishii (2013) found that a climate for inclusion, marked by fair employment practices, openness to differences and inclusion in decision making, reduced conflict in diverse work groups and was associated with lower turnover, which is the outcome Brightleaf needs.

Timeline

Months 1 to 2: hire and train night leads; launch bilingual materials; film the job preview. Months 2 to 3: pilot the new hiring process and the 90-day program at Farm 1; train supervisors in frame-of-reference rating. Months 3 to 6: introduce tower ownership and the yield dashboard; publish the career ladder. Month 6: repeat the technician survey and review pilot results. Months 7 to 12: extend successful elements to Farm 2 and complete the first anchored appraisal cycle.

Evaluation

Each goal has a measure already in place from the baseline analyses: turnover and first-year turnover from HR records, satisfaction and strain from the survey, crop losses from incident logs and absence by shift. Because the hiring and training changes start at one farm, the other serves as a comparison for six months, allowing a stronger conclusion about their effect than a simple before-and-after comparison. Results will be reported to the founders at months 6 and 12, with a recommendation to continue, adjust or stop each intervention.

Ethical Considerations

Survey data will remain confidential and reported only for groups of at least five people. Technicians will be told how appraisal ratings are used before the first cycle. Night leads will be selected through the same structured process as other roles, not by supervisor preference. Any adverse impact found in hiring will be reviewed and corrected. The plan also requires honesty with the founders: some findings, such as the effect of their informal decision making, are uncomfortable, and they are reported plainly.

Closing Argument

Brightleaf's founders built a company that feeds its community, and technicians told us they value that purpose. What they lack is the structure a growing company needs: hiring that finds the right people, training that prepares them, work designed to engage them, leaders who are present and a future they can see. None of the five interventions is expensive compared with replacing more than fifty technicians a year. Together they would let Brightleaf keep the people who grow its crops, which is the only way its growth can last.

References

Allen, D. G., Bryant, P. C., & Vardaman, J. M. (2010). Retaining talent: Replacing misconceptions with evidence-based strategies. Academy of Management Perspectives, 24(2), 48-64. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2010.51827775

Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The job demands-resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309-328. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940710733115

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7

Nishii, L. H. (2013). The benefits of climate for inclusion for gender-diverse groups. Academy of Management Journal, 56(6), 1754-1774. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2009.0823

Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(11), 2040-2068. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994

Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Wiley.