The CEO has expressed some reservation about the existing tuition reimbursement program, which is quite expensive. The program provides full reimbursement for courses taken at any accredited institution of higher education. She asks you to provide some feedback on the program's successes.
Every year, you distribute an employee survey to get feedback on employees' satisfaction with their jobs. You happen to know that the CEO is extremely interested in employee satisfaction. She has long made it a priority to do everything she can (within reason) to ensure that employees are happy at work. Since you have data on employee satisfaction and employees' use of the tuition benefit, you think perhaps some analysis could be useful.
Assume for this question that employees' responses on the survey accurately represent their true level of satisfaction.Through some basic statistical analysis, you learn that employees who use the tuition benefit program (that is, they attend an institution of higher education and request reimbursement) report much higher levels of job satisfaction than those who do not use the tuition benefit program.
When you present the CEO with this information, she says "Let me ruminate on this for a while." A week later, she replies: "Based on the information you've given me, we need to keep the tuition reimbursement program. I place a very high value on happy employees and I believe that the value of the increased employee satisfaction for those who use the tuition reimbursement program is well worth the cost of the program."
a) Provide a brief critique of the CEO's use of your analysis to arrive at her decision to keep the tuition reimbursement program. Assume that she has no additional information on the relationship between employee happiness and participation in the tuition reimbursement program.
b) Describe how additional data collection and analysis might improve the CEO's decision-making process regarding this particular issue.