2: Strategy & HR Planning

Question 1

Define:

Attrition (67)

Answer 1

• “natural” departure of employees through quits, retirements and deaths
• can easily estimate how many people will leave

Question 2

Define:

Balanced scorecard/BSC (69)

Answer 2

• model has 4 cells
• financial
• customer
• processes
• learning

Question 3

Define:

Benchmarking (68)

Answer 3

• process of comparing the organization’s processes and practices to those of other companies
• uncover gaps in performance differences by collecting information on own team and those of other firms
• 2 basic categories of metrics:
• human capital metrics
• hr metrics

Question 4

Define:

Core capabilities (47)

Answer 4

• integrated knowledge sets within an organization that distinguish it from its competitors and deliver value to customers
• people are a key resource; resources must be:
• valuable
• rare
• difficult to imitate
• organized

Question 5

Define:

Core values (42)

Answer 5

• strong and enduring beliefs and principles that a company uses as a foundation for its decisions
• captures the underlying parameters for how the company will act towards customers, employees and the public in general

Question 6

Define:

Cultural audits (51)

Answer 6

• audits of the culture and quality of work life in an organization
• can consist of surveys and interviews to measure how employees feel on a number of critical issues
• can be used to determine if there are different groups within the organization that have different views about the nature of work
• leaders who target employees’ values, attitudes, beliefs and expectations are more effective than those who simply focus on worker’s behaviours or thought processes

Question 7

Define:

Environmental scanning (43)

Answer 7

• systematic monitoring of the major external forces influencing the organization
• 6 external issues
• economic factors and development information
• industry and competitive trends
• technological changes
• government and legislative issues
• social concerns
• demographic and labour market trends

Question 8

Define:

Hiring freeze (67)

Answer 8

• new workers are not hired as planned or workers who have left the organization have not been replaced

Question 9

Define:

Human capital readiness (59)

Answer 9

• process of evaluating availability of critical talent in a company and comparing it to the firm’s supply
• gaps need to be closed; begins with managers identifying core capabilities and the key people and processes that are critical to those capabilities

Question 10

Define:

Human resources planning/HRP (40)

Answer 10

• the process of anticipating and providing for the movement of people into, within, and out of organization

Question 11

Define:

Management forecasts (55)

Answer 11

• the opinions of supervisors, department managers, experts or others knowledgeable about the organization’s future employment needs

Question 12

Define:

Markov analysis (56)

Answer 12

• method of tracking pattern of employee movements through various jobs
• develops transition matrix for forecasting labour supply

Question 13

Define:

Mission (41)

Answer 13

• basic purpose of the organization as well as scope of operations

Question 14

Define:

Organizational capability (71)

Answer 14

• capacity of the organization to act and change in pursuit of sustainable competitive advantage

Question 15

Define:

Quality of fill (56)

Answer 15

• metric designed to assess how well new hires are performing on the job
• company needs to have enough top performers to propel it toward its strategic objectives

Question 16

Define:

Replacement charts (57)

Answer 16

• listings of current jobholders and people who are potential replacements if an opening occurs

Question 17

Define:

Severance pay (67)

Answer 17

• lump sum payment given to terminated employees; calculated by years of service and salary

Question 18

Define:

Skill inventories (56)

Answer 18

• files of personnel education, experience, interests and skills that allow managers to quickly match job openings with employee backgrounds
• confidentiality is key
• info gathered on managers are called management inventories

Question 19

Define:
Staffing tables (56)

Answer 19

• graphic representations of all organizational jobs, along with the numbers of employees currently occupying those jobs and future (monthly or yearly) employment requirements

Question 20

Define:

Strategic human resources management/SHRM (40)

Answer 20

• pattern of human resources deployments and activities that enable an organization to achieve its strategic goals

Question 21

Define:

Strategic planning (40)

Answer 21

• procedures for making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies

Question 22

Define:

Strategic vision (41)

Answer 22

• statement about where the company is going and what it can become in the future; clarifies the long-term direction of the company and its strategic intent

Question 23

Define:

Succession planning (57)

Answer 23

• process of identifying, developing, and tracking key individuals for executive positions

Question 24

Define:

SWOT analysis (60)

Answer 24

• comparison of (s)trengths, (w)eaknesses, (o)pportunities and (t)hreats for strategy formulation purposes

Question 25

Define:

Termination (67)

Answer 25

• practice initiated by an employer to separate an employee from the organization permanently

Question 26

Define:

Trend analysis (53)

Answer 26

• quantitative approach to forecasting labour demand based on an organizational index such as sales

Question 27

Define:

Value creation (62)

Answer 27

• what a firm adds to a product or service by virtue of making it; the amounts of benefits provided by the product or service once the costs of making it are subtracted

Question 28

Define:

Values-based hiring (52)

Answer 28

• process of outlining the behaviours that exemplify a firm’s corporate culture and then hiring people who are a fit for them