7. HRM & Diversity Issues

Question 1

What is HRM?

Answer 1

Human Resource Management: a managerial perspective which argues the need to establish an integrated series of personnel policies to support organisation’s strategy;

the strategic and coherent approach to management of an organisation’s most valued assets – the people working there.

Question 2

List some issues with HRM

Answer 2

1. High cost of turnover
2. Employee commitment and motivation are not ‘granted’
3. Treatment of internal customers is directly reflected on treatment of external customers

Question 3

What is the annual cost of turnover?

Answer 3

(Hiring + Onboarding + Development + Unfilled Time) * (Number Employees * Annual Turnover percentage)

Question 4

List some of the key functions of HRM

Answer 4

• Hiring based on attitudes and person-culture fit
• Training and Development oriented toward both skill and culture (socialisation)
• Performance evaluations and rewards based on quality
• Compensation, pensions, bonuses etc. (to gain ‘buy in’ to the organisation
• Confidential advice to internal customers wrt problems at work
• Recognition: team and individual celebrations
• Legal issues: overtime, discrimination etc.
• Layoffs

Question 5

What is the point of HRM?

Answer 5

Gain employee commitment and create desired organisational culture

Question 6

Outline the best process for conducting interviews

Answer 6

1. Develop accurate job description and use as basis for interview questions
2. Outline topics to be covered –> equal coverage in all interviews
3. Take notes during interview –> recall
4. Have different interviewers speak with applicants separately then meet to discuss
5. Mention good qualities of organisation
6. Guard against common interviewer biases

Question 7

What are two key biases effecting impression formation?

Answer 7

• Fundamental attribution error
• Attraction-similarity bias

Also avoid stereotyping/subtle bias.

Question 8

Explain the ‘implicit personality theories’/implicit bias

Answer 8

Making judgments on someone’s personality from ‘gut reaction’, e.g. taller CEOs becoming higher earners.

Refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.

Question 9

Explain the ‘halo effect’

Answer 9

Initial information changes meaning of subsequent information, highlighting power of first impressions

Question 10

What are ‘group serving biases’?

Answer 10

Judging people differently depending on whether they are from the in-group or out-group. For ‘in-group’, positive behaviours seen as general dispositions and negative as explained by context.
For ‘out-group’, positive behaviours seen as exception, while negative seen as disposition.

Question 11

What is the self-fulfilling prophecy?

Answer 11

our actions towards others –> other people’s beliefs about us –> others’ actions towards us –> our beliefs towards ourselves –> our actions towards others etc.

Similar is the Pygmalian effect, whereby higher expectations lead to better performance.

Question 12

What is performance appraisal?

Answer 12

A method by which the job performance of an employee is evaluated (generally in terms of quality, quantity, cost and time).

Question 13

What does performance appraisal involve?

Answer 13

• Give feedback on performance to employees.
• Identify employee training needs.
• Document criteria used to allocate organizsational rewards.
• Form a basis for personnel decisions: salary increases, promotions, disciplinary actions, etc.
• Facilitate communication between employee and administrator.

Question 14

Outline how to give effective performance feedback

Answer 14

• Base feedback on objective information if possible, such as weekly reports, monthly revenue, customer complaints, etc.
• Describe actions, not personalities.
• Be factual. Don’t ever tell someone, “You are…”
• Describe the effects of the action. For e.g. if you do {action} it leads to {describe the negative consequences}
• If you gain agreement that the effects are unwelcome, begin joint problem solving. For e.g., “how can we prevent…”
• If you do not gain agreement that the action occurred, wait for its next appearance. Do not try to persuade.

Question 15

Name some biases that occur in performance review

Answer 15

• Halo Effect
• Confirmation Bias (often in conjunction with the above)
• Availability heuristic/ Ease of recall bias
• Over-weight negative information
• Lack of sufficient observation
• Justification for salary

Question 16

Explain the impact of the Halo effect and confirmation bias in performance evaluations

Answer 16

How the confirmation bias perpetuates the halo effect (First impressions):

• Success: A high-status performer’s display of competence confirms ability; a low-status performer’s display of competence is an exception
• Failure: attribution of incompetence more strongly for the low-status performer than for the high-status performer (The latter’s mistake is now an exception).

Also consider: Stigma-of-incompetence for people hiring due to affirmation policies (quotas). Others tend to be skeptical and require higher performance for demonstrating competence.

Question 17

Give an example of subtle prejudice in HRM

Answer 17

Fictitious “white” résumés received 50% more callbacks for interviews. Having a white name yielded as many more callbacks as having an extra eight years of experience on an African-American résumé

Question 18

When are HRM decisions discriminatory?

Answer 18

When they use considerations about the group rather than information about the person.

Question 19

What are some of the outcomes of stereotypes?

Answer 19

• Favouring self-interest, e.g. the weakest link
• Information-based discrimination: one person believes that the other person has poor skills, and acts accordingly.
• Unfair job offers

Question 20

From where do stereotypes originate?

Answer 20

• Illusory Correlations And Vivid Recall

- Illusion of causality

Question 21

What is the illusion of causality?

Answer 21

Perceiving a causal relationship between two events that are actually unrelated. e.g. black people and crime, when the causal relationship is actually between poverty and crime

Question 22

Why do biases persist over time?

Answer 22

1. Confirmation trap: tendency to seek confirmation in the environment for prior beliefs and to dismiss information that is not consistent with those beliefs.
2. Self-fulfilling prophecy: our behaviour, even if subtle, influences others‘ behaviour. E.g. Expectation that certain people will be unfriendly changes how we approach those people.