Ch 1

Question 1

Human Resource Management

Answer 1

the process of managing human talent to achieve an organization’s objectives

Question 2

Human Capital

Answer 2

the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of individuals that have economic value to an organizations

• intangible and can’t be managed the way organizations manage tangible things → if employees leave, they take their human capital with them

Question 3

Corporate Social Responsibility

Answer 3

the responsibility of the firm to act in the best interests of the people and communities affected by its activities

• companies learned that being socially responsible can help them avoid lawsuits, improve earnings, and attract new talent

Question 4

Sustainability

Answer 4

doing business in a way that does as little harm to the environment and depletes as few natural resources as possible

Question 5

Knowledge Workers

Answer 5

workers whose responsibilities extend beyond the physical execution of work to include planning, decision making, and problem solving

• advanced tech reduced jobs that require little skill and increase jobs that require considerable skill

Question 6

Human Resources Information System

Answer 6

a computerized system that provides current and accurate data for purposes of control and decision making

• lowers admin costs, increases productivity, speeding up responses times, improving decision making, and tracking a company’s talent

Question 7

Workforce (HR) analytics

Answer 7

The process of gathering and analyzing data to improve a firm’s human resources management

• employment history, skills, education, demographics, hours worked, compensation, performance, training, and disciplinary actions can be collected with “bigger data” (email content, social network communication)

Question 8

Downsizing

Answer 8

the permanent reduction of a company’s labor force by removing unproductive workers or divisions

Question 9

Hidden Costs from downsizing

Answer 9

• severance and rehiring costs
• accrued vacation and sick-day payouts
• pension and benefit payoffs
• potential lawsuits from aggrieved workers

Question 10

companies that avoid downsizing get some benefits:

Answer 10

• a fiercely loyal, more productive workforce
• higher customer satisfaction
• readiness to snap back with the economy
• a recruiting edge

Question 11

Furloughing

Answer 11

A situation in which an organization asks or requires employees to take time off for either no pay or reduced pay

Question 12

An example of furloughing

Answer 12

flexleave - Employees received 20 percent of their salaries and continued benefits for 6 to 12 months, and their stock options remained in place. The workers could take other jobs during their sabbaticals, as long as they did not work for a competitor

Question 13

Drawbacks of furloughing

Answer 13

• Costs are not cut as significantly as they would be with downsizing because employees generally retain their benefits
• Employees who are not furloughed often end up with more work and feel resentful
• product and service quality, as well as innovation, suffer as a result of the higher workloads
• can hurt a company’s recruiting efforts

Question 14

Outsourcing

Answer 14

hiring a party outside a company to perform services or create goods that were traditionally performed in-house by the company’s own employees and staff

Question 15

Offshoring

Answer 15

The business practice of sending jobs to other countries
- Cost reduction is among the key motivators for these decisions

Question 16

Nearshoring

Answer 16

The process of moving jobs closer to one’s home country

• rising labour costs in China are now making it attractive for North American firms to offshore work to Mexico and Central America

Question 17

Homeshoring

Answer 17

The process of moving jobs to work-from home domestic independent contractors

• When a company homeshores call centre jobs, it outsources the work to domestic independent contractors who work out of their homes

Question 18

Employee Leasing

Answer 18

The process of dismissing employees who are then hired by a leasing company (which handles all HR-related activities) and contracting with that company to lease back the employees
- alternative to downsizing, outsourcing, offshoring, and furloughing

Question 19

Explain how Employee Leasing works

Answer 19

• PEO takes over the management of a smaller company’s HR tasks and becomes a coemployer to its employee
  
  • PEO performs all the HR duties of an employer
  • can coemploy a large number of people working at many different companies, they can provide employees with benefits that small companies cannot afford, such as vision care plans
  • many PEOs offer their employees flextime, job sharing, part-time employment, consulting arrangements, seasonal work, and on-call

Question 20

Line managers

Answer 20

non-hr managers who are responsible for overseeing the work of other employees