HR Competencies Flashcards
Levels of Law
National, Sub-national, Extraterritorial
Nationl
laws enacted by the highest or federal legislative bodies of a country, intended to apply across the entire nation.
Subnational
Example: municipalities, states, provinces, or regions within a nation. In the U.S. national law supersedes state laws. Canada is opposite of the U.S.
Extraterritorial
Laws that extend the power of a country’s laws over its citizens outside that country’s sovereign national boundaries. This is important for HR professionals, affects assignee’s or employees traveling for work.
Regional/Superanational
Binding agreements amount nations of a region. Example: European Union. Regional or Supranational rules may supersede conflicting national laws among participants; this is referred to as primacy or supremacy.
International
Involves both the relationships between nations and the treatment of individuals within national boundaries. International laws generally apply in a country when that country has ratified a related treaty or agreement.
Civil Law
Legal system based on written codes approved by legislative bodies.
Common law
Legal system based on legal precedent-previous judicial decisions.
Religious Law
Legal system based on religious beliefs and conventions.
Rule of law
No individual is beyond the reach of the law; authority is exercised in accordance with written and publicly disclosed laws.
Due process
Laws are enforced only through accepted, codified procedures, thus avoiding arbitrary treatment and abuse of power
Jurisdiction
The right of a legal body to exert judicial authority over a region, subject matter, or individual.
Conflict of laws
A situation in which the laws of two or more jurisdictions differ and may exert a different result on a legal case depending on which system is deemed to have jurisdiction.
Forum or jurisdiction shopping
The Practice of taking complaints to jurisdictions sympathetic to the complainants’ case.
Business Acumen
KSAOs needed to understand the organization’s operations, functions and external environment, and to apply business tools and analyses that inform HR initiatives and operations consistent with the overall strategic direction of the organization.
Value
Refers to an organization’s success in meeting its strategic goals.
Value Chain
Represents the process by which an organization creates the product or service it offers to the customer. AKA business model.
Strategy
Plan of action for accomplishing an organization’s long-range goals to create value.
strategy must look inward, toward the strengths and vulnerabilities of the organization
The strategy must look outward, toward possible external influences, opportunities, and obstacles.
Strategic Planning
A process of setting goals and designing a path toward a competitive position.
Strategic Management
Actions that leaders takes to move their organizations toward those goals and create value for all stakeholders.
3 levels of strategy
Organizational, Business Unit, Operational
Organizational Strategy
Focuses on the future of the organization as a single unit- a general vision of the future it seeks and the long-term goals
Business Unit
Address questions of how and where the organization will focus to create value.
Operational Strategy
Reflects the way in which organizational and business unit strategies are translated into action at the functional level through functional strategies.
Measuring Strategic Performance
Measuring performance helps organizations determine whether strategic initiatives have been implemented as planned, the initiative is having the intended effect, Investment in the initiative is returning benefits to the organization.
Performance data is gathered and compared to performance objectives.
Effectiveness, Efficiency, impact
Effectiveness
Is the initiative accomplishing the objective? For example, has a new recruiting program resulted in an increase in candidates?
Efficiency
Is the initiative producing results that exceed the investment in it? Requires finding the most time-and cost-effective processes to achieve the objectives. Example - The new recruitment program must return sufficient economic benefits (through improved retention and productivity) to recoup the investment.
Impact
Is the initiative helping to move the organization toward its strategic goals? Is it making a difference?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Quantifiable measures of performance used to gauge progress toward strategic objectives or agreed standards of performance. Example - KPIs could be the number of manufacturing defects in each completed product or the number of supervisors trained in a quality improvement process.
Customer
Defines value in terms of their needs, which may include economy, convenience, reliability, or innovation.
Suppliers
Value economic stability, fair treatment, and control over their businesses.
Employees
Generally seeking economic stability, fair and transparent treatment, safe conditions, fulfilling work, and opportunities for development.
Life Cycle: Introduction
Revenue is low because there is little market awareness
Life Cycle: Growth
As time proceeds, revenue begins to increase. Rate of growth will vary by industry, enterprise, or product.
Life Cycle: Maturity
The market is saturated and growth occurs only through introduction of new products or customer groups.
Michael Porter’s 5 Forces
Bargaining power of suppliers, threat of substitution, threat of entry, bargaining power of buyers.
Threat of substitution
How easy is it for a competitor to capture customers by offering a similar product or a product that satisfies the same need but perhaps in a different way.
Threat of entry
How easy is it for a new competitor to enter the industry? How much capital investment is required? How much time does it generally take for a new entry to become a threat to market share?
Bargaining Power of Suppliers
How vulnerable are organizations in this industry to the actions of upstream supply chain partners? Are there few suppliers or many? What would happen if a supplier went out of business or was bought by a competitor?
Bargaining power of buyers
How vulnerable are organizations to actions by customers? Do consumers view products as valued brands or as commodities to be shopped for and purchased at the lowest price?
Rivalry among existing competitors
All of the other forces have the potential to increase the intensity of competition within the industry. A concentration of suppliers or buyers will trigger competition.
4 Commonly used budgeting methods
Zero-based, incremental, formula, activity-based
Zero-based
All objectives and operations are given priority ranking and funds are given in order. All expenditures must be justified for each new period, and budgets start at zero.
Incremental
AKA line-item budgeting and traditional. Prior budget is the basis for the next budget. Additional funds must be requested based on need and objectives.
Formula
Different units or operations receive varying percentages of the budget.
Activity-based
The basis for budgeting is not how much to divide a set amount of money, but how much it costs to perform different enterprise activities. Funding may be allocated based on the strategic significance of the activities.
Business case
A presentation to management that establishes that a specific problem exists and argues that the proposed solution is the best way to solve the problem in terms of time, cost efficiency and probability of success.
HR Business Case: Statement of need
This is the condition or change impelling the function’s action.
HR Business Case:Recommended Solution
The objectives of an ideal solution are defined, and the proposed action is described in sufficient detail to show how it meets these objectives.
Business Case: Risks and opportunities
Outcomes that could decrease the project’s chance for success, outcomes that could present new opportunities that would require action.
Business Case: Estimated Costs and time frame
Project budget should include all forseeable elements (labor, equipment, fees, travel, and so on) plus a reserve for the unforeseeable based on the project’s risk.
Create an effective business case by
Research your proposal carefully, gather facts, investigate alternatives, consider risks, Align your proposal with organizational strategy. get early buy-in from key decision makers and influencers. Explain the issue and needs by using facts not emotion
Business Intelligence
Process is greatly improved when an organization has a central database and a business intelligence application that allows analysts to retrieve timely, accurate, and complete data and transform that data into “actionable intelligence” that can be used to make organizational decisions.
Business Intelligence
Applications support analysis of historical performance, forecasts of future performance and needs, and simulations that show the effect of actions on defined variables. BI tools can be used to generate simple spreadsheets as well as dashboards that graphically present current data on prioritized metrics.
Balance Sheet
Indicator of the organization’s financial health.
Assets=
Liabilities + Equity
Assets
What an organization owns. They can be tangible (cash or cash equivalents, inventory of finished product of materials, property, and equipment.) or intangible (copyrights and patents, proprietary knowledge).
Accounts Receivable
the money an organization’s customers owe the organization. Doubtful accounts-probably long overdue and uncollectible-are deducted from AR.
Liabilities
What an organization owes. These are items such as rent, loans or notes, wages and benefits that have been earned but not paid.
