Human Resources

Question 1

What are two important aspects of HR planning?

Answer 1

1. Performing job analyses

2. Forecasting the company’s people needs

Question 2

Define job analysis

Answer 2

The process that identifies and determines the job duties and requirements and the importance of each in the organization

Question 3

Define job description

Answer 3

The tasks and responsibilities of a job

Question 4

Define job specification

Answer 4

A list of the skills, knowledge, and abilities a person must have to fill a job

Question 5

What is the process of human resource management? (seven steps)

Answer 5

1. Job analysis and design
2. Human resource planning and forecasting
3. Employee recruitment
4. Employee selection
5. Training and development
6. Performance planning and evaluation
7. Compensation and benefits

Question 6

What happens if you do the human resource management process well?

Answer 6

You will have a high retention of employees because they will understand their job well and enjoy working for you, which also means that you will have a low turnover rate

Question 7

What does it mean for your financials if you have a high turnover rate?

Answer 7

The human resource management process is very expensive, so if you don’t select the right people for the job and you have to start the process all over again (sometimes frequently), it can be time consuming and expensive

Question 8

What are the two common types of interview questions?

Answer 8

1. Situational

2. Behavioural/Behaviour Description Interview (BDI)

Question 9

What is the question type of situational interview questions?

Answer 9

Hypothetical questions, based on actual critical incidents from the job. Employers can make it similar to what happens in their workplace, but it is a hypothetical situation for you

Question 10

What is the general question form with situational interview questions?

Answer 10

What would do you do if…

Question 11

What is the key assumption with situational interview questions?

Answer 11

That your intentions will predict your actual behaviour (what people intend to do is pretty similar to what they would actually do)

Question 12

What is the question type of behavioural interview questions?

Answer 12

Asks about past experiences the candidate has had, based on actual performance (based on facts and on past behaviour)

Question 13

What is the general question form with behavioural interview questions?

Answer 13

What did you do when…

Question 14

What is the key assumption with behavioural interview questions?

Answer 14

The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour (future behaviour is most likely to mimic past behaviour). This can be difficult if you are interviewing someone who has never been in a similar role before

Question 15

What is the key in asking interview questions? Explain

Answer 15

The key is ensuring validity. If it is a valid question, it is actually predicting success on the job

Question 16

How do you tell if a question is valid?

Answer 16

If two different candidates answer very differently and one succeeds and the other doesn’t, it’s a valid question. If they answer very differently and they both succeed/they both don’t succeed, it was not a good indicator of success

Question 17

What is the point of human resource management laws?

Answer 17

Prohibit discrimination, encourage diversity

Question 18

Describe how the Employment Equity Act applies to big businesses and small businesses

Answer 18

The Employment Equity Act is only mandated for government organizations, crown corporations, and large companies who are doing multimillion dollar projects with the government. Therefore, many small ventures or even medium sized businesses don’t technically have to abide by these laws

Question 19

Explain why it’s a good idea for small businesses to follow the Employment Equity Act, even if they don’t technically have to

Answer 19

If you can establish yourself as an employer that doesn’t discriminate, you will attract more diverse employees. Diversity leads to diverse thought, creative thinking, and better productivity

Question 20

What are the 3 new management concepts in organizational structure?

Answer 20

1. Write the Org Chart in Pencil
2. Fire the Managers
3. Put Customers Second

Question 21

Describe why you should write the org chart in pencil

Answer 21

Work today is a much more dynamic environment, and is focused around projects instead of products. It is a lot more interconnection

Question 22

Give an example of a company that writes their org chart in pencil

Answer 22

Ed McCallum is a consulting company with no consultants on permanent staff. Instead, they have a network of consultants that they know are good. They bring together the right people for each project, based on the specific skills needed for each project

Question 23

Describe why you should fire the managers

Answer 23

Businesses should reduce the numbers of managers, or at least push down a lot of the decision making to the employees. Autonomy is powerful and motivation; when people have more control over their work and how their work is scheduled, they are more motivated and committed to their job

Question 24

Give an example of a company that fired the managers

Answer 24

Nike tried this with some of their manufacturing facilities in Mexico. The workers organized themselves into teams and controlled their own work schedules. When that plant was compared with Nike’s other plants, the self-controlled plant was twice as productive, had lower overall costs, but much higher wages. Even though they were paying their employees more, their overall costs were much lower

Question 25

Describe why you should put customers second

Answer 25

Businesses still want customer loyalty, but they see customer loyalty as the by product of employee satisfaction. When employees are happy working for you, they will provide better customer service and customers will enjoy purchasing your product/service

Question 26

Give an example of a company that puts the customer second

Answer 26

Wegmans is a US retail grocery chain. They purposefully do a lot of training and investment. They end up growing slowly because it takes a lot of time to build up and grow employees

Question 27

What are the 4 new management concepts in selection and exit?

Answer 27

1. Hire as a Team
2. Ban Non-Competes
3. Celebrate Departures
4. Pay People to Quit

Question 28

Describe why you should hire as a team

Answer 28

Businesses are brining the whole team into the interview process; companies are allows many members of the team to meet potential candidates. The team can help management with their hiring decisions by seeing if there’s a good connection with the rest of the team, and if they will work well together

Question 29

Give an example of a company that hires as a team

Answer 29

1. Whole Foods: uses a team approach in the hiring and afterwards
2. Google: the interviewees meet a lot of different people as they’re going through the hiring process

Question 30

Describe why you should ban non-competes

Answer 30

Non-competes are clauses in contracts that prevents employees who leave the company to work for competitors, or to start up their own company in the same industry. It’s not good for the employees because then they can’t find personal growth anywhere because they can’t work anywhere where they can use the skills they’ve learned, and it’s not good for employers because then they don’t get to use those skills when they hire new employees

Question 31

Give an example of a company that doesn’t use non-competes

Answer 31

1. IBM: hires young innovative people and encourages them to come work for IBM for a few years before going out into the professional world
2. P&G: decided to start learning from their competitors, which allowed them more flexibility. Since then, their financial performance has been much better

Question 32

Describe why businesses would want to celebrate departures

Answer 32

Most businesses understand that people are not going to stay at one company for life, and that they should not shun them for doing so. Instead, they can stay connected with those employees so they have a strong network of people outside of their company

Question 33

Give an example of a company that celebrates departures

Answer 33

1. LinkedIn: if you leave a job at LinkedIn, you join their alumni group and stay in touch with them
2. Microsoft: has an alumni group which gets together several times a year

Question 34

Describe why companies would pay their employees to quit

Answer 34

Companies would do this for employees who don’t really fit with the company, who are not doing good work, or people who are just going through the motions of their job. Instead of continuing to pay these employees, let them quit and hire people who are engaged and invested. It is better for them to quit now instead of two years from now, and risk doing more damage to the company

Question 35

Give an example of a company that pays people to quit

Answer 35

1. Zappos: they are very big on customer service. At the end of week three (of four) of training, they offer you $4000 to quit then instead of taking the job. That way the keep the employees who are really passionate about what they are doing
2. Amazon: at the end of each year they have a quit day (with an extra $1000 every year; if you quit after year 1 you get $1000, after year 2 you get $2000, etc. to a max of $5000)

Question 36

What are the 3 new management concepts in compensation and benefits?

Answer 36

1. Make salaries transparent
2. Lose standard vacation policy
3. Take sabbaticals

Question 37

Describe why companies would make salaries transparent

Answer 37

Pay is often complicated and messy, so it is usually ignored. However, pay secrecy lowers overall employee performance and produces more strife and distress in the workplace as people make assumptions about how much their coworkers are paid and how much effort they put into their job

Question 38

Give an example of a company that makes salaries transparent

Answer 38

Whole Foods: they publish all the data about each department in their company, including salaries

Question 39

Describe why companies would lose the standard vacation policy

Answer 39

Companies have discovered that people are more productive and invested in their job when they can decide when/how much vacation time they received

Question 40

Give an example of a company that lost the standard vacation policy

Answer 40

Windsor Regional Hospital; found that their staff were burning out because they weren’t getting enough vacation. When they allowed their employees to choose their own vacation time, their employees were more motivated and they faced less burnout

Question 41

Describe why companies would want their employees to take sabbaticals

Answer 41

Their employees become more productive when they have take time away from work intentionally. These employees often come back to work refreshed and with better ideas on how to manage the company / do their job

Question 42

Give an example of a company that requires their employees to take sabbaticals

Answer 42

QuickTrip: after a certain number of years of work, their employees have to take a four-week sabbatical

Question 43

What is the 1 new management concept in performance evaluation?

Answer 43

Ditch Performance Appraisals

Question 44

Describe why companies would want to ditch performance appraisals

Answer 44

Companies don’t want to ditch performance evaluations altogether, but they are changing the formatting. In the past, performance evaluations were very formal, but it didn’t help employees to figure out how they were doing on a daily basis. People were afraid to take on risks in case they got a bad review on their performance evaluation. Now many companies are adopting a much more informal approach to performance evaluations

Question 45

Give an example of a company that is ditching performance appraisals

Answer 45

Microsoft: Microsoft employees often have check-ins with their boss, where they talk about where they can continue to improve, instead of formal sit-downs

Question 46

What are the 2 new management concepts in work environment?

Answer 46

1. Close Open Offices

2. Outlaw Email

Question 47

Describe why companies would want to close open offices

Answer 47

While open offices can encourage collaboration, they can also be very distracting to employees (especially those who prefer to work alone). Instead, companies are coming up with office designs that have many different types of rooms in which people can work

Question 48

Give an example of a company that has closed open offices

Answer 48

Gerson Lehrman Group: They designed a building with a big open living room type of space for collaborative moments, but there are also group meeting rooms and individual offices for other purposes. Letting their employees have control over their workspace improved their productivity

Question 49

Describe why companies would want to outlaw email

Answer 49

Email makes people less productive; it’s very hard to focus on your work when you’re constantly answering emails or getting notifications about your email

Question 50

Give an example of a company that has outlawed email

Answer 50

1. Volkswagen decided to open their email half an hour before the start of the work day, and close it half an hour after the end of the workday
2. Atos: banned email altogether. They replaced it with a different system where the messages don’t get pushed to you; instead, you decide when you want to go into the platform where communications are open. The system is organized around projects/products