Unit 4

Question 1

1. What is (are) the purpose(s) of HR planning?

Answer 1

1. HR planning usually precedes the more visible parts of the hiring process, which are advertising for potential employees and interviewing a subset of these applicants (typically) to select someone. HR planning is designed to align recruitment and selection efforts with an organization’s broader priorities.

Question 2

2. What are recruitment and selection, and how are they different?

Answer 2

1. Recruitment efforts are typically driven by planning estimates about the number of workers an employer will need to hire to each job.
2. Once a pool of applicants has been generated, an organization must decide whom to hire. Selection is the process of choosing individuals who have the relevant qualifications to fill existing or projected job openings

Question 3

3. What constraints do organizations face in the ways in which they select employees?

Answer 3

1. This divergence of theory and practice in selection may reflect a cost-benefit analysis by employers. Although a bad hiring decision can be expensive for an organization, that risk is largely notional: It may not happen, and a more elaborate hiring process may not prevented it.
2. A second reason that organizations may not undertake an extensive selection process is related to applicant fatigue and attrition. While the recruitment and selection process involves an organization making a decision about a potential worker, it also entails a potential worker making a decision about an organization.

Question 4

behavioural interview

Answer 4

• A behavioural description interview (BDI) focuses on actual work incidents in the interviewee’s past. The BDI format asks the job applicant what he or she did in a given situation. For example, to assess a potential manager’s ability to handle a problem employee, an interviewer might ask, “Tell me about the last time that you disciplined an employee.” Such an approach to interviewing, based on a critical incidents job analysis, assumes that past performance is the best predictor of future performance. It also may be somewhat less susceptible to faking. Research indicates that the BDI is more effective than the situational interview for hiring higher-level positions such as general managers and executives.

Question 5

Forecasting

Answer 5

• predict or estimate (a future event or trend).

Question 6

downsizing

Answer 6

• make (a company or organization) smaller by eliminating staff positions.

Question 7

employment equity

Answer 7

• Employers may also be subject to employment and pay equity requirements. Employment equity laws require employers in the federal jurisdiction to engage in proactive steps to increase the representations of women, persons with disabilities, visible minorities, and Indigenous persons

Question 8

external recruiting

Answer 8

• External recruitment is when the business looks to fill the vacancy from any suitable applicant outside the business.

Question 9

fly-in fly-out workers

Answer 9

• Fly-in fly-out is a method of employing people in remote areas by flying them temporarily to the work site instead of relocating employees and their families permanently. It is often abbreviated to FIFO when referring to employment status.

Question 10

human resource (or workforce) planning

Answer 10

• HR planning usually precedes the more visible parts of the hiring process, which are advertising for potential employees and interviewing a subset of these applicants (typically) to select someone. HR planning is designed to align recruitment and selection efforts with an organization’s broader priorities.

Question 11

internal recruiting

Answer 11

• Internal recruiting is the process of filling vacancies within a business from its existing workforce

Question 12

labour demand

Answer 12

• In economics, the labor demand of an employer is the number of labor-hours that the employer is willing to hire based on the various exogenous variables it is faced with, such as the wage rate, the unit cost of capital, the market-determined selling price of its output, etc.

Question 13

labour shortage

Answer 13

• In its narrowest definition, a labour shortage is an economic condition in which employers believe there are insufficient qualified candidates (employees) to fill the marketplace demands for employment at a wage that is mostly employer-determined.

Question 14

labour supply

Answer 14

• In mainstream economic theories, the labour supply is the total hours that workers wish to work at a given real wage rate.

Question 15

labour surplus

Answer 15

• Surplus labor is a concept developed by Karl Marx in the nineteenth century to describe the production of surplus value and profit. It refers to the labor that produces a value beyond that which is needed for the subsistence of the worker or workers who perform it.

Question 16

Markov analysis

Answer 16

• Another technique, called Markov analysis, shows the percentage (and actual number) of employees who remain in each of a firm’s jobs from one year to the next, as well as the proportions of those who are promoted, demoted, or transferred or exit the organization

Question 17

multiple hurdles method

Answer 17

• A variation of the multiple cutoff is referred to as the multiple hurdle model. This decision strategy is sequential in that after candidates go through an initial evaluation stage, the ones who score well are provisionally accepted and are assessed further at each successive stage. The process continues through several stages (hurdles) before a final decision is made regarding the candidates. This approach is especially useful when either the testing or training procedures are lengthy and expensive.

Question 18

pay equality

Answer 18

• Employers in all jurisdictions have an obligation under legislation to avoid discrimination in wages on the basis of gender. This requirement mandates pay equality (that men and women be paid the same for performing the same job in the same organization).

Question 19

pay equity

Answer 19

• Pay equity requires that men and women be paid the same for performing jobs of comparable value in the same organizations. This requirement is not uniform across the provinces and territories. Pay equity also requires decisions about which jobs are comparable, and such subjectivity often arouses controversy and resistance.

Question 20

recruitment

Answer 20

• The degree to which interviews, tests, and other selection procedures yield comparable data over a period of time is known as reliability.

Question 21

selection

Answer 21

• Once a pool of applicants has been generated, an organization must decide whom to hire.

Question 22

situational interview

Answer 22

• One variation of the structured interview is called the situational interview. With this approach, an applicant is given a hypothetical incident and asked how he or she would respond to it. The applicant’s response is then evaluated relative to preestablished benchmark standards.

Question 23

succession planning

Answer 23

• succession planning—the process of identifying, developing, and tracking talented individuals so that they can eventually assume top-level positions.

Question 24

trend analysis

Answer 24

• One example is trend analysis, whereby a firm’s employment requirements are forecasted on the basis of some organizational index.

Question 25

Validity

Answer 25

• Validity refers to what a test or other selection procedure measures and how well it measures it. In other words, the selection process should be able to predict how well a person performs on the job.

Question 26

yield ratio

Answer 26

• Quite simply, a yield ratio is the percentage of applicants from a particular source who make it to the next stage in the selection process. For example, if 100 résumés were obtained from an employment agency and 17 of the applicants submitting those résumés were invited for an on-site interview, the yield ratio for that agency would be 17 percent (17/100). This yield ratio could then be recalculated for each subsequent stage in the selection process (e.g., after the interview and again after the final offer), which would result in a cumulative yield ratio.

Question 27

1. What is the purpose(s) of human resource planning? And how is it said to be related to organizational success?

Answer 27

1. Human resources planning (HRP), by comparison, is the process of anticipating and providing for the movement of people into, within, and out of an organization. Overall, its purpose is to help managers deploy their human resources as effectively as possible, where and when they are needed, to accomplish the organization’s goals.

Question 28

2. What are the key outcomes of human resource planning? And how do they inform recruitment and selection?

Answer 28

1. HRP provides a set of inputs into the strategic formulation process in terms of what is possible, that is, whether a firm has the types and numbers of people available to pursue a given strategy.

Question 29

3. What techniques are used to forecast labour demand? Describe one quantitative and one qualitative technique.

Answer 29

1. Labour market analysis is aided by various published documents. Statistics Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada/Human Resources and Skills Development Canada publish many studies on the labour force, as do various provincial governments. In addition, local chambers of commerce and city planning departments can assist both large organizations and new business ventures by providing them with a labour market analysis of their areas

Question 30

4. What techniques are used to forecast labour supply? Describe one quantitative and one qualitative technique.

Answer 30

1. At an operational level, labour-supply changes directly affect hiring plans in the area where the organization is located or plans to locate. Similarly, with a “maturing” workforce, HRP must consider the implications for recruitment and replacement policies. Other “barometers” of the labour market include migration in and out of the area and the mobility of the population, the firm’s demand for specific skills, unemployment rates, educational level of the workforce, government labour regulations, and so on.

Question 31

5. What techniques are available to manage a labour shortage? Describe the two techniques you think are most effective and why.

Answer 31

1. From a strategic standpoint, changes in the labour supply can limit the strategies available to firms. High-growth companies may find it difficult to find the talent they need to expand their businesses. Unemployment rates vary by sector, but the shortage of talent in high-skill jobs continues to create strategic challenges for firms.

Question 32

6. What techniques are available to manage a labour surplus? Describe the two techniques you think are most effective and why.

Answer 32

reduce employees work hours
implement hiring freeze
lay offs
offer employees early retirement

Question 33

1. What is the purpose of recruitment? What are the main elements or steps of a recruitment process?

Answer 33

a. In the past, recruiting was often a reactive process firms engaged in periodically when a position needed to be filled. Today, however, more companies see the recruiting function as a strategic imperative and, therefore, an ongoing process. Instead of waiting for a job opening, HR managers are studying their firms’ strategies in conjunction with their organizational charts, job analysis information, and external factors such as the labour market and the competition and then recruiting proactively and continually. The greater competition for talent means that recruiting has become more important for managers.

Question 34

2. What are the main methods of internal recruitment and the pros and cons of this approach?

Answer 34

Internal job postings

• quick way to find employees
• good for future employees as they are on record

9-box grid
-assess appraisal and assessment data to be complied into a single visual refernece so they can see employees both actual performance and potential.

skill inventories
-inventories to help track an employee’s education, past work experience, vocational interests, specific abilities and skills, compensation history, and job tenure to see how they can best be used

Question 35

3. What are the main methods of external recruitment and the pros and cons of this approach?

Answer 35

a. Advertising job openings on websites and in newspapers and trade journals is a common way to attract candidates. But help wanted signs, billboards, and even Craigslist are sometimes used.
b. Walk-in job seekers looking for jobs that pay hourly wages are common in smaller organizations. Employers also receive unsolicited applications and résumés. Walk-in applicants and individuals who send unsolicited résumés to firms may or may not be good prospects for employment.
c. Social media websites are increasingly used by organizations to create company pages, post and advertise jobs, showcase their company’s attractive features, and join groups that target certain types of professionals. Potential applicants can then “follow” companies they are interested in working for.
d. Job fairs can be a good way to cast a wide net for diverse applicants in a certain region. At a job fair, companies and their recruiters set up booths, meet with prospective applicants, and exchange employment information. Often the fairs are industry specific.

Question 36

5. Identify two ways you would measure the success of recruiting efforts. Why did you choose these methods?

Answer 36

a. Quality-of-Fill Statistics
i. quality of hire = ( PR + HP + HR ) / N
1. where PR = average job performance rating of new hires
2. HP = percentage of new hires reaching acceptable productivity within an acceptable time frame
3. HR = percentage of new hires retained after one year
4. N = number of indicators

e. An applicant tracking system (ATS) can help a firm automatically track and calculate the statistics we have discussed, and more. An ATS enables recruiters to electronically post job openings, screen the uploaded profiles and/or the résumés of applicants, rank them, and contact them via email for interviews. An ATS also tracks the sources of applicants—from the various websites they use to apply for jobs and how far they got in the process—and the time and costs related to hiring people. Looking at this data can help recruiters fine-tune where and how they are recruiting.

Question 37

5. Identify two ways an applicant’s human rights may be violated during a selection process. How would you prevent such violations from occurring?

Answer 37

1. The entire subject of preemployment questioning is complex. Federal and provincial requirements sometimes vary in the types of questions that may be asked during the interview. However, all jurisdictions forbid direct questions about race, sex, colour, age, religion, and national origin, and most look with disapproval on indirect questions dealing with the same topics. Some of the questions that interviewers once felt free to ask can be potentially hazardous. Human rights commissions have severely limited the areas of questioning. In general, if the question is job related, is asked of everyone, and does not discriminate against a certain class of applicants, it is likely to be acceptable to government authorities.

Question 38

3. Describe two kinds of employment tests. What are the pros and cons of each?

Answer 38

1. Evaluating résumés can be a subjective process. Evaluators often have a difficult time applying a set of consistent standards across multiple candidates or consistently apply standards that are irrelevant to success on the job. The fact that there is no “set” format for writing résumés—that they vary from person to person—can make them difficult for people to screen. Bias can also enter the process
2. Most organizations require application forms to be completed because they provide a fairly quick and systematic means of obtaining a variety of information about the applicant. Application forms serve several purposes. They provide information for deciding whether an applicant meets the minimum requirements for experience, education, and so on. They provide a basis for questions the interviewer will ask about the applicant’s background. They also offer sources for reference checks. For certain jobs, a short application form is appropriate.