Role and responsibilities of human resource management
What are the five main tasks of a human resource manager?
Planning for staffing needs,
Recruiting and hiring workers,
Providing for training and evaluating performance
Deciding on compensation and benefits
And overseeing employee separation.
What are the three overall objectives of a human resource manager?
Providing qualified, well-trained employees for the organization
Maximizing employee effectiveness
Satisfying individual employee needs through monetary compensation.
How HR recruit and select employees
Describe several recruiting techniques used by human resource managers.
College and university job fairs
Personal referrals
Want ads
Company websites
Online job sites
Podcast interviews (known as jobcasts) that feature hiring managers and employees talking about work at their companies.
Is it unfair to firms that some questions cannot be asked during job interviews?
The firm should be interested only in whether job applicants have the skills or experience to perform a certain job. Any interview questions should be concerned only with the job applicant’s abilities. The firm should be free to ask these questions.
Strategies for developing employees
What are some common employee trainings and why?
New employees often complete an orientation, also called onboarding, program where they learn about company policies and practices.
Training programs provide opportunities for employees to build their skills and knowledge. These new skills can also prepare them for new job opportunities within the company.
Training also helps employers to keep long-term, loyal, high-performing employees.
Performance appraisals give employees feedback about their strengths and weaknesses and how they can improve.
What are the benefits of computer-based training?
Computer-based training offers consistent presentations and interactive learning. Employees can also learn at their own pace. Computer-based training is also less expensive than other types of training.
What is a management development program?
Management development program provides training designed to improve the skills and broaden the knowledge of current and potential executives.
What are the four criteria, or standards, of an effective performance appraisal?
A performance appraisal should take place several times a year
Be linked to organizational goals
Be based on objective measures
Be a two-way conversation.
Compensations
What are some common compensations?
Firms compensate employees with wages, salaries, incentive pay systems, and benefits. Benefit programs vary among firms, but most companies offer health care programs, insurance, retirement plans, and sick leave. More and more companies offer flexible benefit plans and flexible work plans, such as flextime, compressed workweeks, job sharing, and home-based work.
Explain the difference between wage and salary.
Wages are based on an hourly pay rate or the amount of work accomplished.
Salaries are paid periodically, such as weekly or monthly. Salaries do not rise or fall with the number of hours worked.
What are flexible benefit plans? How do they work?
Flexible benefit plans offer a choice of benefits, including different types of medical insurance, dental and vision benefits, and life and disability insurance. Typically, each employee receives a set allowance (also known as flex dollars) to pay for these benefits that suit his or her needs.
Employee separation, downsizing, outsourcing
What is the difference between voluntary and involuntary turnover?
Voluntary turnover occurs when employees leave firms for their own reasons, such as to start their own businesses, take jobs with other firms, move to another community, or retire.
Involuntary turnover occurs because of employees’ poor job performance or unethical behaviour in their business practices or in the workplace. It can also occur when a company is forced to eliminate jobs.
What is downsizing? How is it different from outsourcing?
Downsizing is the process of reducing the number of employees within a firm by eliminating jobs. Downsizing is done to cut overhead costs and streamline the organizational structure.
Outsourcing occurs when companies contract with other firms to perform noncore jobs or business functions, such as housekeeping, maintenance, or relocation services. Outsourcing allows companies to focus on what they do best. It can also result in a downsized workforce.
Methods and theories of motivation
Theories about motivation
Employee motivation starts with high employee morale.
According to ,Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs people satisfy lower-order needs (such as food and safety) before moving to higher-order needs (such as esteem and fulfillment).
Herzberg’s two-factor model of motivation is based on the fulfillment of hygiene factors and motivation factors.
Expectancy theory suggests that people use these factors to decide whether to make the effort needed to complete a task.
Equity theory refers to a person’s view of fair and equitable treatment.
Goal-setting theory says that people will be motivated to the extent to which they accept specific, challenging goals.
Job design is also used by managers for motivation.
What are the four steps in the process of motivation?
Need --> motivation --> goal-directed behaviour --> need satisfaction
Explain how goal-setting works.
People will be motivated to the extent to which they accept specific, challenging goals and receive feedback that shows their progress toward goal achievement.
Describe the three ways that managers design jobs for increased motivation.
Job enlargement is a job design that expands an employee’s responsibilities by increasing the number and variety of tasks.
Job enrichment changes the job duties to increase employees’ authority in planning their work, deciding how it should be done, and learning new skills that help them grow.
Job rotation involves a system of moving employees from one job to another.
Labour-management relations
What is a labour union? What is collective bargaining?
A labour union is a group of workers who organize themselves to work toward common goals in the areas of wages, hours, and working conditions. Collective bargaining is the process of negotiation between management and union representatives.
What are the three main tactics used by unions to win support for their demands?
Unions’ main tactics are strikes (walkouts), picketing, and boycotts.
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- Work environment contribute to success?
- Creates more innovated staff members
- Relase cognitie load from food... (teaboy idea)
- More fun enviornment (most day is at work, makes employee feel better)
- Visually pleasing `-->` better mood
- Draw back?
- Quanlity vs. Quantatity of work
- ★ More focus on `output > input`
- Repeative work induce mistake
- Financial budget concern
- Against work-life-balance
- Food provided indicate increase work time expectation?
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Follow legal requirements (certain questions cannot be asked)
Hiring is a costly process
Some require employment tests
Performance appraisals ^cb1cb8
Performance appraisal: evaluation of and feedback on an employee’s job performance
Take place several times a year
Linked to organizational goals
Based on objective measure
Two-way conversations
Other options
Peer review
360-degree performance review (gather feedback from a review panel that includes co-workers, supervisors, team members, subordinates, and sometimes customers)
From above, below, and beside
What is a balance scorecard and the 4 components
A large portion does fall in the Financial category, however single focus on financial would loss sight on the long run
Financial (profitability, sales),
Traditional evaluation focus
Reason of less focus now: prefer nice rounded individual over direct financial )long-term > shot-term
Cause 2× annual salary to replace someone
Customer relationship
New customers
Customer satisfaction
Internal process
Efficiency improvements
Cycle time: time takes from start to finish of a process
Education
Training provided (giving and taking training)
Conference attended
Compensation ^69d3e7
What is the ethical issues related to compensation of aboard employee salary > local employee salary
Not ethical
Pay them inline with home country expectations
Keep in mind the types of challenges company have for negotiating with employees
Should there be a limit to compensation for executives
Yes: from equality perspective, it doesn’t look good for how much they gain
No: limit salary -> lower motivation
No: higher responsibility, quality, and qualification --> high compensation
Solution: some company uses stock share to resolve the equity issue while providing financial motivation
Differentiate compensation, wage, salary.
Compensation the amount employees are paid in money and benefits
Wage: pay based on an hourly rate or the amount of work accomplished
Salary: pay calculated on a periodic basis, such as weekly or monthly
What are the five factors firms base compensations on?
Competing company’s amount
Government regulations
Cost of living
Company profits
Employee’s productivity
What is flexible benefits and time off policies?
Flexible benefit plans: employees are provided a range of options to choose from (Medical, dental, vision, life, and disability insurance)
Flexible time off policies: instead of establishing a set number of holidays, vacation days, and sick days
What is flexible work
Adjust their working hours and places of work to accommodate their personal needs
Flextime allows employees to set their own work hours within constraints specified by the firm
Compressed workweek allows employees to work the regular number of weekly hours in fewer than the typical five days
Job sharing program allows two or more employees to divide the tasks of one job
Home-based work program allows employees, or telecommuters, to perform their jobs from home instead of at the workplace
More than 70 percent of Generation Y professionals are concerned with balancing career and their personal lives
Employee Separation ^b2ba8e
Differentiate between voluntary turnover and involuntary turnover.
Voluntary turnover:
Employees may leave firms to start their own businesses, take jobs with other firms, or retire (quit)
Exit interviews (find out why they decide to leave)
Involuntary turnover:
Employers may terminate employees because of poor job performance, unethical behaviour, or the need for downsizing (fire)
Must be carefully document
★ Differentiate between downsizing/outsourcing and describe each
Downsizing: The process of reducing the number of employees within a firm by eliminating jobs
Negative emotional for remaining employee
Downsizes resources is hard/higher cost to get back
Outsourcing: Using outside vendors to produce goods or fulfill services and functions that were previously handled in-house or in-country
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- The office emerged from (...)
- Internet age
- Internet allowed people to work from differernt places
- Disadvantage of office: expansive and inefficient
- Small office > big office, sub office > meta(all-in-one) office
- The concept of 9-5 is less relavent
- Pay for function > working duration
- Advantages of office
- Big firms with knowledge employees influence local communities
- A big firm provide support for a large amount of community jobs, remote work with break the community connection with big firms
- Work from home (privaliged minority)
- Unemployeement rate
- Women are more effectved by remote work (women has a higher face-to-face positions)
- Women has a higher layed off rate than men
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Work environment
★ Where was the origin of modern office
From the industrial revolution
Machine are in main cities, need to gather people to work at specific location
What is a knowledge job and why is it important
Highly socialized job, require
Hard to be replace (cost,)
Other job are dependent on them
What challenges are societies face with working from home
Work-life balance
Social isolation
More prone to distractions female > male
Hard to monitor
Things to consider from company perspective with transition
Imagination/creativity with team work
Already leased resources
Employee monitor/management
Pro for employer
Financial, resource, management cost is lower
Future for office
Hybrid form of work locations
Urban planning (more life outside of city)
More possibility for employment (less limitation of employment location)
Work from home can be a part of composition package
