Exam 10: Managing Human Resources

The fact that a 98-pound job candidate is not hired as a dock worker to move 60-pound boxes of produce is legal as a result of ____.

Which of the following statements about employee separation is true?

Which of the following provides employment counseling services for employees faced with downsizing?

List and briefly define the three basic kinds of compensation decisions.

What is a performance appraisal? How does it influence organizational success? Explain why it poses a particular challenge to managers.

Which of the following is an external recruiting method?

Which of the following is one of the ways in which training can be evaluated?

To minimize the problems inherent in firing employees, managers should do which of the following?

____ means providing opportunities for employees to develop the job-specific skills, experience, and knowledge they need to do their jobs or improve their performance.

____ is the process of gathering information about job applicants to decide who should be offered a job.

Estimates of from 2 percent to 20 percent of a taxicab company's driver workforce could result as new federal regulations requiring that all drivers be fingerprinted and the drivers checked to see if they have a criminal record. This new ____ will cause a worsening problem for the already over-extended employer.

Disparate treatment and adverse impacts are defined in labor laws issued by the National Labor Relations Board.

In order to be considered ____, recruitment, selection, training, performance appraisals, and employee separations must be valid and be directly related to the important aspects of the job and identified by a careful job analysis.

WWYD Nick's Pizza & Pub Nick's Pizza & Pub, a two-restaurant business in northern Illinois, wanted to open five more restaurants. But expansion wasn't to be. Expenses were high because of an inability to control food and beverage costs. An economic downturn saw guest counts drop. In the end, with costs up, revenues down, and lending standards tightening, Nick's fixed up and grew the two existing restaurants. Following the success of a young employee who asked staff for ways to keep costs in line, Nick pulled together the staffs in both restaurants to share how and where the restaurants were earning revenue and incurring expenses. He then asked for their help on three key issues: pay, hiring, and training. Nick and his people addressed three human resource challenges at Nick's Pizza & Pub. Pay was the first. Nick's takes a sophisticated multipronged approach to compensating its employees. To start, Nick's alters basic pay by one dollar more than minimum wage, and for employees who work at least 30 hours a week, the company pays half the cost of their company-provided health insurance. And for nearly a decade, Nick's has had a profit-sharing plan for all 230 employees. Each month, if the restaurant meets its goals in four out of the five following areas, food costs, beverage costs, guest comments, employee turnover, and labor costs, Nick's employees split 80 percent of the profit sharing pot. Nick's also takes a unique approach to recruiting. From the start of Nick's interview process, managers are looking for signs of personal accountability. The initial screening interview is strict and eliminates 80 percent of applicants. The 20 percent of applicants who make it out of the first round of interviews then complete two more interviews. This time, however, to increase the reliability and validity of the interview process, two managers sit in on each interview, with one manager sitting in on both interviews for each applicant. Like the first round of interviews, the criteria are strict. One "no" vote, and you're not hired. If you aren't, you still receive a thank-you note and a coupon for a free pizza. During the interview process, hiring managers at Nick's ask each applicant the same job-related questions. New hires spend two days learning about the company's purpose, values, and culture in a training class called Nick's 101 during which they spend 4 hours in the kitchen learning how to make pizza. The next step is Nick's 201, in which employees are separated by job, kitchen, wait staff, or bar staff, and are trained in their specific job responsibilities. And to prove that they've mastered their jobs, each employee is encouraged to certify their skill level in the tasks contained in their job. For example, it usually takes pizza makers two to four weeks to become certified, whereby they can make a pizza on their own to Nick's standards. Pizza makers, however, can get certified in other kitchen jobs, such as salads and sandwiches. When they've been certified in three jobs, their pay goes up 75 cents an hour. Becoming certified in another three jobs, six in total, increases their ay by $1.25 an hour. And when a kitchen worker is certified in nine jobs, their pay will increase by $2.75 an hour. Refer to WWYD Nick's Pizza & Pub. Nick's certification program and the related pay changes for performing different tasks in the kitchen reflect which kind of compensation decisions?

What type of job interview might be used after a background question revealed the applicant had spent three years working in Africa convincing parents to allow their children to take polio vaccine?

Trends in Hiring Practices Zachary Schneider saw a sign in the window of an Amy's Ice Creams franchise operation. The sign said the company was looking for new employees. When he went in to ask for a job application, he was given a paper bag and told to do "something creative with it." The test was to see whether the job applicant was suited to carrying out the chain's mission: "To make people's day." This type of pre-employment assessment is not unusual. Gourmet grocery chain Central Market uses a four-page application form which includes essay questions such as "Tell us about your favorite food experience." If it seems an applicant is a good match for the company, he or she is asked to make a statement about himself or herself using items found in the grocery store and to participate with other applicants in a roundtable discussion. Refer to Trends in Hiring Practices. Which recruiting technique did Amy's use?

The only time gender, age, religion, etc. can be used to make employment decisions is when they are considered a bona fide occupational qualification (BFOQ).

Former female employees of a national real estate brokerage firm claimed that they were subjected to lewd remarks, unwanted groping, and sexual propositions by male co-workers. According to their attorney, "The firm created a frat-house culture and then failed to do anything about it." Their suit claims the women were victims of ____.

____ is the loss of high-performing employees who voluntarily choose to leave a company.

____ ask raters to rate the frequency with which workers perform specific behaviors representative of the job dimensions that are critical to successful job performance.