Exam 10: Managing Human Resources

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

Which of the following is an internal recruiting method?

The United Kingdom issued a new recruitment publication for the nation's Fire Service. The publication lists all of the qualifications needed to become a fire fighter. This recruitment pamphlet is actually a(n)____.

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. Most likely, the kitchen workers at Nick's are trained to do the different kitchen jobs using:

Which of the following is a legal problem employers may encounter in seeking, providing, or using employment references as part of the selection process?

An ESOP is an ____.

Identify the employee characteristics that are protected by federal employment anti-discrimination laws (i.e., the characteristics upon which employers are not legally allowed to discriminate). Specify which human resource management decisions these laws affect.

Domino's Pizza At Domino's Pizza, company-wide turnover is 158 percent. That means Domino's must recruit, hire, and train 180,000 people a year just to fill its company's 114,000 jobs. And, with that much turnover, you can't consistently produce a quality product. Making and delivering pizza may seem simple, but up the ante to making and delivering one million pizzas each night, as Domino's does, and all of a sudden it's not quite so easy, especially if you're always working with inexperienced employees. For instance, even a simple job like taking orders has a learning curve when you're taking 45 to 50 orders an hour. In fact, a new order taker usually requires 80 hours to become as reliable as an experienced one. Until they learn their jobs, new workers make lots of mistakes such as getting orders wrong, giving out the wrong change, and showing up at customers' homes with the wrong pizza. Those mistakes are costly in two ways. First, if the order is wrong, late, or missing, customers get angry and may not do business with you again. Indeed, according to the University of Michigan's American consumer satisfaction index, Domino's ranks in the bottom half of fast-food companies. Second, to right those wrongs, Domino's often says the pizza is free-"Our fault, no charge."-and that hurts profits. So much turnover is costly in other ways as well. For one thing, it costs time and money to find and hire new workers. Domino's estimates that it costs $2,500 to replace each hourly worker who leaves and $20,000 to replace a store manager. Then all those new workers must be trained, and that takes time and money. At Domino's, each new worker spends the first 30 days in training, learning to take orders, handle the cash register, make pizza dough, and, ultimately, how to make a pizza in less than a minute. When everything is considered, turnover is costing the company several hundred million dollars a year, or an astonishing 15 percent to 20 percent of revenues. The question, of course, is what to do about it. Robert Chabot, who owns RAM Pizza, a series of Domino's franchise stores, says, "This business is all about who you hire. It's about people: those who want to do it (good work)and those who don't." Consequently, Chabot relies heavily on employee referrals to first identify good job applicants. Chabot assumes that if current employees are satisfied with their jobs, they'll tell their family and friends about their positive work experiences, and those people will in turn want to work for him and RAM pizza (i.e., Domino's). He also pays employees $25 for each person they recommend who gets hired and then stays for 90 days. Domino's is also doing a much better job of screening and selecting potential managers. Anyone who wants to manage a Domino's store has to pass a 30-minute online test of their financial and management skills. If you're not familiar with financial concepts such as "break-even" and "cash flow," and you're not sure how to handle poorly performing employees (hint: yelling and screaming isn't the preferred answer), then you're unlikely to pass the test. Refer to Domino's. Which of the following selection methods could Robert Chabot use to determine that prospective employees do not have a criminal record?

Two of the most important results of a job analysis are ____.

A study in the construction industry found that when equipment is stolen from building sites, workers are the culprits 82 percent of the time. If background checks reduced employee thievery over a period of time and throughout the industry, then this selection process would be ____.

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. All of Nick's new hires learn about the company's purpose, values, and culture. The most appropriate method to deliver that training would be:

The hostile work environment form of sexual harassment occurs when employment outcomes such as hiring, promotion, or simply keeping one's job depend on whether an individual submits to being sexually harassed.

____ interviewing typically leads to much more accurate hiring decisions (i.e., correctly predicting which job applicants will perform better, and therefore should be hired).

"References Etc" will pose as a prospective employer, call a prior employer on an employee's behalf, and find out what the former employer is saying. If the prior employer provides unsubstantiated negative information, then the job applicant ____.

Bona fide occupational qualifications would be most likely included in a(n)____.

All job applicants for a position in an interior design company were given 10 swatches of fabrics of different colors and textures, 30 different paint chips, and 6 different floor treatments. They were then told to select the best fabric, paint, and floor treatment for an office. What type of selection test was used in this example?

The ____ is a rule of thumb used by the courts and the EEOC to determine whether there is evidence of adverse impact. A violation of this rule occurs when the selection rate for a protected group is less than a specified level of the selection rate for a nonprotected group.

Which of the following is NOT an example of a pay-variability decision used to motivate employee performance?

Sharron Grant-Burton was a marketing director for Covenant Care, owner of skilled-nursing and assisted-living facilities. During a discussion of the fairness of the company's bonus structure with other marketing directors, Grant-Burton said she did not receive a bonus because her executive director "did not believe in them." Several days later, Grant-Burton was fired and told she had been terminated for a number of unspecified reasons, including her comments about bonuses. This is an example of a ____.

A job specification summarizes the basic tasks, duties, and responsibilities of a job, and a job description summarizes the qualifications needed to successfully perform the job.