Exam 14: Human Resource Management: Building a Top-Quality Workforce

Cafeteria-style benefit programs are an approach to employee benefits that gives each employee a set dollar amount he or she can spend on company benefits. Employees choose how to allocate the money among various possible benefits offered by the firm.

The human resources department achieves business goals by recruiting world-class talent, promoting career development, and boosting the effectiveness of its organization.

Because they deal mainly with "people issues" rather than production or marketing issues, human resource managers must be experts in areas such as employment law, pay structure, and employee motivation, but they don't really need a strong understanding of their firm's goals, customers, and competition.

Define how employers evaluate workers' performance. Describe three of the potential appraisal goofs that can arise during this process.

When it comes to dealing with the aging of the baby boom generation, what are enlightened companies doing?

What do we call the option of working a full-time number of hours in less than the standard workweek?

Apprenticeships are training programs in which newly hired managers rotate jobs, serving for short periods of time in each of several management positions in order to get a good feel for all of the functional areas of the business.

Which of the following provides a simple indication of whether senior management values the contributions of the HR department?

Compare the pros and cons of the internal and external recruitment of human resources.

Which of the following explains the responsibilities for a specific position?

What is the primary goal of most employment legislation?

Human resource professionals should ask the following questions when developing the roles and responsibilities for workers to perform: What are the organization's strategic goals? Who are the core customers? Who is the competition?

In order to effectively develop the organization's workforce, human resource managers must work independently of other key managers within their organization.

A job description defines the specific qualifications necessary to hold a particular position.

In which type of employment interviews are all candidates asked to respond to the same questions in the same order, with the goal to improve the employer's ability to compare candidates and predict their performance?

While many companies are ignoring the problem, the aging of the baby boom generation has caused some forward-thinking firms to develop policies designed to retain the best of these employees.

James Greer is a 57-year-old accountant who has worked for the same large firm for almost 30 years. His yearly evaluations always show high performance. Despite this, his young new boss recently called him into his office and let him know that his last day of work will be at the end of the month, explaining that he preferred to work with employees closer to his own age. James noted that the firm posted increased profits this past year and viewed his boss's actions as unfair, so he decided to make an appointment with the HR director. What would the HR director most likely tell James?

Apprenticeship programs are more popular in Canada than in Europe.

Firms that have seasonal business patterns are less likely to hire contingent workers than firms that have relatively stable employment patterns.

On-the-job training requires employees to simply begin their jobs and to learn as they go.