Managing Employees - Competitive Advantage

Chapter 1: Managing Employees for Competitive Advantage

• Effectively managing employees increases productivity and performance.
• Improved employee satisfaction and retention are benefits of effective employee management.
• Effectively managed employees enhance the company's reputation and employer brand.
• The three primary HR activities include: work design and workforce planning, employee competencies, and employee attitudes & behaviors.
• Work Design & Workforce Planning means organizing jobs and ensuring the right number of employees
• Employee Competencies encompasses recruiting, training, and developing employees.
• Employee Attitudes & Behaviors entails managing performance, motivation, and workplace culture.
• Alignment relative to HR activities ensures HR activities are aligned with the company's strategy, culture, and environment to maximize effectiveness.

Chapter 2: Organizational Demands and Environmental Influences

• Cost Leadership focuses on efficiency and cost reduction, leading to standardized HR practices (e.g., Walmart).
• Differentiation focuses on unique products/services, requiring innovation and more flexible HR practices (e.g., Apple).
• Organizational culture comprises shared values and norms that influence hiring, training, and employee behavior expectations.
• A strong organizational culture ensures employees align with company goals.
• Psychological Contract refers to the unwritten expectations between employer and employee (e.g., job security in exchange for loyalty).
• Distributive Justice is fairness in outcomes (e.g., equal pay for equal work).
• Procedural Justice is fairness in decision-making processes.
• Interactional Justice involves fair treatment and communication.

Chapter 3: Regulatory Issues

• The EEOC enforces federal anti-discrimination laws and handles employee complaints.
• Disparate Treatment is intentional discrimination (e.g., hiring only men for a role).
• Disparate Impact refers to policies that unintentionally disadvantage certain groups.
• Harassment includes quid pro quo (favor-for-favor) and hostile work environment (offensive workplace).
• Retaliation involves punishing employees for reporting discrimination.
• BFOQ (Bona Fide Occupational Qualification) is a legal reason to prefer certain groups (e.g., hiring only female models for a women's fashion line).
• Protected Classifications include race, gender, age (40+), disability, religion, national origin, etc.

Chapter 4: Job Design and Job Analysis

• Job Design defines tasks, responsibilities, and required skills to optimize performance.
• Job Analysis identifies duties and skills for hiring, training, and performance evaluation.
• Methods to collect job information include interviews, questionnaires, observation, and job performance trials.
• Analysis of job information uses task analysis, competency modeling, and the O*NET database.
• Job Description defines expectations, qualifications, and responsibilities.
• Specialization means assigning narrow tasks for efficiency.
• Enrichment means adding responsibility and autonomy.
• Rotation & Enlargement increases variety and skill use.

Chapter 5: Workforce Planning

• Key to workforce planning is ensuring the correct number of employees with the right skills are available.
• Internal Workforce Factors include employee turnover and promotion/demotion,
• Internal workforce factors also include transfers, replacement charts & succession planning, and transition matrix.
• Replacement Charts & Succession Planning identifies future leaders.
• Transition Matrix tracks workforce movement over time.
• External Workforce Factors include local labor market, economy, and industry trends affecting hiring.
• Labor shortages can be managed through overtime, hiring, and outsourcing.
• Surpluses can be managed through layoffs, early retirement, and reduced hours.

Chapter 6: Recruitment

• Recruitment is the process of attracting and hiring employees.
• Internal recruitment involves promoting from within (builds loyalty, fast, cost-effective).
• External recruitment involves hiring new talent (fresh ideas, wider talent pool).
• Internal recruitment retains talent, motivates employees, and reduces hiring costs.
• Recruitment Value Proposition (RVP) is the unique benefits a company offers to attract candidates.
• Realistic Job Preview (RJP) helps candidates understand the role, reducing turnover.

Chapter 7: Selection

• Key in selection is choosing the right candidate for impacts performance and success.
• Person-Job Fit is when employee skills match job requirements.
• Effective Selection Process Standards: Reliability refers to consistent results, validity predicts job performance accurately.
• Confirmation Bias in selection means favoring information that confirms preconceptions.
• Halo Effect means judging based on one trait.
• Similarity Bias means preferring candidates like oneself.
• Contrast Bias involves comparing candidates instead of assessing individual merit.
• Initial Screening methods include resumes, applications, and phone interviews.
• Final Selection methods could include employment tests, structured interviews, and reference checks.
• Common types of interviews are structured, unstructured, behavioral, and situational.

Chapter 1 Quiz

• Ensuring specific practices within each HR activity are consistent and aligned leads to internal alignment.
• Companies gain a competitive advantage by implementing a strategy that adds customer value and is hard for rivals to duplicate.
• The question "What is the best way to measure employee performance?" is part of creating a performance management system.
• A company's compensation system greatly influences employee attitudes and behaviors, signaling their value to the company.
• Competencies refers to the knowledge, skills, abilities, and talents of employees.
• If managers overlook company objectives in job design, employees might focus on less important tasks.
• A company's ability to create greater economic value than competitors is a competitive advantage.
• A plan to achieve a competitive advantage over rivals is a strategy.
• Organizational culture is the shared values and beliefs of a company's employees.
• Human resource practices are the systems a company uses to manage employees.

Chapter 2 Quiz

• All of the following are organizational demands except HR activities.
• Innovation is always the focus isn't always true about a differentiation strategy.
• Having more resources for employees isn't always true about larger companies.
• Entrepreneurship is least likely to be consistent with a bureaucratic culture.
• A psychological contract includes perceived obligations that employees believe their employer owes them.
• Anum, performing tasks without compensation, is likely to feel distributive injustice.
• Employee management practices transfer cultural values into expectations for daily tasks and activities.
• A company focused on low cost requires employees to be highly productive and efficient.
• Managers are most effective if they consider the concerns of their employees.
• Companies that balance ethics, social responsibility, and financial performance will likely have a positive reputation and loyal customers.

Chapter 3 Quiz

• Primary role of EEO laws is to eliminate discrimination in the workplace.
• A prima facie case for disparate impact is shown if the minority group selected is less than 80% of the percentage of the non-minority group selected.
• According to the Equal Pay Act, differences in rates are allowed if based on merit, seniority, quality or quantity of production.
• A supervisor's behavior may create a hostile work environment for Sara.
• National origin discrimination results from treating individuals differently based on ancestry, ethnicity, or accent.
• Treating someone differently based their association to someone with a particular nationality is also an aspect of national origin discrimination.
• National origin comes into play when assuming a person is of a particular national origin because of physical, linguistic, or cultural traits associated with an ethnic group.
• Employers must treat pregnancy the same as any other medical or temporary disability under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
• The company will need to make reasonable accommodations to the building in order to accomodate the applicant in the wheelchair.
• Cancelling an interview, for the reasoning of disability, may be considered disparate treatment.
• Affirmative action programs exist for all of these reasons EXCEPT reverse discrimination.
• The Immigration Reform and Control Act requires employers to verify all workers are legally able to work in the U.S.

Chapter 4 Quiz

• Job design helps employees focus on particular tasks and responsibilities.
• A worker wth skills that are easily repeatable, is experiencing low skill variety.
• Feedback in the job characteristics model relates to knowledge of the actual results of activities.
• Companies may use participation and empowerment to provide employees with more input into managerial decisions.
• Parallel teams address a problem or solve a particular issue.
• Luis should look at the job specifications, in order to see if he has the necessary skills and experience for the jobs.
• Job analysis is the process of systematically identifying tasks, duties, and responsibilities.
• When competing based on cost, managers are more likely to maximize efficiencies.
• Encouraging workers to perform at maximum performance over periods of time, is not a way to prevent job stress.
• Managers make jobs more engaging and satisfying by conducting job enlargement and job rotation.

Chapter 5 Quiz

• Voluntary turnover is when an employee initiates the decision to leave a company
• Succession planning plans future leadership for a company.
• Labor supply is the availability of current or potential employees to perform a company's jobs.
• Functional flexibility is a company increasing its skills to have employees with multiple skills to fill needed areas within the company.
• Regardless of strategy, companies are most likely to strive to retain critical employees when considering workforce planning.
• In smaller companies, workforce needs are planned by the managers.
• Attrition refers to eliminate any vacant positions that emerge.
• Organizations implement outplacement assistance programs to help employees attain new jobs afer layoffs.

Chapter 6 Quiz

• The IRS is most concerned with the employee versus independent contractor status.
• A labor shortage that is seen to be temporary would be best handled by employee overtime.
• The highest priority when designing the recruitment strategy and process is to ensure that each hiring manager understands the job requirements.
• Internal recruitment is a company message that values the KSAs and loyalty of employees
• Why are job sites such as CareerBuilder.com so popular with employers is because they provide a way to reach a large number of potentially qualified candidates in an accessible format.
• Freida is using a contingency recruiting agency to help her find a new marketing executive.
• Sourcing is the term for using social networking sites to identify potential candidates.
• Centurey has created a recruitment value proposition.
• It is important to provide information about the work conditions in an employee advertisement to help potential applicants self-select out of the application process.

Chapter 7 Quiz

• Dollar General will implement a recruitment process that will minimize the costs associated with recruiting job applicants,
• Replacement charts track information about employees.
• It's important that applicants perceive that the recruitment process is fair and accurate becuase word travels quickly when an employer is less than honest.
• Employee selection is part of Managing employee competencies.
• Person-job fit matters becuase employees who believe there is a good match are more satisfied and productive.
• Conten validity is being implemented.
• The purpose of using an initial screening of applicants is to decide which candidates should receive further consideration
• Tamara participated in an assessment center.
• Using the same structured interview is less likely to involve discriminatory questions.
• Chaim needs to conduct a personality inventory to assess characterisitcs.
• Compensatory is being used.
• Dollar General will conduct a simple application and short interview process.
• An organization will be less likely to be perceived as an invasion of privacy if they are using cognitive testing.