Attracting Developing Employees Quiz 02

Which one is not an appropriate aim of Human Resource Planning?

• To improve the utilisation of people by introducing more flexible work systems such as work from home, & flexible reporting time.

• To develop a well‐trained and flexible workforce, thus contributing to the organization’s ability to adapt to an uncertain and changing environment.

• To anticipate the problems of potential manpower surpluses or deficits.

• To increase reputation, branding, sales and revenue top line so that the business remains profitable and sustainable.

In Phase 1 of the HR Planning Process, an external business environmental scan is one of the appropriate activities to be carried out. The common model to adopt in this Phase is the PESTELD Model of which D stands for Demographical Forces acting on the Organisation. Which one of these is a Demographic Force?

• Societal expectations & cultural norms force the organisation to change as well.

• Developments in the ecological environment like the push to reuse, recycle, re-purpose and reduce are forces that act on the Organisation.

• Compliance & conformance to Governmental Rules, Regulations, Restrictions and Legislation amendments.

• Issues surrounding aging employees, wage demand, shrinking workforce, & increase in foreigners affecting the Organisation.

The Concept of a flexible organisation, as theorised by Atkinson (1984) states that there are four components of a flexible organisation. Select the correct statement with regards to these components.

• Functional Flexibility is the ability to train and deploy labour over a range of tasks.

• Financial Flexibility is where the management can adjust levels of labour in line with demand.

• Distance Flexibility is the extent of the revising the pay structure as and when needed.

• The replacing of permanent employment contracts with sub‐contracting or other forms of employment is known as Numerical Flexibility.

Job Analysis is the process of ____________.

• getting information about jobs by determining what are the tasks, duties and activities of these jobs.

• ensuring that we get the required Job Description and Job Specifications regardless of the job inputs.

• identifying the suitability of an individual's personality, attitude and skills for a certain job.

• examining the forces of external environment and designing jobs that will counteract these forces.

This is the purpose of using a Triangulation approach to job data collection when embarking on a Job Analysis process.

• To cross-check the accuracy of the data collected and to ensure its convergence.

• To ensure that we have sufficient quantitative data to carry out HR Analytics.

• To ensure we do not get fooled by unhappy individuals who intentionally provide false data to derail the JA process.

• To accommodate the limitations of the organisational culture if we were to just use a single particular method of data collection.

The Questionnaire method of data collection is frequently used in the process of a Job Analysis. Under which circumstance is this Method the least effective?

• When you want to collect a large sample size of data from several sources.

• When the individual is externally deployed or frequently travelling such that you are unable to meet in-person.

• When the job is very mundane or the respondent do not have a good command of the language use in the questionnaire.

• When we want to record the experience, behaviour, thought-process, & reasons behind the actions taken.

When a job requires strategic (long-term) thinking and decision-making, it would be most appropriate to use this approach to collect data in a Job Analysis process.

• Group interviews followed by individual personal observations should any confidential information emerges.

• Request the employee to keep a diary log of the tasks that he carries out and then followed by observations of those tasks.

• Start by observing the individual's daily work and then request him/her to submit a Critical Incident type report.

• Have the employee complete a questionnaire survey and then followed by a one-to-one interview.

What is a major disadvantage of the Critical Incident Method of data collection?

• It focuses predominantly on effective or ineffective job behaviour and is time consuming to gather and categorise the incidents.

• May not be accurate and up to date as employees may lack self‐discipline &/or lack good writing skills to record their activities concisely.

• Rare job requirements (e.g. coping with emergencies or urgent customer’s service) may be critical but not be easily observed.

• Expensive & time consuming to formulate. Lack of direct response and clarification since the employee is not present to explain.

Fabian Lim has been an Accountant in your Organisation for the past 6 years and knows the processes very well. However, he thinks his job has become quite routine. He is not even sure if anybody notices if he does a good job. He is thinking about applying for an internal transfer to the Project Department when the internal Ad comes out next month. Diagnose the problem.

• Employee is feeling a low sense of job security and possibly a lack of feedback from his superiors.

• HOD should deal with his low motivation related to Task Significance and Skills Variety (Hackman-Oldham 1984).

• In order to retain him, HR should recommend a promotion on the basis that it will increase his Task Identity (Hackman-Oldham 1984).

• To avoid losing talent and to meet a low resignation target, his HOD should fulfil the transfer request if he applies.

Promoting a production operator to a Team Lead in one of the Production Lines would likely fulfil this approach to job design.

• Employee is able to make decisions & hence will be more motivated than someone who is closely supervised.

• Employee will be more motivated as she will be able to identify and control the final outcome of her job.

• A promotion will result in a higher salary and hence, employee will not be de-motivated based on Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory.

• This promotion is very motivating to the operator as she moves up from physiological to security needs (Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory).