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Student name:__________
TRUE/FALSE – Write ‘T’ if the statement is true and ‘F’ if the statement is false.
1) Transactional work is typically paid more than tacit work.
⊚ true
⊚ false
2) Fundamental skills include familiarity with company forms and procedures, basic product
knowledge, safety, basic computer usage, and so on.
⊚ true
⊚ false
3) Skill-based pay plans can focus on both the depth and breadth of work.
⊚ true
⊚ false
4) By encouraging employees to take charge of their own development, skill-based plans
may give them more control over their work lives.
⊚ true
⊚ false
5) Person-based plans have the potential to clarify new standards and behavioral
expectations.
⊚ true
⊚ false
6) Compared to an on-demand review of certifications, scheduling fixed review points
makes it easier to budget and control payroll increases.
⊚ true
⊚ false
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7) Skill-based plans are generally well accepted by employees because it is easy to see the
connection between the plan, the work, and the size of the paycheck.
⊚ true
⊚ false
8) There is far less uniformity in the use of terms in person-based plans than there is in job-
based plans.
⊚ true
⊚ false
9) Skill-based plans become increasingly economical as the majority of employees become
certified at the highest pay levels.
⊚ true
⊚ false
10) Scaled competency indicators are similar to degrees of compensable factors.
⊚ true
⊚ false
11) As experience with competencies has grown, organizations are placing greater emphasis
on business-related descriptions of behaviors.
⊚ true
⊚ false
12) While competencies hone in on information about specific tasks, skill- and job-based
systems take the opposite approach.
⊚ true
⊚ false
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13) Advocates of competencies say that by focusing on optimum performance rather than
average performance, competencies can help employees maintain their marketability.
⊚ true
⊚ false
14) Core competencies are often linked to mission statements that express an organization’s
philosophy, values, business strategies, and plans.
⊚ true
⊚ false
15) Basing pay on race or gender seems appalling today, but basing pay on someone’s
judgment of another person’s integrity is considered the norm nowadays.
⊚ true
⊚ false
16) In virtually all the studies on job evaluation, job-based evaluation is treated as a
measurement device.
⊚ true
⊚ false
17) Validity refers to the degree to which an evaluation assesses the relative worth of jobs to
an organization.
⊚ true
⊚ false
18) Communication and employee involvement are crucial for acceptance of resulting pay
structures.
⊚ true
⊚ false
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19) The reliability of a job evaluation can be improved by using evaluators who are familiar
with the work and trained in the job evaluation process.
⊚ true
⊚ false
20) Defining the compensable factors and scales to include the content of jobs held
predominantly by women is one of the methods to ensure that job evaluation plans are bias-free.
⊚ true
⊚ false
MULTIPLE CHOICE – Choose the one alternative that best completes the statement or
answers the question.
21) The roots of job-based pay structures are traced to
A) Frederick Taylor.
B) Karl Marx.
C) Adam Smith.
D) Ronald McFreyer.
22) Routine work is also termed
A) transactional work.
B) hygiene work.
C) tacit work.
D) system work.
23) ________ are often linked to mission statements that express an organization’s
philosophy, values, business strategies, and plans.
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A) Job-based systems
B) Bureaucratic systems
C) Skill-based systems
D) Core competencies
24) According to Frito-Lay’s list of competencies for managerial work, the behavior of
modeling, teaching, and coaching company values is linked to the ________ competency
dimension.
A) leading for results
B) doing it the right way
C) leveraging technical and business systems
D) building workforce effectiveness
25) Which of the following is an advantage of skill-based pay plans?
A) They guarantee a low rate of employee turnover.
B) They aid in deploying workers in a way that better matches the work flow.
C) They are less expensive than job-based plans.
D) They are viewed more favorably by courts than any other type of pay plans.
26) The majority of applications of skill-based pay have been in:
A) education industries.
B) manufacturing industries.
C) health-care industries.
D) service industries.
27) An employee’s focus in a job-based approach is to
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A) seek promotions to earn more pay.
B) acquire skills.
C) acquire competencies.
D) utilize skills efficiently.
28) Compensable factors, skill blocks, and competency sets are used for:
A) assessing relative value.
B) collecting work content information.
C) determining what to value.
D) completely different purposes.
29) Employees in a multiskill system earn pay increases:
A) by increasing their productivity.
B) based on job content.
C) based on job assignments.
D) by acquiring new knowledge.
30) Which of the following is least likely to be used in establishing skill-based certification
methods?
A) Tests
B) College degree
C) Peer review
D) On-the-job demonstration
31) ________ is a crucial factor that affects the perception of fairness of a skill-based plan.
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A) The design of the certification process
B) The number of compensable factors
C) The extent of alignment with an organization’s strategy
D) The number of weights and factor degrees
32) A camper is an employee who ________ in a skill-based pay system.
A) tops out
B) is a jack-of-all-trades
C) does not want to rotate jobs
D) moves too quickly from job to job
33) Skill-based plans tend to work best in organizations using a(n) ________ strategy.
A) innovator
B) defender
C) laissez-faire
D) cost-cutter
34) ________ are the observable behaviors that indicate the level of competency within each
competency set.
A) Competency generators
B) Core competencies
C) Competency indicators
D) Behavior scale points
35) ________ translate each core competency into action.
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A) Competency indicators
B) Multifunctional skills
C) Skill-based structures
D) Competency sets
36) The process of identifying competencies in person-based structures resembles identifying
________ as part of job evaluation in job-based structures.
A) compensable factors
B) job descriptions
C) employee requirements
D) work flow outlays
37) Which of the following reasons makes competencies a risky foundation for a pay system?
A) The number of stakeholders and the lack of a global standard
B) Openness and nonquantifiable nature
C) Vagueness and subjectivity
D) Lack of motivation and objectivity
38) The organization specific group for classifying competencies generally includes
A) customer orientation.
B) personal integrity.
C) flexibility.
D) maturity of judgement.
39) Leadership, customer orientation, and functional expertise are examples of which group
of competencies?
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A) Personal characteristics
B) Visionary
C) Organization specific
D) Team dynamics
40) Competencies are derived from the ________ beliefs about the organization and its
strategic intent.
A) executive leadership’s
B) stakeholders’
C) competitors’
D) customers’
41) Most studies report that when different people rank-order jobs, the correlations are
between:
A) .15 and .36.
B) .35 and .46.
C) .55 and .66.
D) .85 and .96.
42) The reliability of job evaluation techniques is measured by:
A) determining if different evaluators produce the same results.
B) asking the question “What does the evaluation measure?”
C) determining hit rates.
D) surveying employee attitudes about the evaluation.
43) Who among the following is examining the validity of a job evaluation?
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A) Keira, who is measuring the degree to which the job evaluation plan matches an
agreed-upon pay structure for benchmark jobs
B) Laila, who is measuring the effectiveness of a formal appeals process
C) Keith, who is surveying employee attitudes about the job evaluation plan
D) Rita, who is requesting the management for a reanalysis and a reevaluation of the
required skills as she feels her job has been evaluated incorrectly
44) A study of 400 compensation specialists revealed that:
A) job evaluation data had a larger effect on pay decisions than market data.
B) current pay data had a larger effect on pay decisions than market data.
C) job titles had a larger effect on pay decisions than job evaluation data.
D) market data had a substantially larger effect on pay decisions than job evaluation
data.
45) Which of the following is the reason why skill-based pay plans have maximum
flexibility?
A) They pay employees for the highest level of skill they have achieved regardless of
the work they perform.
B) They focus on placing the right people in the right job.
C) They only pay as much as the work performed is worth, regardless of any greater
skills the employee may possess.
D) They encourage employees to focus on how to get promoted rather than on how to
get the required competencies.
46) Managers whose employers use ________ plans focus on placing the right people in the
right job.
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A) person-based
B) skill-based
C) competency-based
D) job-based
47) A ________ approach controls costs by paying only as much as the work performed is
worth, regardless of any greater skills the employee may possess.
A) performance-based
B) competency-based
C) job-based
D) skill-based
48) Which of the following is an advantage of the skill-based structure?
A) Pay based on value of work performed
B) Continuous learning flexibility
C) Cost control via certification
D) Lateral movement
49) Lisa is a manager at Trell, Inc. When she hires her employees, she focuses on finding the
right job for the right person. Which of the following pay plans is her employer most likely
using?
A) A skill-based pay plan
B) A competency-based pay plan
C) An aptitude-based pay plan
D) A job-based pay plan
50) Who among the following is most likely to be working for a company that uses a
competency-based pay plan?
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A) Julia, who focuses on getting promoted to get a pay increase
B) Faiza, a manager who focuses on choosing the employees best suited for job roles
C) Juan, a manager who focuses on controlling costs through budgets and work
assignments
D) Carlos, who focuses on obtaining certifications in her field to get a pay increase
SHORT ANSWER. Write the word or phrase that best completes each statement or
answers the question.
51) How do modern organizations analyze work processes?
52) What is the relevance of certification in a multiskill system?
53) How do skill-based plans motivate employees?
54) What is relevance of flexibility in skill-based plans?
55) How are organizations redefining the original definition of competencies?
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Answer Key
Test name: chapter 6
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