978-0078029165 Appendix B Part 10

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Appendix B-181

| Appendix B – Chapter Exercises

This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part.

both career planning tools (e.g., self-assessments) and career management techniques. The system

should be able to meet the needs of both individuals and the organization.

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Exercise 9.2 Assessment Questions

1. What did you learn about yourself that you did not realize before?

Students should learn more about their own values, work preferences, attitudes, and career goals. By

2. How important are your career and work in your total life? Why is this important to realize?

3. How can completing a self-assessment assist you in preparing a résumé or interviewing for a

job?

By completing a self-assessment, they should have a better understanding of their own goals,

4. What will you do to follow-up on this self-assessment?

Students should develop an action plan to continue to explore their own career-related issues. They

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Chapter Exercise 9.3

Career Development at Technochip Computers

Lillian T. Eby and Joyce E. A. Russell

IM Notes prepared by Joyce E. A. Russell

Objective . The purpose of Exercise 9.3 is to help students gain more experience in analyzing cases. In

particular, students are expected to examine the case and determine the career issues of importance

for employees. The exercise requires students to utilize information from the chapter in order to

determine which career programs are in place at TechnoChip Computers.

Description. This exercise requires about 2 hours of out-of-class preparation for students to read the

assigned exhibits and to complete the questions in Form 9.3.1. Following completion of these steps,

students are expected to work in small groups in class (about 4-6 students per group), and review

each other’s responses to Form 9.3.1. After reviewing their responses, they should reach consensus

on the appropriate career development tools to use in the sales division of TechnoChip Computers. If

they also discuss the timeline for implementation of their career tools and the advantages and

disadvantages of their suggestions, then it may take about 3—45 minutes of in-class time for their

small group discussions.

Professors may want to lead the entire class in a discussion of the following:

1. Career issues and concerns facing sales employees and team leaders

2. Career tools and interventions that can be used to assist sales employees and team leaders

3. Relative advantages and disadvantages of the career tools selected.

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Exercise 9.3

Answers to Form 9.3.1

1. For each of the following groups of employees in the sales division at TechnoChip

Computers, first identify their career-related concerns as noted from the survey results.

Then provide some recommendations for each group to meet career or job-related needs.

A. Telephone sales employees:

1. Concerns:

a. Plateauing and Dissatisfaction with Job Challenges – A percentage of these sales

employees felt that they were plateaued or bored in their jobs. Their jobs require them

2. Recommendations:

B. On-site sales employees:

1. Concerns:

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b. Job Security – a percentage of employees were fearful about losing their jobs. This was

probably because the firm had been declining in annual sales and their customer base

and some employees were worried about losing their jobs.

c. Job-induced tension and work-family stress – employees reported work-related stress,

particularly due to all the travel involved in their jobs.

2. Recommendations:

FOR ALL SALES EMPLOYEES:

1. Concerns:

a. Promotional opportunities – this was one of the biggest concern of all employees, since

2. Recommendations:

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etc. The idea may be to try to establish a dual-ladder system so that sales employees can

remain in sales while being promoted up their own ladder so that they do not have to

move into management to be promoted.

b. To address career guidance provided to employees, team leaders need to receive

training on how to be career coaches. In addition, the organization should allocate one

member of its HR staff to be responsible for providing career assistance to employees in

each location. This HR staff member can receive assistance from the corporate office of

HR. A career resource center can also be established which describes career

opportunities in the organization as a whole (e.g., opportunities for training and

promotions in other locations, etc).

C. Team Leaders:

1. Concerns:

a. Role Clarity and Training as Coaches. They have previously been managers who were

renamed as team leaders. They were not given much training in what their new roles as

2. Recommendations:

a. Team leaders should be given training on what their new roles as team leaders are (i.e.,

what activities it involves). In addition, team leaders need to receive training on how to

provide career guidance and coaching to sales employees. The performance appraisal

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alleviated. Also, the division or operations manager could hold periodic sessions with

team leaders to discuss ways to work more efficiently to reduce their feelings of work

overload.

Positive Aspects:

Some aspects of the job were viewed positively by sales employees including the following:

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2. Describe the advantages and disadvantages to your recommendations as well as a timeline

for when they should be implemented.

Immediate Solutions (within the next month):

a. Meet with team leaders to clarify their roles.

Longer-term Solutions (within the next six months – one year):

a. Develop a dual-career ladder system to enable sales employees to move up in the organization

without having to move into management.

3. How would you assess whether the programs you have recommended for employees are

perceived positively or improve attitudes after they are implemented? (Hint: Review the

evaluation section in Chapter 8). Should additional surveys be conducted with sales

employees and their team leaders? If so, how often and what types of questions should be

asked? What would you do with those data?

Employees should be surveyed after six months to assess their attitudes on the same dimensions that

4. Review TechnoChip’s mission statement, strategic objectives, and the survey feedback

results. Based on what you learned in Chapter 8, identify the training needs for each of the

following groups of employees.

Training needs for all sales employees would involve learning how to retain customers, develop new

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for both types of sales employees, although the training for on-site sales employees may require

more interactions (face-to-face) with potential customers.

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5. For each specific training need you identified, what types of training methods would be

appropriate to incorporate into the training? (Hint: review the description of training

methods and techniques in Chapter 8).

Training for phone sales should involve role-plays where employees are involved in phone calls with

customers (employees could play the role of customers, while others would play the role of

6. Some of the employee attitude problems TechnoChip is facing may be due to the fact that

when current employees were hired the job was very different than it is today. What steps

can TechnoChip management take before hiring future sales employees and team leaders to

be sure the applicants have a realistic assessment of what the job is like? (Hint: Think about

what you learned in the previous chapters about job analysis, recruiting, and selecting

employees).

Future employees should be educated on the new role of sales employees (working in teams) that is

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CHAPTER 10 – CHAPTER EXERCISES

Chapter Exercise 10.1

Problems in the Pay System

James R. Harris and Lee P. Stepina

Objectives. The purpose of Exercise 10.1 is to have students consider the critical variables related to

the development of a fair pay system that will enable an organization to attract, retain, and motivate

a qualified workforce. The problems with reconciling data related to internal and external equity are

emphasized.

Description. In order to use Exercise 10.1 effectively, several different issues need to be examined.

Instructors may change locale, industry type, or any other aspects of this case to fit the particular

needs of the various student groups.

Table 10.1

Answers to Form 10.1

1. Are the CCUA department’s current pay practices concerning data processor IIs and

computer analyst Is externally equitable (i.e., competitive)? Explain your answer.

In order to determine the fairness of the current pay system of CCUA certain assumptions need to be

made. The case indicates that the Data Processor II position most closely matches the survey’s Data

A. Finding CCUA comparators in the Decision Sciences Survey.

Relevant information:

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Industrial Manufacturing

Large Company: Company revenues > $20,000,000

B. External equity comparisons.

Given these assumptions the following comparisons can be made:

Ind. Man. Large Company CCUA

2. What specific action, if any, do you recommend be taken now? Be specific and justify your

recommendations as fully as possible.

Students should note that regional differences are not available with this database. Since the

organization is located in the rural Southeast, it is very possible that regional practices may be

somewhat lower than the national practices reflected on the Decision Sciences survey. Three

additional steps are recommended:

any details concerning the types of salaries they accepted elsewhere?

Each of these steps should help better identify a competitive wage for CCUA.

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Given the problems in using the Decision Sciences database about the external equity of CCUA’s pay

system, the next step is to make some sense of the satisfaction survey.

Is there a problem with satisfaction at CCUA?

Relevant Information:

Assuming Average wage for new hires

and Turnover reduced to 10%

Current Budget 255,490 10% Pay Increase 280,039

Turnover Costs 2,250 Turnover Costs 450

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several different scenarios such as: No Budget increases, 10% pay increases allowed or $15,000 total

budget increase, etc. The instructor may also provide some other external market source.

3. What specific strategy(ies) do you recommend for the future so that these types of problems

can be anticipated and (it is hoped) avoided.

The instructor should focus discussion on developing a system that will address the pay problems of

the future. Below is just a short list of potential specific recommendations.

Exit Interviews

Periodic pay reviews

4. As is often the case in business, we typically find that we must make decisions, or

recommendations, on the basis of incomplete, imperfect information. What additional

information in this situation would have enabled you to improve the quality of your

recommendations?

More specific local market data would be most important. In a rural area, it is difficult to know what

pay is appropriate given only national salary data. In addition, any good compensation survey should

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DP experience, there may be cost savings opportunities possible by pricing the skills CCUA seeks in the

marketplace when hiring DPs and providing rapid salary growth to a competitive DP rate as stages of

training occur.

5. Conduct a Web search (O*NET?) to determine how accurate the data are in Exhibit 10.1.3.

Summarize your findings below, citing the relevant web site(s) and the methods of the pay

survey. What are the outsourcing options for the data processing and computer analyst

jobs? Locate pay data for outsourcing options.

For the purpose of this illustration, two sources were used: O*Net and the Department of Labor’s

Bureau of Labor Statistics (National Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates).

Computer and Mathematical Occupations was used for the Computer Analyst I position, specifically

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Chapter Exercise 10.2

Should the State Adopt a Pay Equity Policy?

Objectives. The purpose of Exercise 10.2 is to have students consider the implications of pay equity or

comparable worth. Some of the most important issues related to pay equity must be considered in the

process of taking a position on the policy.

Description. This is a provocative exercise on a controversial issue (review pp. 334-335). The students

are asked to take positions on various recommendations made by a consulting firm. This case was

based on real data compiled in the state of Florida and a report submitted to the Florida legislature for

possible legislative action.

In order help the students in this exercise; instructors should clarify some of the information that is

presented in the consultant’s report. An excellent reference for this exercise is a special issue of Human

Resource Management Review from 1991 that features seven articles on the subject of job evaluation.

Good on-line references are: http://www.pay-equity.org/info-opposition.html; and

http://www.iwpr.org/. See also the references below.

Critical Issues:

1. Budget allocation

Relevant Information:

–Policy Capturing methodology —– do the results of a statistical procedure, regression in this

2. Point Factor Adoption

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Students must be informed on what a point factor system is and the implementation options

available. See the text discussion (p. 335). Point out that the pay equity approach calls for

comparisons between job families and very different jobs.

Like this study, pay equity studies are typically conducted using point-factor job evaluations but with

comparisons across job families. This form of job evaluation is typically conducted within a job family

in order to establish internal equity.. Thus, the job hierarchy is established within each family. While

definitions differ a little, a job family is essentially a group of jobs having the same basic nature of

work (e.g., clerk, teacher, engineer) but requiring different levels of skill, effort, responsibility or

working conditions (e.g., entry versus senior level). Families can be groupings of related jobs with

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consultants, such as Hay & Associates, have been making comparisons across job families for many

years. They use systems of job evaluation to compare job factors such as know-how, problem solving,

and accountability. Each factor is scored and the total scores are compared with the aim to establish

pay equity between female-dominated jobs as compared with male-dominated jobs. By 1986,

comparable worth studies had been undertaken by 156 jurisdictions in the public sector, as well as

twenty states. There is no legal mandate to implement comparable worth at the federal level and, as

discussed in the text, the courts have yet to decide a case in favor of a comparable worth policy under

Title VII. The Fair Pay Act is legislation, not law. Says Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, one

of the co-authors of the Fair Pay Act, “No matter how hard women work or whatever they achieve in

terms of advancement in their own profession and degree, they will not be compensated equitably.”

One of the most memorable cases involved head nurses working for the city of Denver. A pay study

determined that head nurses were paid less than tree trimmers despite the fact that the head nurse

job had substantially more job evaluation points than the tree trimmer job. In finding for the City of

Denver (and against the nurses), a federal judge said if you don’t like the lousy pay and stressful work

of nursing, become a tree trimmer! If the city refuses to hire you as a tree trimmer because of your

gender, now that’s a Title VII violation.. For details on this case, see Bernardin , H.J. (1982) Women in

the Work Force New York: Praeger Press

The “wage gap” (page 345 nd 346). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, despite over 40 years

of the Equal Pay Act, women earn 78.5 cents for every dollar earned by a man. Says Connecticut

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, one of the co-authors of the Fair Pay Act, “No matter how hard

women work or whatever they achieve in terms of advancement in their own profession and degree,

they will not be compensated equitably.” But a new book disputes the arguments attributing the

wage gap to discrimination. Says Warren Farrell, author of “Why Men Earn More,” the wage gap

exists primarily because of the type of work women choose and the number of hours worked.

From page 346 of the 5th edition:

“Farrell compared the starting salaries of men and women with Bachelor’s Degrees in 26 categories of

employment, from investment bankers to dieticians. Women are paid equally in one category; in

every other category, their starting salaries exceed men’s. A female investment banker’s starting

salary is 116 percent of a man’s. A female dietician’s is 130 percent, that is, $23,160 compared to

$17,680. Another argument he makes is that women often prefer jobs with shorter and more flexible

hours in order to accommodate family responsibilities. For example, women generally favor jobs that

involve good social skills and no travel. These jobs generally pay less. Another reason men earn more

is that they work more hours per week. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, full-time men

work about 45 hours a week versus 42 for women. Women choose to avoid particularly dangerous

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jobs that pay well. Over 92 percent of occupational deaths are men. Of course, women have a legal

right to enter dangerous professions, the most dangerous of which are over 95 percent male.”

Starting a family and adding domestic responsibilities often motivates a woman to rotate into a less

demanding job so she can balance home and work more easily. Doing so usually stalls her progress on

the pay scale, as reduced responsibility is usually accompanied by smaller raises or even a pay cut.

Just a few years of salary stall reverberates for decades.

Table 10.2.1

Answers to Form 10.2.1

1. The state legislature should appropriate $75,552,000 to cover the costs of the pay equity

adjustments indicated by this study. If you are unsure, what additional information do you

require before you take a position?

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IF AGREE: Proponents of comparable worth state that there is a connection between gender and pay

class. Gender inequalities are deeply embedded in social structures and processes and are sustained

from year to year, spiraling a convergence of class and gender separation among low status groups,

women, and minorities.

IF DISAGREE: The data do not support an argument that the wage differences are a function of sex

discrimination. Thus, the remedial action is not only very expensive it’s unjustified. Wages are

determined by supply and demand. The market wage reflects a process that takes into account the

1. Enabling an organization to attract and retain qualified, competent workers