REVIEW AND APPLICATIONS
CHAPTER SUMMARY
7-1 Describe the key components of the human resource management process and the
important influences on that process. The HRM process consists of eight activities that will
staff an organization with competent, high-performing employees who are capable of sustaining
their performance level over the long-term. The first three HR activities involve employment
7-2 Discuss the tasks associated with identifying and selecting competent employees. The first
task is employment planning, which involves job analysis and the creation of job descriptions
7-3 Explain how employees are provided with needed skills and knowledge. New hires must be
acclimated to the organization’s culture and be trained and given the knowledge to do the job in a
7-4 Describe strategies for retaining competent, high-performing employees. Two HRM
activities that play a role in this are managing employee performance and developing an
appropriate compensation and benefits program. Managing employee performance involves
7-5 Discuss contemporary issues in managing human resources. Downsizing is the planned
elimination of jobs and must be managed from the perspective of layoff victims and job
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
7-1. How does HRM affect all managers?
7-2. Discuss the external environmental factors that most directly affect the HRM process.
7-3. Some critics claim that corporate HR departments have outlived their usefulness and
are not there to help employees but to shield the organization from legal problems. What
do you think? What benefits are there to having a formal HRM process? What drawbacks?
Answer: HR departments are critical to the success of organizations since human resources
are the true assets of the company. When HR is involved with strategic decisions of
7-4. Do you think it’s ethical for a prospective employer to delve into an applicant’s life by
means of interviews, tests, and background investigations? What if those investigations
involved looking at your Facebook page or personal blogs? Explain your position.
Answer: This will be a controversial issue. Most students will probably feel their private
lives are their own business. A few will not. Key here is discussing the relationship
7-5. Discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the various recruiting sources.
Answer: Recruitment seeks to develop a pool of potential job candidates. Typical sources
include an internal search, advertisements, employee referrals, employment agencies,
school placement centers, and temporary services. The device selected depends on a variety
of factors. An example is an internal search that can be used when a position becomes
7-6. Discuss the advantages and drawbacks of the various selection devices.
Answer: Selection devices must match the job in question. Work sampling works best
with low-level jobs; assessment centers work best for managerial positions. The validity of
the interview as a selection device increases at progressively higher levels of management.
But the typical interview often provides little in the way of valuable information. All kinds
of potential biases can creep into interviews.
Prior knowledge about the applicant will bias the interviewer’s evaluation.
The interviewer tends to hold a stereotype of what represents a “good” applicant.
first four or five minutes of the interview.
The interview is most valid in determining an applicant’s intelligence, level of
motivation, and interpersonal skills.
7-7. What are the benefits and drawbacks of realistic job previews? (Consider this question
from both the perspective of the organization and the perspective of a potential
employee.)
Answer: Realistic job previews are beneficial to both the employee and employer, since
7-8. List the factors that influence employee compensation and benefits.
Answer: The factors are: an employee’s tenure and performance, the kind of job performed,
7-9. What, in your view, constitutes sexual harassment? Describe how companies can
minimize sexual harassment in the workplace.
Answer: Sexual harassment encompasses sexually suggestive remarks, unwanted touching
The EEOC cites three situations in which sexual harassment can occur. These are instances
where verbal or physical conduct toward an individual (1) creates an intimidating, offensive,
A company can do some things to protect itself. The courts want to know two things—did the
7-10. Research your chosen career by finding out what it’s going to take to be successful in
this career in terms of education, skills, experience, and so forth. Write a personal
career guide that details this information.
Answer: Student answers will vary.
MyManagementLab
Students can find the following assisted-graded writing questions at mymanagementlab.com.
Answers to these questions are graded against rubrics in the MyLab.
7-11. How is technology changing how HRM is done?
7-12. How does HRM help achieve the goal of having the “right numbers of the right people in the
right place at the right time”?
Management Skill Builder: Providing Good Feedback
Everyone needs feedback! If you want people to do their best, they need to know what they’re
doing well and what they can do better. That’s why providing feedback is such an important skill
to have. But being effective at giving feedback is tricky! That’s why we often see managers
either (a) not wanting to give feedback or (b) giving feedback in such a way that it doesn’t result
in anything positive.
Personal Inventory Assessment: Work Performance Assessment
As this chapter indicated, performance assessment is an important HR function. Use this PIA to
assess work performance.
Skill Basics
The following highlights the key behaviors associated with effective interviewing:
Be straightforward by focusing on specific behaviors.
Be realistic.
Keep feedback impersonal.
Keep feedback goal oriented.
Know when to give feedback – make it well timed.
Ensure understanding.
Watch your body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions.
Practicing the Skill
Craig is an excellent employee whose expertise and productivity have always met or
exceeded your expectations. But recently he’s been making work difficult for other
members of your advertising team. Like his coworkers, Craig researches and computes
the costs of media coverage for your advertising agency’s clients. The work requires
laboriously leafing through several large reference books to find the correct base price
and add-on charges for each radio or television station and time slot, calculating each
actual cost, and compiling the results in a computerized spreadsheet. To make things
more efficient and convenient, you’ve always allowed your team members to bring the
reference books they’re using to their desks while they’re using them. Lately, however,
Craig has been piling books around him for days and sometimes weeks at a time. The
books interfere with the flow of traffic past his desk and other people have to go out of
their way to retrieve the books from Craig’s pile. It’s time for you to have a talk with
Craig.
Prepare an outline of how you will address this issue with Craig. Using the suggestions
in the Skill Basics, be as specific as possible in terms of what you will say and how you
will approach this. If your professor chooses, be prepared to do some role-playing in
class.
Experiential Exercise
Western Montana Power & Light
To: Sandra Gillies, Director of Human Resources
From: William Mulroney, CEO
Re: Sexual Harassment
Sandra has been informed that there might be a problem. It appears that some of the employees
aren’t clear about the practices and actions that do or do not constitute sexual harassment. The
company can’t have any ambiguity or uncertainty about this and the boss wants Sandra to make
the issue of sexual harassment the primary topic at next month’s executive board meeting.
What would be some content of an initial two-hour employee workshop on sexual harassment?
Teaching Tip: Information on sexual harassment programs is available on the Internet.
Google the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission. Search sexual harassment for a list of resources.
Students can also find examples of company sexual harassment training programs on
YouTube.
Case Application 1: Résumé Regrets
Discussion Questions
7-13. What does this story tell you about the importance of checking a job applicant’s
background?
7-14. What stakeholders are affected when an executive has inaccuracies in his or her résumé?
How might they be affected?
7-15. Look at the statistics in the first paragraph of this story. Are you surprised by them? Why
or why not?
7-16. What can you learn from this story (a) personally and (b) professionally?
Case Application 2: Stopping Traffic
Discussion Questions
7-17. Many managers say that evaluating an employee’s performance is one of their most
difficult tasks. Why do you think they feel that way?
7-18. What can organizations (and managers) do to make performance appraisal an effective
process?
This item can be assigned as a Discussion Question in MyManagementLab. Student
7-19. What’s your impression of the color-coded system like that being used by J.C. Penny? As
a store department supervisor, how would you have approached this?
Students can find the following assisted-graded writing questions at
7-20. What could J.C. Penny executives have done to make this process more effective?
Case Application 3: Spotting Talent
Discussion Questions
7-21. What does this case imply about the supply and demand for employees and what
implications does that have for businesses?
7-22. What’s the meaning behind the search for the “purple squirrel” in relation to spotting
talent? Is this relevant to non-tech companies as well? Discuss.
7-23. Do you think that mature tech companies are always going to have a more difficult time
attracting tech talent? Explain.
7-24. What do you think of the recruiting approaches that Google and Facebook have tried?