Chapter 05

Chapter:05 1. Suppose an organization expects a labor shortage to develop in key job areas over the next few years. Recommend general responses the organization could make in each of the following areas: a. Recruitme ...

Chapter:05 1. Suppose an organization expects a labor shortage to develop in key job areas over the next few years. Recommend general responses the organization could make in each of the following areas: a. Recruitment b. Training c. Compensation (pay and employee benefits) When an organization anticipates an upcoming labour shortage, new human resource strategies must come into play at the organization. The following responses could be undertaken to alleviate the problem in these specific areas: Recruitment – select new employees carefully while availability remains high and indoctrinate them into the organization, recruit them more widely and through a variety of methods such as Internet recruiting, and utilize other non-traditional recruiting sources to fill organizational needs; Training - develop a training program that will produce “homegrown” employees from within the company who can be taught a variety of job skills in order to fill the gap when supply is diminished; Compensation – maintain a competitive compensation/benefits system in order to attract the best of the available candidates and modify the existing system in order to diminish the effect of perceived inequity within the organization 2) Discuss the costs and benefits associated with statistical versus judgmental forecasts for labour demand and labour supply. Under what conditions might either of these techniques be infeasible? Under what conditions might both are feasible but one more desirable than the other? Certainly, judgment by experts may be intuitively appealing since it appears faster and less expensive than compiling and analysing statistics. There may not be employees available who have the skills to work with data for planning purposes . Hiring consultants to analyse the data might be very expensive, and the perception could be that the planning could be done without this laborious and expensive step. However, if the situation is relatively stable, these statistics may be the best source of projections for future planning strategies, since one could expect the future to be very similar to the past . Both these techniques might be infeasible to use when the the environment is so unstable that neither past experience nor expert judgment will instability in the environment. Statistical information could be examined in comparison to leading indicators. This might help define a relationship between actual changes in the environment and what happens to human resources. For For example, in a bank, although mortgage interest rates may be unstable, there is a strong, negative correlation between mortgage interest rates 3) Some companies have detailed affirmative action plans, complete with goals and timetables, for women and minorities, and yet have no formal human resource plan for the organization as a whole. Why might this be the case? If you were a human resource specialist interviewing for this company for an open position, what would this practice imply for the role of the human resources manager in that company? This might be the case because they simply have not yet taken the steps to properly enact the plans into their human resource department. If applying for this job the implied role as a human resource manager would be to find effective and efficient ways to carry over this plan into the human resource department. Just because something is written down does not mean it is followed, so as a human resources manager, your job for this company would be to put their plan into action and create a formal human resource plan. 4) Recruiting people for jobs that require international assignments is increasingly important for many organizations. Where might an organization go to recruit people interested in such assignments? Some colleges and universities have majors in international trade or business. Students often have a double major in a foreign language and business. These individuals are more likely to be interested in going abroad. Thus, recruitment at colleges and universities could provide candidates. People who have language skills other than English may also be a possibility, particularly if they have lived in other countries. Placement of job advertisements in special-interest magazines may prove helpful.