You are the HR director at Springtime Manufacturing, which employs 75 people. The VP of Human Resources has asked that you evaluate the following situations. Please provide in the format of a memorandum to the VP with captions labeling each issue and addressing the questions posed. (See template at end)

1. Ron Robin is a salesperson for the firm. As part of his benefits, he is given a country club membership and is expected to entertain Springtime clients at the club, including golf and tennis games. One Saturday, Ron takes a client, Barbara Bluebird, and two of his close friends (non clients) golfing. While Ron and Barbara discuss a bit of business at the beginning of the game, most of the game is spent joking and socializing. Ron trips in a deep hole on the golf course and breaks his leg. Ron has filed for workers compensation; the VP has asked you to evaluate Ron’s claim to determine whether Springtime should dispute the claim.

Assessment Rubric for Assignment 4-     20 points total

Identification of Legal Issues (Clarity) 5 points Is the legal issue correctly identified for each situation presented?

Analysis Explanation (Content) 5 points Does the memorandum use the correct analysis for each identified issue and thoroughly explain the analysis?

Application of Analysis to Facts (Evidence Evaluation) 5 points Does each analysis include all applicable facts?

Conclusion (Are conclusions appropriate based on evaluation and appropriate use of terminology) 5 points

You are the HR director at Springtime Manufacturing, which employs 75 people. The VP of Human Resources has asked that you evaluate the following situations. Please provide in the format of a memorandum to the VP with captions labeling each issue and addressing the questions posed. (See template at end)

1. Springtime operates a distribution center in an old building with 3 floors. While the first two floors can be accessed with an elevator that holds up to 500 lbs, the third floor elevator has a maximum weight capacity of 250 lbs. Thus, with an average weight of 100 lbs per freight load, this elevator can only support a person weighing a maximum of 150 lbs. Springtime has a sign that specifically forbids any employee weighing more than 150 lbs from using the elevator to the third floor, which is used to house inventory. Please evaluate whether this policy violates Title VII.

Assessment Rubric for Assignment 4-     20 points total

Identification of Legal Issues (Clarity) 5 points Is the legal issue correctly identified for each situation presented?

Analysis Explanation (Content) 5 points Does the memorandum use the correct analysis for each identified issue and thoroughly explain the analysis?

Application of Analysis to Facts (Evidence Evaluation) 5 points Does each analysis include all applicable facts?

Conclusion (Are conclusions appropriate based on evaluation and appropriate use of terminology) 5 points

You are the HR director at Springtime Manufacturing, which employs 75 people. The VP of Human Resources has asked that you evaluate the following situations. Please provide in the format of a memorandum to the VP with captions labeling each issue and addressing the questions posed. (See template at end)

1. Springtime decides to create a new Director of Marketing and Communications position. This position is responsible for overseeing all marketing for the company as well as communicating directly with the press and other major customers about the company, its news and initiatives. Thus, Springtime includes a requirement that the “ideal candidate will be able to communicate clearly and present a positive image of Springtime Manufacturing”. Both May Flower and June Bug apply for the position and are interviewed by the President of the Company, April Showers. Both May and June have appropriate degrees in Marketing and about the same level of experience. May is a practicing Muslim and so wears a headscarf to the interview, as she always does to comply with her religious beliefs. April asks May the same questions as she has asked June, but adds a question about the headscarf. In particular, she asks May whether she always has to wear the headscarf and whether she has encountered “negative reactions” to the scarf. May answers that she does have to wear the scarf and she occasionally has negative reactions. April also asks several other questions about May’s religion. After the interview, April announces that she is hiring June Bug for the position and cites the “Very positive image” that June will present for the company. May sues for discrimination under Title VII. Will she succeed? Why or why not?

Assessment Rubric for Assignment 4-     20 points total

Identification of Legal Issues (Clarity) 5 points Is the legal issue correctly identified for each situation presented?

Analysis Explanation (Content) 5 points Does the memorandum use the correct analysis for each identified issue and thoroughly explain the analysis?

Application of Analysis to Facts (Evidence Evaluation) 5 points Does each analysis include all applicable facts?

Conclusion (Are conclusions appropriate based on evaluation and appropriate use of terminology) 5 points

Logic is basically human reasoning that tells us if certain proposition or declarative statement is true.

(a)There are five boards of directors (kojo, kofi, menash musah, and mawule) of a School. The board of director kojo owns 10% shares, kofi owns 30% shares, mensah owns 20% shares, musah owns 25% shares and mawule 15% shares of the total shares. For the adoption of the particular policy to be passed in the board’s meeting more than 66% should vote in favour of the policy. The weightage to the votes depend upon the percentage shares owned by the directors. In the board’s room each director has a switch which he turns ON if votes in favour of policy. Design a switching circuit to ring a bell if policy is accepted in the board’s meeting. Only the NAND gates should be used to realize the circuit.

(b) What is a universal gate? Give examples. Realize the basic gates with any one universal gate.

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
PART A

You have been tasked by the Director of HR with developing the training for a new Human Resources Assistant. at a manufacturing company. The Director of HR has asked you to do small project.

This employee will be supporting a Manager and two HR Consultants by doing the following:

·      reception duties

·      looking after all paperwork

·      formatting union contracts and

·      providing general admin support to the department.

You are tasked to develop and write 5 different objectives for the training.

Each objective must be measured by the end of training by the trainer.

Each objective must be divided into the parts of performance, condition and

criterion using the following format for each:

Objective 1: write out your objective out in full; - then separate it into the following parts:

Performance 1: write the performance portion of your objective

Condition 1: write the condition portion of your objective

Criterion 1: write the criterion portion of your objective

Please note that each objective, including all 3 parts of that objective, must be

completely different from each other objective. This means that you should not repeat conditions and/or criteria.

PART B

The Director of HR has tasked you with some research as the organization is going to be embarking on some company-wide training initiatives.

1. The CEO has heard of the terms "on-the-job training" and "off-the-job training". How might you define them, and could you provide an example for each?

2. As part of her presentation to the Sr. Leaders meeting, the Director of HR has asked you to describe things sources of data for your ANALYSIS, provide a list of training METHODS, and how you might EVALUATE the training in these company-wide initiatives.

3. She has also asked you to describe 3 advantages and 3 disadvantages of asynchronous and synchronous methods for any new training programs.

1. Hiring and developing human capital is important to keep the company stays competitive.

(a) State your opinion on the statement above

(b) Explain any FIVE (5) strategic roles of HRM in a total quality management organisation.

2. Some organisation set the policy that an engineer can only be promoted to higher position if he or she becomes a green belt and later a black belt.

(a) What is your opinion on such policy from organisation performance perspective?

(b) Is six sigma continual improvement a “cure-all” methodology for all problems? Justify your answer

1) Which human services settings and/or trends, are most represented in your area? For example, are all of the services targeted toward a specific population? Are the services only available in urban areas?

2) Is technology included in one of the ways a client can access the services you found? If yes, provide specific examples. If not, how can technology be used with the services/resources you found in your community? Based on what you learned about services in your area, what suggestions can you make regarding the use of technology, if you were advising the head of the agencies servicing

Human resource management Case

Gerald Mahoney was working in the women’s shoe department and doing the best that he could to sell a fairly expensive pair of boots to a young lady who obviously could afford to shop at a much classier store. For some unfathomable reason, however, she decided to shop at Marcy’s. After a few minutes of trying on several pairs of boots, Gerald was able to gently persuade Ms. Monahan to buy one of the store’s most expensive boots. He rang up the sale and was complimenting himself on his persistence when out of the blue the customer said:

“Why is an obviously highly talented man like you, who has just sold me a pair of shoes I probably don’t need or even want, working at a place like Macy’s? My name is Ms. Monahan, and I am the director of recruiting and training at Home Builders, and I can tell from the way that you have handled this sale that you would make a superb home salesperson. Here’s my card. Why not call me tomorrow morning, and we can arrange a time for you to come in?”

Gerald thanked Ms. Monahan for her kind words and told her he certainly would call her. He called the next day and she seemed quite receptive to his call. She asked him to fax over a resume and said that she would get back to him (or her assistant would), in order to set up an appointment for him to interview with her and some of the key salespeople in the firm. Gerald ended up faxing his resume three days after talking to Ms. Monahan. Her office emailed him with a link to an online blank job application, which he quickly filled out. A nerve-wrecking week went by, and Gerald finally received an appointment for an interview for the following week.

The interview started at 9. a.m.. First, before he met with anyone, Gerald took a battery of tests and filled out a set of questionnaires. The exams included everything from basic math to what

seemed to be an IQ test, to questions about self-image, his honesty, and his preference about the type of work he liked to do. Rather than having a long break for lunch they had a working lunch where HR went through the entire compensation package: a base salary plus commission, medical benefits, and a really good retirement plan where the firm contributed 5% of his salary.

His first interview that afternoon seemed to set the tone for the rest of the day. Gerald had a wonderful interview with the Sales Director, Sam Arden, and found it easygoing, laid-back. Sam, after telling Gerald about the firm and the job, asked Gerald some brief standard questions about his background and sales history and what made Gerald special enough to become a sales associate with Home Builders. Gerald expected these questions and was quite prepared. The next series of questions, however, were very different from anything he had experienced before. Sam would tell him a little story and then ask Gerald what he would do or say if he were the sales associate in the fictional story. No one had ever asked Gerald’s opinion about anything at his prior job and he felt he had finally found a firm that cared about what he thought. Gerald thought he sailed through these scenarios with flying colors.

After the interview with Sam, Gerald was directed to a small conference room where three people who identified themselves as area managers and one person from HR asked him a series of questions about his selling approach, his work habits, and his ability to work with a sales partner. This session was repeated in another room with another three area managers and another person from HRM. Both of these sessions included a series of follow-up questions that Gerald was happy to answer. In both of these interviews after the one with Sam, he was always asked to explain the most difficult sales situation he has ever faced and how he has handled it. However, apparently he was not the only candidate the company was looking at since in the second interview with the area managers and the HRM representative he sat together with a different candidate in the room and both were asked the same questions to which they often had similar but sometimes also very different answers. Gerald felt that his answers were overall much better than the responses of the other candidate. He even felt that the interviewers had to make suggestions to the other person in terms how to answer, basically giving the other candidate only the option to agree or disagree with the suggested answers. They never did this when they asked him questions. At 5 p.m. the last session ended and Sam walked in and told Gerald he would contact him in a week to let him know the decision of Home Builders.

In the days after Gerald left, some HRM personnel of Home Builders screened Gerald’s online profile accessing his Facebook and Twitter as well as Instagram account. From the list of his contact on those three social media HRM randomly picked a few individuals and contacted them in order to get some references. Gerald learned about it only by chance as one of his friends contacted him via email asking if he could respond to Home Builder’s request – Gerald answered affirmative. Later he would find out that ten other of his acquaintances, friends and even a coworker at Marcy’s had been contacted by Home Builders.

A week went by, and Gerald had not heard anything from Home Builders. He finally called and was told that a letter was in the mail to him and he should await arrival. Three days later, and with continued impatience at work and at home, Gerald received the letter. The first word he read, “congratulations”, sent him into an ecstatic frenzy. He then read further and realized that

12

this is not what he was told. Their job offer was commission-based only, and, assuming that medical and dental packages ran about the same cost and that coverage was the same as his current job, Gerald would lose paid vacation time but perhaps gain in terms of contributions to a retirement plan. Gerald though: “This is not the same great deal that I was told about during the interview process! Who sold who in the job?”.

At the same time as Gerald was asking this question to himself, Angie was standing at her (former) desk at Home Builders picking up her personal items and wondering how she had gotten into this mess. At one shoulder was the head of HR and at the other was one of the security officers. They were there to escort her out of the building as soon as she retrieved her personal items. Thinking back, the last hour or so had been a whirlwind. She had come to work like she had for the past several months, maybe a little late and a little hungover, but she was there. Shortly after she had sat down at her desk to start making phone calls, her supervisor had called her into her office. She asked her to accompany her to the HR Manager’s office. Once there, she saw a printout of her Facebook page, but at least they weren’t the postings she first had considered putting up. She was really glad that when she graduated from college she had purged her account of all previous personal pictures.

Angie knew, like all of the other employees, that management had recently been going through some of the social networking sites to review potential recruits before they decided to hire them, but she didn’t know anything about management reviewing current employees’ webpages. Well, she thought, my pages are pretty clean since I was warned about this by career services in college. However, what she saw next really bothered her. There was the highlighted section of her blog from last Thursday. She had forgotten about that! In the post, she had noted that she had a whopping hangover because of the night out on Wednesday and saw her post: “I think I’ll call in sick because I just can’t face working for that idiot with this headache. I’ll take a pill and relax today taking a sunbath”. Well, now they knew that she wasn’t sick. How could she have been that stupid?

As she sat there, she suddenly realized that this was no normal conversation – it looked more like an inquisition. And when the HR manager informed her that the company was going to terminate her employment by today – i.e. right away - and she would be required to pick up her personal belongings right now, she couldn’t believe it. What had happened to freedom of speech? What had happened to a person’s right to have a life outside of work? Could they monitor her personal communications that had nothing to do with work and then use them against her? She wasn’t sure, but she thought that was wrong. Nonetheless, here she was cleaning out her desk with a security guard next to her. She should have been more careful: the internet is full of references to people fired for things that they posted on their personal webpages. And it doesn’t necessarily matter if you set your pages to private. Your friends may still capture comments that you’ve made on their pages without you even knowing about it. In addition, recruiters may use your “friend” list to find people to call for references, and if your friend is unaware of the purpose of the call, they might say something that you’d rather wish they didn’t. Employers can look at who has recommended you on sites such as LinkedIn and may approach those references as well.

As Angie finished packing her personal belonging she noticed that the security guard had filmed her cleaning out her desk. While she was walking to the exit, she already saw the recording being streamed on the video monitors placed all around the corporate headquarters and other employees were watching it and staring at her while she was walked through the crowd followed by the security guard like a criminal. The subtitle of the video said: “This is how we deal with problematic employees!”... This seems to have been a modern version of the medieval pillory punishment which publicly exposed and shamed culprits. Some of her colleagues were also her friends and after her dismissal they did not want to meet her anymore. In the evening after her dismissal she started to have depressions and a first panic attack - both even got more intensive with time passing! A large part of her social network and friendship was cut off as a result and this further pushed her into a severe depression in the months after the incident. Angie soon needed psychoanalytic treatment and antidepressant medication to get by.

Not long ago her career in the company seemed to have been quite bright: she was asked to attend various workshops that were designed to train future junior managers. Apparently, she was in the roster of those employees who may be promoted into leadership positions she thought. Angie was familiarized in one of those workshops with strategic management and business strategies and analyzed her own company’s strategy using Porter’s concept of business strategies. A leadership workshop, as it was called, was also quite interesting: next to some presentations about some leadership theories and HRM issues she would be asked to engage into some role plays – one was about “democratic leadership” and the other about how to discipline subordinates. Now she was the one to be disciplined while she was never in the position to use what she has learned by herself. But, perhaps, at least she learned something in the workshop which will help her to address the way she was dealt with by the company: how they handled her case was not correct, she thought!

While Angie encountered this problem, Nora, one of several supervisors at Home Builders that has 50 sales teams, each with 10 members, was busy with performance evaluation. For this, Nora was supposed to use a graphical rating scale that has four performance indicators (1. Quality of work; 2. Quantity of work; 3. Politeness; 4. Integrity) with a 6 point scale ranging from 6 = (outstanding/best) to 0 = (problematic/poor). Employees will receive a corresponding performance bonus on top of their base pay depending on the rating. If they receive a rating of 1 on all four indicators (= 4) they will receive a 4% bonus and so on (a rating of 0 on the rating scale for all items will, of course, result in a 0% bonus) with a maximum of a 24% bonus pay. Nora can, of course, not observe all employees permanently and, therefore, usually simply looks at the subordinate’s work behavior and work outcome one week before the performance evaluations are due. Nora considers this as a “random sample” for evaluating work behavior and outcome. However, Nora’s subordinates are all aware of the fact that their performance is only monitored that particular week. Nora usually gives all employees scores between 4-5 (4= very good and 5 = excellent) in order to not upset anyone. Nora feels confident that this is fair since all subordinates demonstrated actually very good/excellent work in that particular week. Yet, there are significant differences in performances throughout the year. There are two subordinates in the team, who are actually outperforming any others in the company on all of the indicators!

But Anton has also to deal with another problem: one his subordinates, Carl, has been caught being involved in a scheme of fraudulent sales with a kick-back scheme. Anton is fuming since this particular team member had received a great reference from his previous supervisor - even highlighting the very high moral standard. Fact is that Carl was involved in some illegal schemes even at his previous employer as Anton found out later. The supervisor who provided the excellent reference only did not learn about those activities only since he omitted the regular auditing duties since he was too busy. Anton reports this fact to Ms. Monahan who decides that it is now payback time. Ms. Monahan is aware of the fact that the fraudulent subordinate’s wife is expecting soon to give birth to a child. Ms. Monahan instructs the HRM department specifically to wait to inform Carl about his immediate dismissal on the day when the birth of the new child has been confirmed to make him feel miserable. Of course, as is the practice at Home Builders, a short video clip will be created and screened on the video monitors of the company while Carl will be pictured being escorted outside of the premises by security personnel.

Question: Identify all the HRM issues and carefully analyze them while using relevant concepts and theories you have been familiarized with and suggest how Home Builders could have avoided the various problems.

Case study
Barbara is a trained counsellor and thoroughly enjoys the level of human interaction she encounters in the workplace. You are Barbara’s manager. You find Barbara personable, trustworthy and always available to listen to you and others when they have a work-related issue or grievance. As a result, Barbara has developed positive relationships with many of her colleagues, increasing her job satisfaction.
In a meeting, Barbara puts forward the idea of implementing a mentoring program in the organisation. Troy, another counsellor in your team, quickly dismisses Barbara’s suggestion due to a lack of time and resources to implement the program. Troy is dismissive of Barbara’s idea despite her having spent time putting a presentation together for the meeting.
After the meeting, Barbara sends Troy an email requesting that he take a look at her presentation. He ignores the email and doesn’t respond. Barbara takes Troy’s response personally and begins to feel unappreciated, unsupported and less confident in her abilities. She bottles up her emotions and begins to have trouble finding enjoyment in her work tasks.
You notice a change in Barbara’s mood and that she finds it harder to stay motivated and enthusiastic when you are around her. When you ask her how she is feeling, Barbara’s emotions come to the surface and she describes how disconnected she feels from both Troy and the organisation.

Answers the questions as per the case study

How could you assist Troy to better understand the effect of his behaviour on Barbara’s emotional state?

What does Barbara’s behaviour indicate and what aspects of Barbara’s emotional intelligence could be further developed?

How could you work with Barbara to develop some constructive actions that will help her build a better relationship with Troy?