Assignment #3
Chapter 5: Information for Making Human Resource Decisions
The purpose of this chapter is to highlight the importance of companies having the information they need to make informed human resource management decisions. This chapter focuses on the most basic type of information used by HR managers to form the basis for HR planning. This information is about the supply and demand for labor. The chapter ends with a discussion of what has been called big data or data analytics.
Objective:
Describe human resource planning as a source of information for decision-making. Many people might assume that the number of unpleasant and undesirable jobs has declined. This is not true—many Americans work in dirty, grimy, unsafe settings:
Chicken-processing facilities are unpleasant, dangerous, and unhealthy; workers often cut themselves because space is tight. Jobs such as these are becoming increasingly common
Deliverable: Write responses to questions in a single paragraph format and include references for each answer.
What industry sectors are most likely to add jobs during a down economy? During an improving economy?
Are there employment sectors that are essentially unaffected by economic fluctuations?
Managers attempt to forecast the future supply of and demand for jobs and employees. One major uncertainty is which jobs may become more or less popular in the future.
What are some very new kinds of jobs of which you are aware?
What jobs on the 2014 list may be in danger of disappearing in the near future?
How relevant are the concepts of competencies to the jobs in a chicken-processing plant?
What information sources would be of most significance regarding jobs in a chicken-processing plant?
Are dirty, dangerous, and unpleasant jobs an inevitable part of any economy?
Chapter 6: Human Resource Decision-Making in Organizations
The purpose of this chapter is to discuss how decisions are made about the size of an organization—in other words, how many employees should be on the payroll at any time. This is often referred to as the “head count.” The chapter begins with ethics in decision-making. Decision-making about both temporary and more permanent employees is considered, as well as special problems about the size of an organization’s workforce after a merger or acquisition.
Deliverable: Write responses to questions in a single paragraph format and include references for each answer.
What role might HR play in helping to enhance employee engagement?
How easy or difficult would you expect it to be to transform disengaged workers into engaged workers?
HR managers use two kinds of data. One type is based on employee education, skills, experience, demographics, and so on. The other is information from external sources
Can a manager ever have too much information? Why or why not?
What issues arise when a firm looks at its employees’ posts on social media sites to gain information about them?
Do you think evidence-based management seems like common sense? If so, why wasn’t it advocated earlier?
Are there circumstances in which evidence-based management might not be the best approach?
Costco has a policy of not hiring business school graduates. Could automated evidence-based management ever replace human decision makers? Why or why not?
Would you want to work under Jack Welch’s system at General Electric? Why or why not?