Activities + Cases
JOB ANALYSIS: 1. “Smaller Organizations do not need Job analysis for their jobs, because most of their employees conduct a myriad of activities, too far reaching for a standard job analysis”- Comment 2. An individual hired for a position finds out that the work he was asked to do was not the work he was hired to do. Is it possible? Discuss. 3. Application Case Tropical Storm Charley In August 2004, tropical stormCh a rley hit North Carolina and the Optima Air Filter Company. Many employees’ homes were devastated and the firm found that it had to hire almost 3 completely new crews, one for each of its shifts. The problem was that the “Old-timers” had known their jobs so well that no one had ever bothered to draw up job descriptions for them. When about 30 new employees began taking their places, there was general confusion about what they should do and how they should do it. The storm quickly became old news to the firm’s out-of state customers- who wanted filters, not excuses. Phil Mann, the firm’s President, was at his wits end. He had about 30 new employees, 10 oldtimers, and his original factory supervisor, Maybelline. He decided to meet with Linda Lowe, a consultant from the local universities business school. She immediately had the old- timers fill out a job questionnaire that listed all their tasks, duties & responsibilities. Arguments ensued almost at once- Both Phil & Maybelline thought the old-timers were exaggerating to make themselves look more important, and the old-timers instead that the list faithfully reflected their duties. Meanwhile, the customers clamoured for their filters. Question 1: Should Phil & Linda ignore that old-timers’ protests and write up the job descriptions as they see fit? Why? Why not? How would you go about resolving the differences? Solution: No, Phil & Linda should never ignore the old-timers’ protest. Since its the old–timers who have full knowledge about the tasks, duties & responsibilities they used to perform. Ignoring them may result to turbulence among the workers and they’ll feel cheated hence leading to lower productivity. Writing job description without the information acquired from old-timers would be like climbing mountain without a guide. Since they know the nature and requirement of the job very well, they must be asked about the information of the job before writing a job description. To resolve the problem I would have used a questionnaire with both structured as well as openended questions. That would have lead to lesser confusion and misinterpretation by Phil & Maybelline. (The Job Information Sheet is given below which consist of both structured and unstructured questions).
Question 2: How would you have conducted the job analysis? What should Phil do now? Solution: I would have conducted the job analysis in one of the two ways. Either I would have used questionnaire (with both structured as well as unstructured questions) or the interview method. In the interview method, after collecting the information, I would further proceeded to get the information reviewed and verified by the immediate supervisor of the interviewee and the interviewee. Phil should now use the information, which is verified and reviewed by supervisor and worker both, for the training purpose of the new worker. The information consists of task, duties & responsibilities of the workers. When the workers will be trained accordingly they’ll know what to do and how to do, resulting in lesser confusion and time-wastage & increase in productivity so that Optima Air Filter Company comes back on track. 4. Develop JD ans JS for: a. Traffic police. b. Hotel Receptionist c. T & P officer of an institute.
HUMAN RESOURCE PLANNING 1. Suppose HR planners estimate that because of several technological innovations your company will need 25% fewer employees in three years. What actions would you take today? 2. What can an organization do • when shortage of labour is anticipated? • When internal supply exceeds demand? 3. How can redundancies of labour in private sector units be removed? Discuss
RECRUITMENT 1. Write a recruitment ad for following posts: a. Hotel Receptionist b. Engineering college lecturer c. Project leader (IT) 2. What are your views in having some form of temperory or leased employees instead of having permnanent ones?
3. Working in groups, visit an employment exchange office at your place. Prepare following questins for discussion in the class: a. What types of jobs seems to be available through this agency predominently? b. To what extent do you think this particular agency would be a good source of professional, technical, managerial applicants? c. What other services does that ofice provide? d. What formalities nrrd to be completed by applicants before their applications are processed by the exchange office? 4. Find atleast five employment ads, either on the internet or local newspaper, that suggests that the company is family-friendly and should appeal to women, minorities, older workers. Discuss what they are doing to be family-friendly.
SELECTION 1. Working in groups, develop a list of specific selection techniques that you would suggest your director to hire your next professor at your institute. Explain why you chose each selection technique? 2. If you were chairman of your company, what considerations would guide your judgement on the following employment issues: a. Hiring of relatives of employees?
b. Promotion from within or selecting the best from outside? c. Hiring physically handicapped persons? d. Hiring Sc’s, SZT’s and candidates belonging to minority community? 3. Case study Tehri Hydro Electric Corporation Ltd, (THDC), with Headquarters at Rishikesh, is a joint-venture company owned by the Government of India and the Uttar Pradesh State Government. The company was set up to develop, operate, maintain the Tehri Hydro Power Complex and other Hydro power projects. The Tehri dam, situated on the river Bagirathi, is the largest earth-filled dam in Asia that is designed to withstand a high level of seismic activity. The Hydro poer plant attached to the dam has a generating capacity of 1,000 MW. The project involved large-scale displacement of people, who were residents of the towns and villages that fell within the reservoir area for the dam. As per legal regulations and international humanitarian
conventions, the project affected - people had to be relocated or compensated, and the entire exercise was difficult and time-consuming. After the successful completion and commissioning of the project, THDC is developing other hydropower projects, including the 444 MW Vishnugad Pipalkoti Hydro-Electric Project (VPHEP), located in Chamoli District in Uttarakhnd. According to the national policy on rehabilitation of displaced people, the company is responsible for rehabilitation of people affected by the project. The compny has decided to employ professional social workers to work as interface between THDC and the local community. They will facilitate the rehabilitation and Resettlement work in the area. THDC has approached you for help. 1. What should the job description of a professional social worker look like? 2. What are the ideal job specificatons for the person at this position?
3. How should we have gone about recruiting and screening for this position? What selection tools specifically would you use?
INDUCTION 1. “If employees are properly selected, there should be no need for an orientation programme.” Give your viewpoint. 2. “Induction is the guided adjustment of emplpoyee to the organization and his work environment” discuss. 3. Case Study: Backfired Surmise Naik, AGM Materials is fuming and fretting. He bumped into Kamath, GM Materials, threw the resignation letter on his table, shouted and walked out of his room swiftly. Naik has reason for his sudden outburst. He has been driven to the wallPerhaps, details of the story will tell the reasons for Naik’s bile and why he put in his papers, barely four months after he took up his present assignment. The year was 1995 when Naik quit the prestigious SAIL plant at Visakapattanam. As a manager materials, Naik enjoyed powers-he could even place an order for materials worth Rs 25 lakh. He needed nobody’ds prior approval. Naik joined a pulp making plant located at Harihar in Karnataka, as AGM Materials. The plant is a part of the multi-product and multi-plant conglomerate owned by a prestigious business house in India.
Obviously, perks, designation and reputation of the conglomerate lured Naik away from the public sector Steel monolith. When he joined the eucalyptus pulp making company, llittle did Naik realise that he needed prior approval to place an order for materials worth 12 lakh. He presumed that he had the authority to place an order by himself worth half the amount of what he used to do at the mega steel maker. He placed the order, materials arrived, were received, accepted and used up in the plant. Trouble started when the bill for Rs 12 lakh came from the vendor. The accounts department withheld the payment for the reason that the bill was not endorsed by kamath. Kamath refused to sign on the bill as his approval was not taken by Naik before placing the order. Naik felt fumigated and cheated. A brief encounter with Kamath only aggravated the problem. Naik was curtly told that he should have known the company rules before venturing.Naik decided to quit. Questions: 1. Does the company have an orientation programme? 2. If you were Naik, what would have you done? 4. Design a two day Induction programme for a sales executive in FMCG company.
TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT 1. Working in groups, use the phone or web to contact a provider of management development seminars. Obtain copies of its recent listings of seminar offerings. • At what levels of managers are the seminar offerings aimed? • What seem to be the most popular type of management programmes? • Why do you think that’s the case? 2. • • • •
What training techniques do you recommend for each of the following occupations? Why? A clerk in an office A welder An assembly-line worker An inexperienced supervisor
3. As a front line supervisor, what indicators would you need inorder to decide whether a low-performing subordinate was a selection mistake or merely needs training? 4. Case study: Reinventing the wheel at Apex Door company Jim Delaney, president of Apex Door, has a problem. No matter how often he tells his employees how to do their jobs, they invariably “decide to do it their way,” as he puts it, and arguments ensue between Jim,
the employee, and the employee’s supervisor. One example is the door-design department, where the designers are expected to work with the architects to design doors that meet the specifications. While it’s not “rocket science”as Jim puts it, the designer invariably makes mistakes- such as designing in too much steel, a problem that can cost Apex tens of thousands of wasted dollars, once you consider the number of doors in, say, a 30-storey office tower. The order processing department is another example. Jim has a very specific and detailed way he wants the order written up, but ost of the order clerks don’t understand how to actually use the multipage order form. They simply improvise when it comes to a detailed question such as whether to classify the customer as “industrial” or “commercial”. The current training process is as follows. None of the jobs has a Training manual, although several have out-of-date job descriptions. The training for new people is all on the job. Usually, the person leaving the company trains the new person during the one- or two- week overlap period, but if there is no overlap, the new person is trained as well as possible by other employees who have filled in occassionally on the job in the past. The training is basiccaly the same throughout the company- for machinists, secretaries, assemblers, engineers and accounting clerks. Questions: 1. What do you think of Apex’s training process? Could it help to explain why employees “do things their way” and if so, how? 2. What role should Job descriptions play in training at Apex. 3. Explain in detail what you would do to improve the training process at Apex.
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL 1. How do I like thee? Lets at least be aware of our personal biases a. Generate a list of people you like and a list of those you dislike. (Be careful where this ends up) b. What seems to be the basis for your liking? Is it gender? Physical attractiveness? Similar interests? c. Does your liking seem to be highly related to performance? In answering the question you might look at your lists and see how many on your liked list you would classify as low performers and how many on your disliked list you would classify as high performers. In other words, if you transformed your two lists into a two by two matrix of liking (liked and disliked) and performance (poor and good), would you have a roughly balanced number of names across the four cells? If not, there would seem to be a correlation between liking and performance.
2. Behaviors in the classroom Behaviors can have disadvantages as performance criteria. However for some jobs, such as those involving delivering a service, performance may be better captured as a behavioral process than as specific outcomes. For example, the classroom performance of a college professor is likely represented by how the professor presents material and interacts with students than by outcomes such as average assigned grade. 1. Consider the position of professor in a college classroom. Apply Critical Incident technique (CIT) to generate BARS. Share with the group the dimensions and behavioral anchors your team generated. 2. What type of performance dimensions and rating scales are typically used to assess professor performance? Are there any advantages/disadvantages to the behavioral approach? Describe. 3. Are there results-based criteria you would recommend for assessing the classroom performance of college professor? Describe. 4. What do you think is better for measuring college professor classroom performance: behaviors or outcomes? Why?
3. Design an employee performance appraisal form for: •
For professor, An educational institute.
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Managing Director.
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Service sector (IT company).
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A manufacturing company (Pharma).
4. Case study: (Performance Appraisal)(unit-6) Mr. S.Basu, the Head of HR in Tandra Technologies Ltd has been a veteran HR Professional in the company for the last 25 years. When Mr.Anup Golash joined as the new CEO of the company, he called upon Mr. Basu for a chat in his cabin. He began saying, “Mr. Basu ever since my joining I have been hearing about people complaining the validity of ratings. I think you need to organize a Training programme for managers to help them to understand the various rating errors and how to avoid them”. Mr. Basu impatiently waiting for his chance to speak said, “Rating errors are common everywhere. After all it’s human! I have given such training in the past but in vain. I think leniency has become a hallmark of our line managers”. Questions for discussion:
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What is your opinion on Mr. Anup’s approach to appraisal system in the company?
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Do you agree with the contentions of Mr. Basu? Why?
CAREER PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 1. Write a one page essay stating, “Where I would like to be carer-wise 10 years from today?
2. Case Study Maya Industrial products ia partnership firm with more than 20 years of successful business operation. In the course of 20 years, the firm has been trading in textile products and has 30 dedicated personnel. Pay and promotions were ad-hoc and solely decided by the Managing Partner, Mr. Suresh Gopal. There were no career paths and positions were discreetly assigned. Mr. Amit Gopal, the young MBA qualified son of Mr. Suresh Gopal joined the company on 26.03.2005 as the Junior Managing Partner. He had lots of ideas in his mind to expand the company and engaged a consulting firm namely, TD Management Consultants for advising on HR issues, primarily recruitment. 12 new hiring were made in a short span of 2.5 months. These new recruits were much better qualified and were picked from large companies with high compensation packages. However, within 14 months, 9 people left the firm at various stages. The consulting firm TD Management Consultant was again called back to ascertain the reasons for such high attrition levels although compensation paid to these new hires were very high. The consulting firm took a very systematic approach and it got in such with all the new hires who left the firm in addition to existing new hires still working for the firm. The consultant reported to Mr. Amit Gopal that most of the people said that they saw no future for themselves in the firm and emphasized that apparently Mr. Amit Gopal also had no clue to their future.
Questions for discussion: 1. Why did most of the new hires left. 2. Did TD Management Consultant play its role effectively? 3. What should Mr. Amit do now?
JOB EVALUATION 1. Case Study: DJ’s Meat & Meat Products Company (job evaluation, unit 1) In the DJ’s Company, the butchery section has always been regarded as one of the worst places to work. The work is dirty, hot and stinking. Physical endurance rather than brains and intelligence is considered as chief requirement to get the job done in this section. Yet according to job evaluation plan of the company, physical ability and working conditions are weighted relatively lower tha responsibility, training and skill. As a result, most of the butchery jobs are rated at the bottom of the wage scale of the company. In recent years, it has been increasingly difficult to get men working in butchery. Often, management had to employ men who could not get jobs elsewhere due to their personal limitations in terms of IQ level. This has led to further lowering of the already low social status of the butchery in the eyes of other employees of the plant. The matter has reached a crisis now. There are twenty vacancies in the section at present and it is almost impossible to hire new men for these jobs at the evaluated rate. The HR manager of the company has a difficult task. Questions for discussion: •
How should this problem be handled?
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Would you suggest the management to revise the job evaluation programme or would you suggest treating the butchery job as an exception to job evaluation?
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How would the management deal with the reactions of other workers if it decides to increase butchery wages?
2. Working in groups, conduct salary surveys in Nagpur city for the following positions: •
entry level accountant
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entry level engineer
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entry level receptionist
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entry level Lecturer
What sources did you use?
COMPENSATION MANAGEMENT
1. Group activity: You are the HR consultant to a small business with about 40 employees. At the present
time the firm offers only five CL, five SL and legally mandated benefits like insurance, social security measures ets. Develop a list of other benefits you believe it should offer, along with reasons why?
2. Group activity: Shalini is running a popular play school in Defence Colony, New delhi from rented premises. Her school caters to 50 children and has three teachers who are paid Rs 5000/ per month. In addition she has employed two helpers and a caretaker for the school and pays them Rs 4,000 each per month. Shalini wishes to register the school as a company and start two new branches on a similar pattern in Delhi. If more teavhers have to be attracted to her chain, the compensation system has to be redesigned and a benefit package included. The upper limit on the fee per child is Rs.1,000 per month and 40% of the expenses go for establishment expenses like rentals, power and water charges. In the time alloted, your group should create a benefits package for this school.
3. Discuss: If selection and Placement decisions are done effectively, individual performance should not vary a great deal, therefore, an incentive system is not necessary”.
4. If you are asked to create employee awareness about the fringe benefits, what actions would you take without changing the way your company provides such benefits?
