Deck 3: Planning

Question 1

The process of human resource planning should be an ongoing process that is updated very frequently, ideally multiple times in a year.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

When a company's values are consistent with practices that employees encounter on a day-to-day basis, motivation, communication, and retention are enhanced.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

It is usually more efficient and effective for HR managers to just focus on their own functional responsibilities, and avoid getting bogged down with learning about the organization's strategy.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Culture is a set of easily recognized and measured properties of an organization that mostly includes things like formal policies and procedures.

Question 5

Planning based on a specific group of employees, such as faculty in specialized areas of a university or nursing employees, is called population-based HRP.

Question 6

In project based HR planning, the organization's representatives set up a system that looks far into the future and tries to avoid consideration of short term perturbations in the market.

Question 7

Staffing planning should focus on benchmarking policies that are successful at other companies, because they will probably work with your organization's culture as well.

Question 8

Counting the number of employees on payroll may be a misleading indicator of the workforce because it ignores the amount of scheduled time worked by each employee relative to a full workweek.

Question 9

Strategy planning incorporates evaluating the organization's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

Question 10

Some of the most significant workforce trends affecting staffing planning include high costs of healthcare, increased global competition, and greater need for cross-cultural business knowledge.

Question 11

Although culture is intangible, it can have very significant effects on staffing planning activities.

Question 12

In human resources planning, a comparison is made between labor force requirements and labor availability.

Question 13

Advances in technology always result in net job destruction, which is one of the main reasons unemployment rates have continued to increase over time.

Question 14

Data from the US Department of labor shows that labor force participation has been rapidly increasing in recent years.

Question 15

Statistical techniques are of little importance to HR managers and should usually be rejected as methods for evaluating HRP needs.

Question 16

Most employers note that high school graduates have more than adequate skills in the areas of reading comprehension, writing, and math, but do not have sufficient critical thinking and time management skills.

Question 17

Projections suggest that job growth is likely to occur in health services sectors, whereas production and agriculture will see declines in demand for workers.

Question 18

The gap between current workforce size and available workforce size is a critical part of the reconciliation process.

Question 19

The four major internal and external influences on HR and planning are organizational strategy, organizational culture, labor markets, and technology.

Question 20

In plan-based HR planning, the organization's representatives set up a system that is integrally related to the organization's strategic planning process.

Question 21

When conducting Markov analysis, it is desirable to have 20 or more employees in each job category/level.

Question 22

In regression analysis, historical predictors of workforce size, like sales or new customers, are used to predict staffing levels.

Question 23

Staffing objectives are derived from identified gaps between requirements and availabilities.

Question 24

Sometimes members of the internal workforce will resent external hires, which can limit the effectiveness external hiring.

Question 25

Markov Analysis is used to assess a previous period's workforce supply on the basis of historical patterns of external applications.

Question 26

A flexible workforce can bring in new technical and administrative knowledge that isn't available from the core workforce.

Question 27

Internal hiring methods are often less expensive than external hiring methods.

Question 28

Through replacement and succession planning the organization constructs internal talent pipelines.

Question 29

Companies often prefer internal hiring because it gives them a large labor market to recruit from.

Question 30

A core workforce is nearly always less expensive than a flexible workforce because the core workforce will accept lower pay and benefits.

Question 31

Long term options for dealing with an employee shortage include hires, transfers into the position, retraining workers, or transferring the work out of the firm.

Question 32

A core workforce is an excellent technique for acquiring new technical and administrative knowledge.

Question 33

In scenario planning, a variety of potential issues that might affect future plans is considered, and multiple different strategies corresponding to each scenario for the coming year are developed simultaneously.

Question 34

The key to ratio analysis is assessing each promotable employee for KSAO or competency gaps, and where there are gaps, creating employee training and development plans that will close the gap.

Question 35

Replacement and succession planning are conducted primarily for managerial jobs.

Question 36

Manager judgment is an ideal method for forecasting workforce availabilities for companies with large numbers of employees in many job categories.

Question 37

One advantage of a core workforce is that the organization maintains the legal right to control employees working in its behalf, in terms of both work process and expected results.

Question 38

Trend analysis directly takes into account external factors that might change trends.

Question 39

Succession planning precedes replacement planning.

Question 40

If an organization faces a surplus of workers, it is likely that they will have to either downsize or encourage voluntary retirement, because there aren't many alternatives to these actions.

Question 41

Employing organizations usually have a lot of control over the quality of the flexible workforce.

Question 42

A flexible workforce can be obtained by using staffing firms or independent contractors.

Question 43

Organizations need to take diversity into account because the workforce has become more diverse.

Question 44

Studies show that women and minorities are largely indifferent to whether an organization has a commitment to diversity in their recruiting efforts.

Question 45

Evidence suggests that demographically diverse teams are far more effective than homogeneous teams.

Question 46

Some states have banned the use of AAPs for government contractors and educational institutions.

Question 47

Despite popular press to the contrary, there hasn't really been an increase in the number of Latinos and Asians in the American workforce.

Question 48

Many organizations do not take demographic shifts in the workplace into account when developing staffing plans.

Question 49

One reason organizations outsource is because specialized vendors can achieve economies of scale for routine tasks that would be performed across many organizations.

Question 50

Which of the following is a major part of organizational strategy's influence on staffing?

A) Demographic trends
B) Current financial and human resources in the organization
C) Financial and marketing goals
D) Both Current financial and human resources in the organization and Financial and marketing goals

Question 51

Targeted recruitment, inclusion of women and African-Americans on top management teams, work family accommodations, and affirmative action plans increase the racial and gender diversity of the organization's managerial workforce.

Question 52

AAPs are organization-specific plans that have a legal origin and basis.

Question 53

Outsourcing is a more drastic step than using independent contractors or temporary employees.

Question 54

Which of the following are likely to occur during job expansion periods?

A) New hire rates increase for entry level jobs, but decrease for higher level jobs
B) Departure of some employees to take opportunities at other firms
C) Stagnation of movement through internal labor markets
D) Reductions in turnover rates

Question 55

Outsourcing is confined almost exclusively to manufacturing work.

Question 56

A general rule of thumb is that if the ratio of incumbency percentage for a group to their availability is less than 80%, the organization should establish a placement goal to increase minority representation.

Question 57

Replacement goals from AAPs are often legally termed "quotas" for minorities and women in an organization.

Question 58

Active diversity planning occurs when the organization encourages underrepresented minorities to apply for positions, actively recruits from a variety of sources, and provides additional training and mentoring to underrepresented groups.

Question 59

Federal contractors are legally required to have AAPs in place.

Question 60

The components of AAPs are enforced by the Department of Workforce Diversity (DWD).

Question 61

In Markov analysis for staffing, ________ is used to forecast future workforce availabilities.

A) cost data
B) product demand
C) transition probabilities
D) Bayesian inference

Question 62

A manager has collected data on the dollar value of sales and has divided this by the number of FTE.Assuming this relationship will hold in the future, and using projected sales, the manager estimates the number of employees required.This is an example of ________.

A) regression analysis
B) ratio analysis
C) trend analysis
D) Markov analysis

Question 63

The process of determining reconciliation and gaps tells managers ________.

A) how many employees will be needed for jobs in the coming period
B) why employees are leaving the organization
C) which activities should be performed to place new employees in appropriate positions
D) when employees are most likely to quit

Question 64

A manager has gathered data on staffing levels over time, and then predicts future requirements based on the pattern of demand, taking seasonal variations in demand into account.This equation is used to predict future staffing levels.This is an example of ________.

A) regression analysis
B) ratio analysis
C) trend analysis
D) Markov analysis

Question 65

Which of the following would not be addressed in forecasting HR availabilities?

A) Promotions
B) Transfers
C) Exits
D) Motivation level

Question 66

Which of the following creates a problem for Markov analysis?

A) large sample sizes
B) lack of employee moves
C) poor economic conditions
D) small sample sizes

Question 67

Markov analysis is a technique for ________.

A) job analysis
B) availability forecasting
C) HR requirement forecasting
D) seniority estimation

Question 68

Project-based HRP consists of ________.

A) organizational responses to sudden changes in the environment
B) planning focused on a specific employee group
C) planning that is part of the organization's strategic planning process
D) planning based on best practices of competitors

Question 69

Manager judgment is an important method for staffing in ________.

A) organizations with extensive records on human resources outcomes
B) smaller organizations
C) organizations with lateral diffusion of responsibility
D) organizations in the manufacturing sector

Question 70

In general, the labor force is becoming ________.

A) younger
B) older
C) less skilled
D) less diverse

Question 71

Which of the following are likely responses to labor shortages?

A) Decreased pay and benefits packages
B) Hiring bonuses and stock options
C) Decreased use of temporary employees
D) Higher hiring standards

Question 72

Which of the following is a likely effect of technology on employment demand?

A) Changes in the skill requirements of the workforce
B) Elimination of some jobs
C) Creation of new jobs
D) All of the above

Question 73

What is the set of intangible factors, including the expressed vision of executives, hierarchy and bureaucracy, and style of communication, that influences attitudes and behavior in organizations called?

A) Organizational strategy
B) Organizational culture
C) The labor market
D) None of the above

Question 74

Which of the following is not a shortcoming of using manager judgment for forecasting availability?

A) managers may not know employee intentions
B) the complexity of forecasting may overwhelm the manager
C) managers are always overly aggressive in making estimates of hiring requirements
D) none of the above is shortcomings of manager judgment

Question 75

What are some of the characteristics employers are seeing as in particular demand for new workers?

A) Professionalism
B) Critical thinking
C) Leadership
D) All of the above

Question 76

Population-based HRP consists of ________.

A) organizational responses to sudden changes in the environment
B) planning focused on a specific employee group
C) planning that is part of the organization's strategic planning process
D) planning based on best practices of competitors

Question 77

Human resource planning activities most directly involve ________.

A) assessing external environmental factors
B) forecasting labor requirements and availabilities
C) generating technological replacements for labor
D) all of the above

Question 78

A manager has collected data on sales, the economy, and taxes over a number of years, and statistically estimates an equation that describes how each of these predictors has affected staffing levels in the past.This equation is used to predict future staffing levels.This is an example of ________.

A) regression analysis
B) ratio analysis
C) trend analysis
D) Markov analysis

Question 79

Plan-based HRP consists of ________.

A) organizational responses to sudden changes in the environment
B) planning focused on a specific employee group
C) planning that is part of the organization's strategic planning process
D) planning based on best practices of competitors

Question 80

A transition matrix would appear in a ________.

A) regression analysis
B) stochastic analysis
C) Markov analysis
D) time series analysis