UNIVERSITY OF MALAYA

DEPARTMENT OF BUSINESS STRATEGY & POLICY

MID TERM TEST FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF MANAGEMENT

ACADEMIC SESSION 2020/2021: SEMESTER I

CQD7008: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

COURSE INSTRUCTOR: DR. KHAIRUDDIN NAIM BIN MOHD ZAIN

6th DECEMBER 2020 TIME: 1 HOUR

Instructions for Students:

You are required to answer all FIVE (5) questions listed below. The answer sheet needs
to be completed within the stipulated time frame indicated below.

The prescribed time to finish the exam is ONE (1) hour. However, you will be allowed a
grace time of another ONE (1) hour due to the online nature of this exam. Hence the
maximum time allowed is TWO (2) hours. No extra time will be allowed.

The total of 40 marks shown in this examination indicates that it reflects 10% of your
total grade.

Q.1. How does ‘Strategic Human Resource Management’ differ from ‘Human Resource
Management’ and give examples of how strategic human resource management can play
a vital role in creating competitive advantage for a company? (10 marks)

Q.2. Explain the importance of Job Analysis in relation to talent management. (10 marks)

Q.3. Briefly describe how a human resource manager would be able to forecast the demand for
employees in the future and where he or she can get the supply. Discuss about the
advantages and the disadvantages in applying it. (10 marks)

Q.4. What is the difference between reliability and validity? Provide examples.
(5 marks)

Q.5. Briefly discuss why selection interviews may be less useful than they should.
(5 marks)

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Name: Lim Yen Theng (CQD190017/17202505)

Q1

Human resource management involves numerous personnel-related activities, and HR

managers are less likely to interact with customers. Human resource management is the
process of acquiring, training, appraising, and compensating employees, and of attending to
their labor relations, health and safety, and fairness concerns. HRM falls under the staffing
function of the management process. HR management is important to all managers because
managers can do everything else right such as lay brilliant plans, draw clear organization charts,
set up world-class assembly lines, and use sophisticated accounting controls but still fail by
making personnel mistakes. For example, hiring the wrong person for the job; experience high
turnover; have your people not doing their best; waste time with useless interviews; have your
company taken to court because of your discriminatory actions; have your company cited under
federal occupational safety laws for unsafe practices; have some employees think their salaries
are unfair relative to others in the organization; allow a lack of training to undermine your
department's effectiveness; commit any unfair labor practices. .On the other hand, many
managers like presidents, generals, governors, supervisors have been successful even with
inadequate plans, organizations, or controls because they had the knack of hiring the right
people for the right jobs and motivating, appraising, and developing them. The direct handling of
people is an integral part of every line manager's duties. More specifically, line managers must
place the right person in the right job, orient and train new employees, improve the job
performance of each person, gain cooperation and develop smooth working relationships,
interpret the company's policies and procedures, control labor costs, and protect employees'
health and physical condition.

The five basic functions of the management process are planning, organizing, staffing, leading,
and controlling. Manager is the person responsible for accomplishing an organization's goals by
managing the efforts of the organization's people. Planning activities include establishing goals
and standards, developing rules and procedures, and developing plans and forecasting.
Organizing activities include giving specific task assignments to subordinates, establishing
departments, delegating authority to subordinates, and establishing channels of authority and
communication. Staffing activities include determining what type of people should be hired,
recruiting prospective employees, selecting employees, training and developing employees,
evaluating performance, counseling employees, compensating employees and setting
performance standards. Leading activities include manager to get others to get the job done,
maintaining morale and motivating subordinates. Controlling activities include setting standards
such as sales quotas, production levels, quality standards and taking corrective action as
needed. Managers then compare actual performance with the standards, which often involves
the use of metrics. Staffing is the function most readily related to human resource management.

The SHRM Human Resource Manager competencies are leadership & navigation, ethical
practice, business acumen, consultation, critical evaluation, global & cultural effectiveness and
communication. HR managers need to show how their actions are "adding value" for the
organization as a whole by boosting profits and performance. It also entails improving the
company’s processes, aligning HR’s activities with the company’s strategy, and fostering
employee engagement. Every company needs its human resource management policies and
activities to make sense in terms of its broad strategic aims. Strategic human resource
management means formulating and executing human resource policies and practices that
produce the employee competencies and behaviors the company needs to achieve its strategic
aims. The basic idea behind strategic human resource management is simple: In formulating

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human resource management policies and activities, the manager's aim must be to produce the
employee skills and behaviors that the company needs to achieve its strategic aims.
Management formulates a strategic plan. That strategic plan implies certain workforce
requirements. Given these workforce requirements, human resource management formulates
HR strategies (policies and practices) to produce the desired workforce skills, competencies,
and behaviors. Finally, the human resource manager identifies the measures he or she can use
to gauge the extent to which its new policies and practices are actually producing the required
employee skills and behaviors.

A high-performance work system is a set of strategic human resource management policies and
practices that promote organizational effectiveness. A high-performance work system is what
managers now expect from the HR system. It means that the HR system is designed to
maximize the overall quality of human capital throughout the organization. Based on ongoing
research, firms that use HPWS practices perform at a significantly higher level than those that
do not. Strategic human resource management is significant to a high-performance work
system. Strategic human resource management refers to formulating and executing human
resource policies and practices that produce the employee competencies and behaviors the
company needs to achieve its strategic aims and to maximize its human resources. In
formulating human resource management policies and activities, the manager's aim must be to
produce the employee skills and behaviors that the company needs to achieve its strategic aims
such as self-management and involvement. For HPWSs, that most likely means implementing
policies and practices regarding selection tests, training, merit increases, and incentive pay.
High-performance work organizations are more likely to use validated selection tests when
hiring employees, fill jobs internally, and use self-managing work teams. Pay increases are
more likely to be based on job performance rather than the number of years an employee has
worked for a firm. The primary purpose of implementing high-performance practices such as
recruiting, screening, and training is to foster a trained, empowered, self-motivated, and flexible
workforce. This help to gain competitive advantage allow a firm to differentiate its products or
services from its competitors to gain market share in order to have a competitive advantage.

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Q2

Job analysis is important in relation to talent management. Job analysis provides information for
recruitment and selection by laying out what the specific job entails duties and what human
characteristics are required to perform these activities. Work activities, human behaviors,
machines, tools, equipments, performance standards, job context, and human requirements are
the types of information typically collected through a job analysis. Managers use job analysis for
the purpose of recruitment, compensation, training, EEO compliance and performance
appraisal. Talent management is the holistic, integrated and results and goal-oriented process
of planning, recruiting, selecting, developing, managing, and compensating employees. It
means getting the right people (in terms of competencies) in the right jobs, at the right time,
doing their jobs correctly. The talent management process has 8 steps which are decide what
positions to fill, build a pool of job candidates, obtain application forms, use selection tools,
decide to whom to make an offer, orient, train, and develop employees, appraise employee and
compensate employees to maintain their motivation.

Competency modeling and workflow analysis involve organizational roles by its alignment with
organizational strategy and related performance goals. Competency-based job analysis
constitutes a required input for talent identification. It means describing the job in terms of
measurable, observable, behavioral competencies (knowledge, skills, and/or behaviors) that an
employee doing that job must exhibit to do the job well. It focus on the skills of the worker rather
than the duties, equipment, or working conditions of the job. It determines what an employee
should be able to do. Traditional job-analysis is more job-focused while competency-based
analysis is more worker-focused. Competency-based job descriptions are beneficial to firms that
are striving to be high-performance work systems. Here the whole thrust is to encourage
employees to work in a self-motivated way. Employers do this by empowering employees,
organizing the work around teams, encouraging team members to rotate freely among jobs, and
pushing more responsibility for things like day-to-day supervision down to the workers. Workflow
analysis is a detailed study of the flow of work from job to job in a work process. Usually, the
analyst focuses on one identifiable work process, rather than on how the company gets all its
work done using business reengineering process, job enrichment, rotation and enlargement.
Such a system leads to workers becoming collectively responsible for overall results rather than
merely focused on their individual tasks.

Job analysis results such as job descriptions and specifications shift towards recruitment
strategies that are led not by vacancies but rather by onboarding talents to be able to fill
strategic roles when they arise. A job description is a written statement of what the worker
actually does, how he or she does it, and what the job's working conditions are. You use this
information to write a job specification; this lists the knowledge, abilities, and skills required to
perform the job satisfactorily. The job specification takes the job description and answers the
question, "What human traits and experience are required to do this job effectively?" It shows
what kind of person to recruit and for what qualities you should test that person. Therefore,
rather than looking at existing job tasks, companies strategically may look, especially
concerning their leadership competency profiles, for visionary talents who are well connected,
cross-culturally skilled, and whose values match well with the firm culture.

The guidelines for an equal employment opportunity clearly require a sound and comprehensive
job analysis in order to validate the recruiting and selection criteria. For example, if a position
requires a bachelor’s degree, the organisation must be able to justify how that particular

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educational achievement matches the requirements of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of
that job comprises. It also must be able to show that the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed
to fill that particular position could be obtained only through formal education. Organizations use
job analysis to identify job specifications in order to plan how and where to obtain employees for
anticipated job openings, whether recruited internally or externally. Being able to specify the
correct requirements such as age, qualifications, experience, the salary and willingness to
relocate through the job analysis, the applicants who are attracted to the position are now
properly and clearly informed of what is expected of them if they were to fill this position. That
then allows for them to assess for themselves their competencies. This essentially minimizes
the number of irrelevant applications. The less irrelevant applicants, the smaller the pool of
candidates to go through when the time comes to select the person best suited for the position
based on the required specifications.

Strategic training and development is what aids organizations in achieving a competitive

advantage through the development of competences and talent management through the
development of firm-specific skills sets, and through the promotion of innovation and the
creation of new. It focuses on designing and implementing training systems which will have a
successful impact on the organization’s performance. During the training process, the new
employees/trainees are provided with the opportunity to learn the key skills which are required
to get the job done. Training aids the employees in understanding the complete job
requirements. Development is an on-going systematic procedure and through development
managerial staff learns to enhance all aspects of their knowledge and helps the employee to
efficiently and effectively get their job done. It also aims to improve the personality and attitude
of the individual to promote their all-round growth which will in turn help them to face any future
challenges that arise. It goes about changing the mindset of the employees and builds their
talent while creating future replacements for the company.

Both employee factors and organisational factors affect compensation administration. Employee
factors include satisfaction and needs, motivation as well as employee, group/department and
organisational performance. Organisational factors include needs, effectiveness and
efficiency/costs. The value of the job then translates to the appropriate compensation.
Information from a job analysis can be used to give more value, and therefore more pay, to jobs
involving more difficult tasks, duties, and responsibilities. Job analysis also can aid in the
management of various employee benefits programs.

The performance appraisal process should tie to the job description and performance
standards. These job descriptions and performance standards allow for management to
compare what an employee is supposed to have done with what they actually have done. It
allows for the evaluation of accountabilities of the employee and the objectives of the job they
are supposed to carry out. This comparison allows for the determination of the employee’s
performance level. The development of clear, realistic performance standards can also reduce
communication problems in performance appraisal feedback among managers, supervisors,
and employees.

Job analysis should be a joint effort by a human resources specialist, the worker, and the
worker's supervisor. The HR manager may observe the worker and then have the supervisor
and worker fill out questionnaires. It is important to make sure that process and questions are
both clear. There are various ways to collect information on a job's duties, responsibilities, and
activities. In practice, you could use any one of them, or combine several. The basic rule is to
use those that best fit your purpose. They all provide realistic information about what job
incumbents actually do such as questionnaires, observations, interviews, diary/log, pocket

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dictating machines and the Internet to distribute and collect job analysis data to geographically
dispersed employees.
Q3
Workforce (or employment or personnel) planning is the process of deciding what positions the
firm will have to fill, and how to fill them. It embraces all future positions, from maintenance clerk
to CEO. Employment planning should flow from the firm's strategic plans since it is best
understood as an outgrowth of the firm's strategic and business planning. Paying continuous
attention to workforce planning issues is called predictive workforce monitoring. Succession
planning refers to the process of deciding how to fill executive positions at a firm systematically
identifying, assessing, and developing organizational leadership to enhance performance. The
process is also known as workforce (or employment or personnel) planning, although most firms
use the term succession planning when determining how to fill top management positions.

Forecasting is defined as the attempts to determine the supply and demand for various types of
human resources to predict areas within the organization where there will be labor shortages or
surpluses. Like all plans, personnel plans require some forecasts or estimates, in this case, of
three things: personnel needs, the supply of inside candidates, and the likely supply of outside
candidates. The basic workforce planning process is to forecast the employer's demand for
labor and supply of labor, identify supply-demand gaps, and develop action plans to fill the
projected gaps

Trend tools used for projecting personnel needs include the trend analysis, the ratio analysis,
and scatter plot. Trend analysis means studying variations in your firm's employment levels over
the last few years. The purpose of a trend analysis is to identify trends that might continue into
the future. These statistics are called leading indicators, which are objective measures that
accurately predict future labor demand. They may include measures of the economy, actions of
competitors, changes in technology, and trends in the composition of the workforce. Trend
analysis can provide an initial estimate of future staffing needs, but employment levels rarely
depend just on the passage of time. Other factors (like changes in skills, voluntary withdrawals,
sales volume and productivity) also affect staffing needs, which is why a trend analysis is limited
in its usefulness. Another simple approach, ratio analysis, means making forecasts based on
the historical ratio between (1) some causal factor (like sales volume) and (2) the number of
employees required (such as number of salespeople). For example, 4 million in sales divided by
the $800,000 generated by each salesperson indicates that 5 extra salespeople should be
hired. Also, a scatter plot shows graphically how two variables such as sales and your firm's
staffing levels are related. Managerial judegement is the few historical trends, ratios, or
relationships will continue unchanged into the future so managerial judgment is needed to
adjust the forecast.The basic process for forecasting personnel needs is to forecast revenues
first. Then estimate the size of the staff required to support this sales volume. However,
managers must also consider other factors. These include projected turnover, decisions to
upgrade (or downgrade) products or services, productivity changes, financial resources, and
decisions to enter or leave businesses.

The drawback is they focus on projections and historical relationships. They do not consider the
impact of strategic initiatives on future staffing levels. They support compensation plans that
reward managers for managing ever-larger staffs. They “bake in” the idea that staff increases
are inevitable. They validate and institutionalize present planning processes and the usual ways
of doing things

Department managers or owners of smaller firms often use manual devices to track employee
qualifications to forecast the supply of inside candidiates. Thus a qualification (or skill) inventory

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contains data on employees' performance records, educational background, and promotability.

It is to determine which employees should be promoted or transferred for selecting inside
candidates. In other words, it is a manual or computerized records listing employees' education,
career and development interests, languages, and special skills. Thus personnel inventory and
development records compile qualification information on each employee. Personnel
replacement charts are another option, particularly for the firm's top positions. They show the
present performance and promotability for each position's potential replacement.

Larger firms obviously can't track the qualifications of hundreds or thousands of employees
manually. Larger employers therefore computerize this information, using various packaged
software systems. Increasingly, they also link skills inventories with their other human resources
systems. So, for instance, an employee's skills inventory might automatically update each time
he is trained or appraised. Markov analysis is also used to forecast availability of internal job
candidates by showing the probabilities that employees in the chain of feeder positions for a key
job will move from position to position and therefore be available to fill the key position.
Historical data may not always reliably indicate future trends. Thus, planners need to combine
statistical forecasts of labor supply with expert judgments. Besides looking at labor supply within
the organization, planners should examine trends in the external labor market. The drawback is
the matter of privacy where it access to records that violate legal consideration of ADA.

Forecasting the Supply of Outside Candidates is done when there is not enough skilled inside
candidates to fill the anticipated openings such as unexpected unemployment rate and general
economic conditions. Forecasting workforce availability depends first on the manager’s own
sense of what’s happening in his or her industry and locale. The manager then supplements
such observations with formal labor market analyses.

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Q4

Reliability is a test's first requirement and refers to its consistency. A reliable test is one that
yields consistent scores when a person takes two alternate forms of the test or when he or she
takes the same test on two or more different occasions. If a person scores 70 on an intelligence
test on a Monday and 110 when retested on Tuesday, you probably wouldn't have much faith in
the test. While Scores of 78 and 79 on the same test suggest that the test is reliable because it
is measuring with consistency. There are several ways to estimate consistency or reliability. You
could administer the same test to the same people at two different points in time, comparing
their test scores at time two with their scores at time one; this would be a retest estimate. An
equivalent or alternate form estimate involves administering a test and then administering what
experts believe to be an equivalent test later. A test's internal consistency is another reliability
measure. For example, a psychologist includes 10 items on a test of vocational interests,
believing that they all measure, in various ways, the test taker's interest in working outdoors.
You administer the test and then statistically analyze the degree to which responses to these 10
items vary together. This would provide a measure of the internal reliability of the test and is
known as an internal comparison estimate. Many things could cause a test to be unreliable. For
example, the questions may do a poor job of sampling the material or there might be errors due
to changes in the testing conditions in terms of physical conditions, differences in test taker and
administration. A lack of equivalence between tests would also explain a test's unreliability.

Test validity answers the question "Does this test measure what it's supposed to measure?" Put
another way, validity refers to the correctness of the inferences that we can make based on the
test and the accuracy with which a test or interview fulfills the function it was designed to fill.
With employee selection tests, validity often refers to evidence that the test is job related. In
other words, that performance on the test is a valid predictor of job performance. There are
three types of validity which are criterion, construct and content. Criterion validity means
demonstrating that those who do well on the test also do well on the job and those that do
poorly on the test do poorly on the job. It relates to the idea that performance on a test equates
to performance on the job. Construct validity is to demonstrate that abstract idea such as morale
or honesty is important for successful job performance. Employers can demonstrate content
validity of a test by showing that the test constitutes a fair sample of the content of the job. If the
content on the test is representative of what the person needs to know for the job, then the test
is probably content valid. Demonstrating content validity sounds easier than it is in practice.
Demonstrating that (1) the tasks the person performs on the test are really a comprehensive
and random sample of the tasks performed on the job and (2) the conditions under which the
person takes the test resemble the work situation is not always easy. For many jobs, employers
opt to demonstrate criterion validity for evidence based human resources.

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Q5
A selection interview is a selection procedure designed to predict future job performance based
on applicants’ oral responses to oral inquiries. Selection interviews can be classified according
to 1) how structured they are, 2) their content, and 3) how they are administered. Structure can
range from unstructured to structured. Content classifications are situational or behavioral.
Examples include job-related interviews and stress interviews. Interviews can be administered
by one person or by a panel of interviewers. Interviews may also be computer-administered.

Probably the most widespread error is that interviewers tend to jump to conclusions—make
snap judgments—about candidates during the first few minutes of the interview (or even before
the interview starts, based on test scores or résumé data). First impressions are especially
damaging when the prior information is negative. Interviewers are more influenced by
unfavorable information about the candidate. In addition, their impressions are much more likely
to change from favorable to unfavorable than from unfavorable to favorable. The bottom line is
that most interviews are loaded against applicants.

Candidate-Order (Contrast) Error means that the order in which you see applicants affects how
you rate them. In one study, managers had to evaluate a sample candidate who was “just
average” after first evaluating several “unfavorable” candidates. They scored the average
candidate more favorably than they might otherwise because, in contrast to the unfavorable
candidates, the average one looked better than he actually was.

Pressure to hire accentuates this problem. Researchers told one group of managers to assume
they were behind in their recruiting quota. They told a second group they were ahead. Those
“behind” managers rated the same recruits more highly.

Interviewers who don’t have an accurate picture of what the job entails and what sort of
candidate is best for it usually make their decisions based on incorrect impressions or
stereotypes of what a good applicant is. Then they erroneously match interviewees with their
incorrect stereotypes. You should clarify what sorts of traits you’re looking for and why, before
starting the interview.

They let a variety of nonverbal-behaviors (smiling, avoiding your gaze, and so on) can also have
a surprisingly large impact on his or her rating. Interviewers infer your personality from your
nonverbal behaviors in the interview. Clever candidates capitalize on nonverbal behavior and
impression management. One study found that some used ingratiation to persuade interviewers
to like them. Psychologists call using techniques like ingratiation and self-promotion “impression
management.” Unfortunately, physical attributes such as applicants’ attractiveness, gender,
disability, or race also may distort an interviewer’s assessments.