- Learning Objectives

- Explain the importance of human resource management as a strategic

contributor to organizational success, and summarize the five steps in human
resource planning.
- Describe methods that companies use to recruit new employees, and explain
some of the issues that make recruitment challenging.
- Outline the six steps in selecting employees, and illustrate the use of various
types of employee training and development methods.
- Trace the six steps in evaluating employee performance, and summarize the
objectives of employee compensation programs.
- Demonstrate how managers use scheduling plans to adapt to workers’ needs.
Consider the ways in which employees can also move through the company.
- Illustrate the effects of legislation on human resource management.
- Learning Objective 1: Working with people is just the beginning
- Human resource management
- The process of determining human resource needs and then recruiting,
selecting, developing, motivating, evaluating, compensating, and
scheduling employees to achieve organizational goals.
- The roles and responsibilities of HRM have evolved primarily because of
two key factors
- Organizations’ recognition of employees as their ultimate resource
- Changes in laws that rewrote many traditional practices
- Diagram of the legal environment

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- Human resource challenges
- In the coming decade, half of al jobs will be disrupted by technology and
automation.
- Uncertainty in global politics and increased attention on hiring immigrants.
- Multigenerational workforce where older millennials and GenZers hold
management positions, Gen Zers are entering the workforce, and many
Baby Boomers are delaying retirement.
 - Shortages of trained workers in growth areas such as computer
technology, biotechnology, robotics, green tech, and sciences.
- Large numbers of skilled and unskilled workers from declining industries
and need retraining. Underemployed workers are those who have more
skills or knowledge than their current jobs require or those with part-time
obs who want to work full-time.
- A growing percentage of new workers who are undereducated and
unprepared for jobs in the contemporary business environment
- A shortage of workers in skilled trades due to the retirement of
experienced, aging baby boomers.
- The baby boomer drain means that with yearly retirements, employers in
all fields must plan for and manage how to transfer their knowledge to
younger workers.
- Demand for job sharing, maternity and parental leave, and special career
advancement for women.
- A shift in employee attitudes attitudes toward work. Leisure time has
become a much higher priority, as have flextime, working from home, and
a shorter workweek.
- An increased demand for temporary and part-time workers.
- A challenge from overseas labor pools whose employees work for lower
wages and are subject to fewer laws and regulations than Canadian
workers. This results in many jobs still being offshored.
- An increased demand for benefits tailored to the individual yet cost-
effective to the company.
- Growing concerns over health care, elder care, child care, opportunities
for people with disabilities, and workplace violence and harassment.
- A decreased sense of employee loyalty, which increases employee
turnover and the cost of replacing lost workers.
- Implementing human resource information systems (e.g technology that
helps manage HR activities such as payroll, benefits, training, recruiting,
and so forth)
- Determining a Firm’s Human resource Needs
- Preparing a human resource inventory of the organization’s system
- This inventory should include
- Ages
- Names
- Education
- Capabilities
- Training
- Specialized skills
- Other relevant info
- Reveals whether the labour force is technically up to date and
thoroughly trained
- Preparing a job analysis
 - A job analysis is a study of what is done by employees who hold
various job titles.
- It is necessary to recruit and train employees with the necessary
skills to do the job.
- A job description specifies the objectives of the job, the type of
work, the responsibilities and duties, working conditions, and the
job’s relationship to other functions.
- Job specifications are a written summary of the minimal education
and skills a person needs to do a particular job.
- Responsibilities diagram
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- Assessing future human resources demand

- Because technology changed rapidly, effective HR managers are
proactive; taht is, they forecast the organization’s requirements
and train people ahead of time.
- Assessing future human resource supply
- The labor force is constantly shifting: getting older, becoming
more technically oriented, and becoming more diverse.
- Establishing a strategic plan
- The HR plan must address recruiting, selecting, training,
developing, appraising, compensating, and scheduling the labour
force.
 - Upskilling is the process of teaching employees new skills that will
aid them in their work.
- A human resource information system (HRIS) is software that
uses multiple tools and processes to manage an organization’s
employees and databases
- Learning Objective 2: Describe methods that companies use to recruit new
employees, and explain some of the issues that make recruitment challenging
- Recruitment is the set of activities for obtaining the right number of qualified
people at the right time.
- Purpose is to select those who best met the needs of the organization.
- Reasons why CEOs say that attracting and retaining talent is their biggest
challenge
- Some organizations have policies that demand promotions from tihin,
operate under collective labour agreements, or offer low wages, which
makes recruiting and keeping employees difficult.
- Legal guidelines that surround hiring practices – employees are protected
by provincial or territorial jurisdiction.
- An emphasis on corporate culture, teamwork, and participative
management makes it important to hire people who not only are skilled
but also fit in with the culture and leadership style of the company.
- Sometimes people with necessary skills are not available and will need to
be trained internally.
- Sources of recruitment

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- Seven career types
 -
- Learning Objective 3: Outline the six steps in selecting employees, and illustrate
the use of various types of employee training and development methods.
- Selection is the process of gathering information and deciding who should be
hired, under legal guidelines, to serve the best interests of the individual and the
organization.
- Typical selection process steps
- Obtaining complete application forms
- Although employment laws limit the kinds of questions that can
appear, applications help reveal the applicant’s educational
background, work experience, career objectives, and other
qualifications directly related to the job.
- Conducting initial and follow-up interviews
- HR usually interviews first, and if they consider the applicant a
potential hire, the next step is usually to be interviewed by the
supervisor and potential co-workers.
- It is important that managers prepare adequately for the
interview to avoid selection decisions they may regret.
- Giving employee tests
- Organizations are allowed to pre-screen applicants and narrow
the candidate pool by using tests that are always directly related
to the job.
- Tests can be used to measure basic competency in specific job
skills like welding or firefighting, and to help evaluate applicants’
personalities.
- Conducting background investigations
- Most organizations investigate a candidate’s work record, school
record, credit history and references more carefully than in the
past to help identity those most likely to succeed.
- IT is simply to costly to hire, train and motivate people only to lose
them and have to start the process over.
 - Obtaining results from the physical exams
- There are obvious benefits to hiring people who are healthy and
testing may be requested from job applicants, e.g drug testing.
- Establish trial (probationary) periods.
- An organization will often hire an employee conditionally to let the
person prove their value on the job.
- The Gig Economy and Contingent Woekers
- Contingent wokrers are workers who do not have regular, full eimt
employment. Such workers include
- Part-time workers (people who work less than 30 hours per week)
- Temporary workers
- Seasonal workers
- Independent contractors
- Interns
- Co-op students
- Hiring contingent workers is so comon today that some have called this a
gig economy.
- A gig describes a single project or task for which a worker is hired,
often through a digital marketplace, tow rok on demand.
- Two key reasons for the rise of gig economy
- Workers want diversity adn flexibility in their roles and the
ability to showcase their skills
- Employers have shifted from “I need to hire a person” to “I
need to complete a task”
- Companies may hire contingent workers when
- full-timers are on some type of leave
- There is peak demand for labor or products
- The economy is uncertainty
- Contingent workers received few benefits; they are rarely offered
health insurance, vacation time, or company pensions.
- Many companies include post-secondary students in their
contingent workforce plan.
- Students will already be screened so they can be found
easier.
- Workforce agility is the ability of employees and organizations to remain
steadfast and maintain productivity in the face of change.
- A flexible workforce is a staffing model that features non-traditional
workers (ie contingent workers)
- Example of non-traditional workers
 -
- Training and development
- Training and development includes all attempts to improve productivity by
increasing an employee’s ability to perform. A well-designed training
program often leads to higher retention rates, increased productivity, and
greater job satisfaction.
- As technology and other innovations change the workplace, companies
must offer both training and development programs that often are quite
sophisticated. Both include three steps:
- (1) assessing organization needs and employee skills to
determine training needs
- (2) designing training activities to meet identified needs
- (3) evaluating the training’s effectiveness.
- Training and development techniques

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- Training Techniques
- Training refers to planned activities to provide employees with
enhanced skills to perform their current jobs.
- Orientation is the activity that initiates new employees to the
organization, to other employees, to their immediate supervisors,
and to the policies, practices, values, and objectives of the firm
- Onboarding, similar to training, is targeted to new employees. It is
a series of events (including orientation) that helps new hires
 understand how to be successful in their day-to-day job as well as
how their work contributes to the overall business
- On-the-job training lets the employee learn by doing, or by
watching others for a while then imitating them, right at the
workplace.
- Salespeople for e.g are often trained by watching
experienced salespeople perform (often called shadowing)
- In apprentice programs, a trainee works alongside an experienced
employee to master the skills and procedures of a craft.
- Workers who successfully complete an apprecntiveship
earn the classification journeyman.
- Off-the-job training occurs away from the workplace and consists
of interal or external programs to develop a variety of skills or to
foster personal development. Training is becoming more
sophisticated as jobs become more sophisticated
- Online training demonstrates how technology is improving the
efficiency of many off-the-job training programs.
- Online training’s key advantage is the ability to provide a
large number of employees with consistent content tailored
to specific training needs at convenient times.
- Vestibule training is done in classrooms with equipment similar to
that used on the job so that employees learn proper methods adn
safety procedures before assuming a specific job assignment.
- E.g computer and robotics, clerical kitchen, paramedic
training.
- Job simulation is the use of equipment that duplicates job
conditions and tasks so that trainees can learn skills before
attempting them on the job.
- It differs from vestibule training in that it duplicated the
exact combination of conditions that occur on the job.
- Development Techniques
- Development includes planned activities aimed at providing
employees with enhanced skills and competencies for the future.
- Management development programs include the following
techniques
- On-the-job coaching
- Understudy positions
- Work until they are ready to assume the position
themselves.
- Job rotation
- So the new employee can learn about the different
functions of the organization.
- Off-the-job courses and training
 - Managers periodically go to classes or seminars
off-site to hone technical and human relations skills.
- Empowering workers
- In traditional organizations, directing involves giving assignments,
explaining routines, clarifying policies, and providing feedback on
performance.
- Networking
- Networking is the process of establishing and maintaining contacts with
key managers in your own organizations, and using those contacts to
weave strong relationships that serve as informal development systems.
- Of equal or greater importance may be a mentor, a corporate manager
who supervises, coaches, and slides selected lower-level employees by
introducing them to the right people and generally acting as their
organizational sponsor.
- Mentoring programs provide a number of benefits.
- Mentoring programs provide a number of benefits:
- (1) improved recruiting and retention
- (2) more engaged employees
- (3) lower HR costs
- (4) increased skills and better attitudes
- A gartner study found that retention rates were higher for both
mentees (72 percent) and mentors (69 percent)
- Managing diversity
- Diversity is recognizing individual differences
- Managing diversity is the ability to manage these individual employees
and lead teams made up of diverse employees. It involves creating a
workplace that promotes inclusion and belonging.
- Inclusion is about creating a culture that strives for equity and embraces,
respects, accepts and values differences.
- Put together, diversity and inclusion is about capturing the uniqueness of
the individual in an environment that values and respects individuals for
their differences to the benefit of the collective.
- Companies that take the intiative to develop diversity policies understand
three crucial principles
- (1) having diverse managers is not about legality, morality, or
even morale but rather about bringing more talent in the door - the
key to long-term profitability.
- (2) the best employees will become harder to attract and retain, so
the companies that commit to development early have an edge
- (3) having a more diverse workforce at all levels lets businesses
serve their diverse customers better.
- Learning Objective 4: Trace the six steps in evaluating employee performance,
and summarize the objectives of employee compensation programs
- A performance appraisal is an evaluation that measures employee performance
against established standards in order to make decisions about promotions,
compensation, training, or termination.
- Performance appraisals have six steps
- Establishing performance standards
- Communicating standards
- It is dangerous to assume that employees know what is expected
of them
- Evaluating performance
- If the first two steps are done correctly, this step is relatively easy.
- Discussing results with employees
- It takes time to learn a job and do it well – discussing an
employee’s successes and areas that need improvement can
provide managers with an opportunity to be understanding and
helpful, but guide the employee to better performance.
- Taking corrective action
- As part of the performance appraisal a manager can take
corrective action or provide corrective feedback to help the
employee perform better
- Using the results to make decisions
- Decisions about promotions, compensation, additional training, or
firing are all based on performance evaluations.
- Conducting effective appraisals and reviews

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- Compensating employees: Attracting and Keeping the Best
- Compensation refers to all types of financial rewards employees receive
as part of their employment. It is one of the main tools companies use to
attract and retain qualified employees, and one of their largest operation
costs.
- Carefully managed and competitive compensation and beenefits program can
accomplish several objectives
- Attract the kinds of people the organization needs, and in sufficient
numbers
- Provide employees with the incentive to work efficiently and productively
- Kepe valued employees from going to competitors or starting competing
firms
- Maintain a competitive position in the marketplace by keeping costs low
through high productivity from a satisfied workforce
- Provide employees with some sense of financial security through fringe
benefits such as insurance and retirement benefits.
- Pay Systems
- Many companies still use the pay system known as the Hay method,
where the plan is based on job grades, and the pay range is strict.
- The most commonly used pay structure today is market based.
- Companies that use market-based pay structures compensate
people relative to the market value of their job, regardless of their
level in the organization.
- The way an organization chooses to pay its employees can have a
dramatic effect on efficiency and productivity.
- Methods of pay

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 -
- Compensating Teams
- Skill-based pay rewards the growth of both the individual and the
team Base pay is raised when team members learn and apply
new skills.
- Most gain-sharing systems base bonuses on improvements over
previous performance
- It is important to reward individual team players also. Outstanding
team players who go beyond what is required and make an
outstanding individual contribution should be separately
recognized with cash or non-cash rewards.
- Fringe benefits
- Fringe benefits, also known as employee benefits, is
compensation in forms other than cash.
- Examples include:
- Sick-pay leave
- Tuition
- Reimbursement
- Vacation pay
- Pension plans
- Health plans
- Fringe benefits may be divided into 3 categories
- Stautory benefits
- REquired by federal and provincial legislation in the
form of compulsory deductions from employees’
pay cheques, employer contributions, or both.
 - Workers’ compensation insurance provides wage
replacement and medical benefits to employees for
work-related inquiries and occupational diseases
while also protecting employers employee claims of
negligence
- Legally required benefits
- Include vacation pay, holiday pay, overtime pay,
and unpaid maternity and parental leave with job
protection.
- All other benefits
- Stem fro employer programs and from collective labour
agreements.
- Benefits in recent years have grown faster than wages and cannot
really be considered fringe anymore. Benefits policies can have a
significant impact on attracting and retaining key and high-
performing employees.
- A good number of firms offer ‘cafeteria-style fringe benefits’’, in
which employees can choose the benefits they want up to a
certain dollar amount.
- Learning Objective 5: Demonstrate how managers use scheduling plans to adapt
to workers’ needs. Consider the ways in which employees can also move through
the company.
- Flextime plans
- A flextime plan gives employees some freedom to choose which hours to
work as long as they work the required number of hours or complete their
assigned tasks.
- Core time refers to the period when all employees are expected to be at
their job stations
- Flextime is not for all organizations, as it does not suit shift work in jobs
such as fast-food or assembly-line processes in manufacturing.
- Another option is a compressed workweek, where an employee works the
full number of hours, but in fewer than the standard number of days.
- Not always a benefit to employees - some retailers use on-call scheduling
or in-demand scheduling, meaning that they can call employees. It’s great
for flexibility, but can cause a lot of stress on employees/
- Home-based work
- Providing employees with the ability to choose their work location is
another opportunity for organizations to demonstrate flexibility – this can
include home-based work or working rom a client’s site.
- Home-based work can also benefit employers becaus eit can limit
absences, increase productivity, and save money.
- Some large companies offer hotelling (being assigned to a desk through a
reservation system) or hot-desking (sharing a desk with other employees
who work at different times) as an alternative.
 - Hot-desking can lead to more collaboration since workers get to
know more people throughout the organization than they would
have at a fixed desk.
- Job-Sharing plans
- Job sharing lets two or more part-time employees share one full-time job.
- Benefits of job sharting include:
- Employment opportunities for those who cannot or prefer not to
work full-time
- An enthusiastic and productive workforce
- Reduced absenteeism and tardiness
- Ability to schedule part-time workers into peak demand periods
- Retention of experienced employees who might otherwise have
retired.
- Disadvantages include
- Having to hire, train, motivate, and supervise at least twice as
many people and perhaps prorate some fringe benefits.
- Career Management: Up, Over and Out
- Promoting and reassigning employees
- In the new, flatter corporation structures, ther are fewer levels for
employees to reach than in the past. Thus, they often move over to a new
position rather than up.
- Such lateral transfer allow employees to develop and display new skills
and learn more about the company overall.
- Terminating employees
- Even if the economy is booming, many companies are hesitant to hire or
rehire workers full-time because the cost of terminating employees is
prohibitively high in terms of lost training costs and possible damages and
legal fees for wrongful discharge suits.
- A layoff is considered a termination of employment when the employer
has no intention of recalling the company to work.
- Employment standards statues across canada provide for temporary
layoffs (also called furloughs) which is a pause in the employment
relation.
- Retiring employees
- Companies looking to downsize sometimes offer early retirement benefits
to entice older (and more expensive) workers to retire. Such benefits can
include
- One-time cash payments, known as golden handshakes
- Increased morale of remaining employees
- Increases promotion opportunities for younger employees.
- Many companies offer older employees more flexible, part-time schedules
in order to entice them to stay long enough to train their replacements.
- Losing valued employees
 - In spite of a company’s efforts to retain them, some talented employees
will choose to pursue opportunities elsewhere.
- One way to learn the reasons to have an outside expert conduct an exit
interview. Outsiders can provide confidentiality and anonymity that earns
more honest feedback than employees are comfortable giving in face-to-
face interviews.
- Offboarding is the process surrounding employee exits. Whether
employees are fired, resigning or retiring, there are things that need to be
done before they leave. This includes:
- Managing payments
- Insurance and benefits
- Conducting exit interviews
- Collecting work and documents
- Returning anything owned by the company
- Attracting and retaining the best employees is the key to success in the
competitive global business environment
- Learning Objective 6: Illustrate the effects of legislation on human resource
management
- The charter of rights and freedoms guarantees equality before the law for everyt
canadian.
- The human rights act seeks to provide equal employment opportunities without
regard to race and colour, national or ethnic orogin, religion, age, sex, sexual
orientation, marital status, family status, disability, or pardoned convinctions.
- The federal government legisaltes on national issues and it has juridistinctions
over certain types of businesses that are deemed to be of a national nature, e.g
- Banks
- Communications companies
- Interprovincial transportation companies
- Insurance companies
- Many first nation activities
- Most federal crown corporations
- Pay equity
- Pay equity refers to equal pay for work of equal value. It compares the
value of male and female jobs by objectively evaluating the jobs in terms
of four neutral factors: skil, effort, responsibility, and working conditions.
- Canada has a variety of pay equity laws and policies that differ depending
on where one works.
- Gender wage gap
- Difference between wages earned by men and wages earned by
women.
- On average, Canadian women earned $4.13 less per hour than
men, or 87 cents for every dollar men earn.
- Stats for reasons for this gap:
 -

- Factors that lessened the wage gap

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- Employment equity
- Employment equity refers to employment activities designed to
increase employment opportunities for four groups given
discrimination in the past, who are
- (1) women
- (2) aboriginal peoples (indigenous, inuit or metis)
- (3) persons with disabilities
- (4) members of visible minorities (people other than
aboriginal peoples who aren’t caucasian)
- The employment equity act, introduced in 1986, applies to
federally regulated industries, crown corporations, and other
federal organizations with 100 employees or more, as well as
portions of the federal public administration.
- Reverse discrimination has been defined as discriminating against
members of a dominant or majority group (say, whites or males)
usually as a result of policies designed to correct previous
discrimination against minorities or disadvantaged groups.
- Laws that protect people with disabilities
- Legislation protects people with disabilities. Businesses cannot
discriminate against people on the basis of any physical or mental
disability.
- Other effects:
- Putting up barriers to isolate people readily distracted by noise
- Reassigning workers to new tasks
 - Making changes to supervisors’ management styles
- Providing a special screen and software for people with visual
impairment
- Allowing an employee to take time off to attend a medical
appointment
- Managing an employee's schedule in a way that balances their
work and caregiving obligations
- Making wheelchair access available to people with disabilities.
- Effects of legislation
- Employers must know and act in accordance with the lega rights of their
employees or risk costly court cases
- Legislation affects all areas of human resource management, from hiring
and training to compensation
- Court cases demonstrate that is is sometimes legal to implement special
employment policies (e,g employment equity) to correct past
discrimination.
- New court cases and legislation change human resource management
almost continuously. The only way to keep current is to read business
literature and stay familiar with emerging issues.