1. Why should organizations keep their skills inventories up to date? Explain.
2. Assume that someone hacked into the HR records of your company. It appears that employee names, social security numbers, and home addresses were downloaded by the hacker. If you were the director of HR for this company, what would you do in this situation? For the employees today? To prevent this kind of identity theft from happening again in the future?
3. What kinds of action decisions are available to an organization when there is a surplus of labor? A labor shortage?
4. What is succession planning? How have HRISs helped companies integrate career planning with effective succession planning?
5. In your opinion, will HR planning become more or less important as we near the time in which the baby boom generation will begin to retire? Explain.
6. Read Application Case: Human Resource Planning and Virtual Human Resource Management in Chapter 5 and answer the following questions.
a) How has the emergence of the Internet changed the way that organizations plan and manage their human resource needs?
b) What kinds of future human resource activities might we see developed over the next several years?
c) What are the legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of the Internet by individual employees for human resource activities? Are you concerned about violations of your own privacy because of these kinds of Web applications?
d) What specialized skills will the future HRIS professional need in order to effectively manage an organization's virtual human resource function?
7. What is the difference between an essential and nonessential skill? How are these related to the Americans with Disabilities Act?
8. Describe the mechanistic and motivational models of job design. What is the emphasis of each?
9. Assume that you're a manager who needs to design three new jobs for your department in a company. Will you apply the job characteristics model of job enrichment to these new jobs? Why or why not?
10. What are the six major components of the O*NET Model? How many occupations are included in the O*NET database?
11. Explain the difference between competency modeling and job analysis? Why do some companies prefer to use competency modeling?
12. Read Application Case: Job Analysis: Assistant Store Managers at Today's Fashion in Chapter 6 and answer the following questions.
a) Critically evaluate the job analysis that Marina conducted for the position of assistant store manager. Has she used appropriate methods? What are the strengths and weaknesses of her efforts?
b) What kinds of factors about Today's Fashion and its operations should Marina have examined more seriously in order to improve her job analysis?
c) Carefully read the job description and job specification that Marina prepared. Do they appear to be thorough? Do you think they are adequate to serve as a basis for a new selection system? How well do you think these documents will work if Marina is sued for discrimination in her hiring practices? Why?