MASTER OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Final Exam
Human Resource Management

Short Essay Questions

(Answer TEN of the following questions)
1) Explain why careful selection is vitally important to the organization.

Garbage in, Garbage out! This is the bottom neck of the vital role of the Selection
process in the HR at any organization. Hiring good employee will help increasing the
overall company performance, and on the contrary, hiring incompetent employee due
to a bad selection process will affect the work, and company performance.
Nevertheless, company will bear cost of his\her poor performance, and cost of the
selection process of replacing & hiring a replacement.

In other words, selection process will define the quality of the new hires and it can
have an impact on company daily operations and company’s long-term success.
Selecting the wrong employee will make the workforce less productive, reduce work
quality, decrease customer satisfaction, and will cost company more money. On other
hand, selecting the bad employee can improve morale and organization performance.
Understanding the selection role in the Human Resources Management and the
importance of the process can help organization to make better hiring choices.

If we take some examples to see the importance of selection to any organization, it

can be seen clearly in how the choices occurred will have a vital impact on the daily
operations from work productivity and quality standards. If we selected employees
based only on their CV credentials and skills as described in their resume and we
don't validate how they actually work during the selection process, it means that we
take the risk of hiring someone who might not be as fast as needed to keep up with
the rest of team members so it will slow down the pace of others or he\she may prefer
to be dependent and ask other employees to cover him and take the workload. Even
the worse may occur, as selection choices may not focus on work quality only, and
costing company money and lost productivity time to redo the work. However
effective selection process can help organizations avoid any damage to company's
reputation that can result from these issues.

The selected employees will not only determine how company will perform daily but
it also defines if the company will be competitive in the long term; selecting
employees who can do the current roles for today only, it can limit if the company
needs to make a definite changes in job duties and roles in response to market
dynamics and innovations in the industry. The selected employees should have an
adaptable skill so that they can take on new roles and they can evolve and learn new
technologies as necessary as needed. otherwise, the company may face the risk of
losing the competitiveness and reputation as a result.
2) Explain via providing examples the 3 stage cycle that states that HRM is in
the business of “Hatch – Match – and Dispatch”.

These stages in HR are the “People Management” role at any organization. In other
words, these stages represent Employees’ Life Cycle at any organization.

HR strategy is designed to meet company goals and objectives through proper People
Management approach:
- Hatch: Get the right people on the bus (company)
HR Department start the homework through understanding business needs,
culture and company mission and then transforming these standards into filters in
the shape of manpower planning, recruitment practices, Ex: job evaluation, job
advertising, screening, assessment, interviewing, selection and then onboarding
and induction.

The HR lens analyzes the company goals, do organization structure, recruitment

plans, create roles, writing job descriptions that defines employees’ main
accountabilities, background, skills, and qualifications to do Staffing.

- Match: Put the right people on the right seats on the bus (company)
At this stage, HR goes on the employees’ evolution journey, Once HR have them
recruited, HR work on the employees’ development plans that may offer other more
suitable seats! Do a Performance Management, offer facilitation of learning, one-to-
one with their managers to give and receive feedback, provide coaching and training,
do a retention and engagement plans to enjoy the workplace and keep the company as
an employer of choice and continuously evaluating the needs of the business versus
the requirements of a job role to assist the organizations.

- Dispatch: Facilitating and assisting bus seaters to get off the bus (company)
This stage clearly points to considering the different reasons of terminations and
employee exit from the company and end of the contractual agreement between
employee and company.

These reasons can be:

o Voluntary
o Involuntary
o Death
o Retirement
Getting of the bus will fall into 2 categories; decisions dictated to people and
decisions made by people. Dictated to people must occur in a polite with integrity
and professionality from the organization. As for decisions made by people, HR
should do an exit interview and prepare reports to organization and calculate staff
turnover ratio. Given that leaving company can be for being under-utilized and
demotivated in the role performed. Organizations have to understand not only the
job task but the individual performing that task as well.
3) Explain the concept that claims that HR professionals are playing the role
similar to a devil’s advocate. Provide examples to highlight your
understanding.

“What were they thinking? We don’t understand why they did that” this is a common
reaction of employees and it summarizes the essential of the HR to play the devil’s
advocate role.

Business leaders and executives, managers at companies can fall into a several biases
in decisions, why? Because this is the way their brain works and they take sides that
appear trustworthy internally but are completely unreliable to the external observers,
stakeholder and in this case employees.

Therefore, a necessity to put in place process for challenging the beliefs, decisions,
and approaches of business leaders by having a group specialized to questions and
encounter these decisions. This will be the right time to include HR, the organization
backbone.

The benefit of adopting these processes can help company leaders and owners to
avoid embarrassing themselves by putting them in positions that seen improbable to
employees. HR professionals will definitely help lead this process by playing the
devil’s advocate role in policies and or decisions that executive would like to make
Before it is implemented.

By putting in the workplace a devil’s advocate, HR professionals will be able to make

relative proper decisions with more confidence. Instead of looking for an evidence to
support executive’s decision “yes people”, HR professionals will concentrate on why
this decision should not be made through making a logical consideration of all the
relevant sides/angels, So the HR devil’s advocate will bring a more reliable approach
that helps in avoiding bad and costly decisions.
4) Explain the factors that can distort the performance appraisal process.
Provide one example for each to highlight your understanding.

Performance appraisal is the process of evaluating the employees’ performance,

conductor is a human and this leads to the human errors and mistakes during this
process, there are several factors that distort the performance appraisal process:

- Halo Effect: is appraiser tendency to rate high or low to all factors due to his/her
impression of a high or low rating on some other factor. For an example, if
employee has a strength competency to be loyal, appraiser might turn to be biased
to employee to the level that appraiser can give him a high rating on many
desirable qualities. This means that appraiser consciously or unconsciously
granted a high ranking based on one quality to carry over to the other factors,
impacting all the factors.
- Leniency/Strictness error: it means that appraisers may be too generous or too
hard on the appraisee based on his own value system that acts as a standard
against appraisal process. For example, when appraiser knows that he/she is
evaluating employee for merit increase purposes, like pay increase, he/she is
likely to be more merciful than when evaluating employee performance to
achieve employee’s development. This may result in failure to define correctable
deficits.
- Similarity: means that appraiser rate employees in the same way that the he/she
perceive themselves, at that time they fall into a similarity error. Because of this
perception that appraisers have about themselves, they stimulate those perceptions
onto others. As an example, the appraiser who sees himself as an aggressive
character may judge others by seeking for aggressiveness character.
Other types of similarity is by allowing individual differences like age, race,
color, and gender to affect the evaluation.
- Central Tendency: it happens when appraiser tends to evaluate all the employees
on average or the middle of the rating scale. In a scale from 1 to 5, failing to
differentiate employees’ performance by giving 3 to who deserve and who
doesn’t deserve, this will create problems in the organization specially if this will
impact the merit increase and will cause morale issues.
5) Explain the logic behind the fact that PMS is a component in the motivation
function in HRM. Provide examples to highlight your understanding.

The Performance management system impacts employees’ motivation. but, the

impact relies on how the performance is clearly managed! The employee who gives
and receives constructive criticism feedback along with praise and also receives the
needed support and assistance when looking for performance improvement is more
likely to be motivated. If a manager will discuss his feedback with the employee, they
will be more likely to accept this feedback and generate ideas. That’s a core
component that related how PMS is a motivation component through showing as a
manager the willing to assist, planning with the employee the next steps and helping
them develop a plan that is realistic and achievable.

On the contrary, if the performance management is tackled less positively, appraisee

will definitely finds it demotivating and useless. If the managers’ feedback is
overwhelmingly negative and also it doesn’t describe what and how the employee can
improve, the employee will dis-engage. When managers don’t offer help by creating
and developing a plan to improve employees’ performance, the employee will feel
demotivated and lost.

Also, there is a clear link proves that people will perform well when they are working
towards specific goals that are linked to end results:
- Goals will give direction to employees to prioritize his work
- Goals will motivate employees to exert more to achieve the set objectives and
encourage them to make best utilization of their skills.

This leads to the fact that if there is a positive psychological contract between
company and employee when there is a framework “PMS”, it leads to higher
satisfaction, higher commitment and better employee relations-management.
6) Explain the factors that can impact the efforts of the recruitment process.
Provide examples to highlight your understanding.

Generally, there are several factors that can affect the recruitment and it can be
defines in two categories:
- Internal factors: are the factors from within the organization and it affect the
recruiting of a personnel in the organization. It works as an internal force and it
can be controlled by the organization:
o Recruitment policy: it defines the recruitment pool whether internal or
external candidates, also policy defines the framework of recruitment
implementation programs. The recruitment policy will be impacted by
organization needs, objectives, preferred sources of recruitment,
recruitment costs and financials.
o HR Manpower Planning: in this exercise the HR will determine the
number of needed calibers to close the gap in the vacancies, qualities, and
qualification.
o Organization expansion, growth plan and size of Org.: if the company is
going to conquer new markets or enter new industry, add new products to
the portfolio, this will lead to an impact to the recruitment plans and
process.
o Other factors like, pay strategy will impact the power to hire high calibers
in the market and career planning, if the company is not offering
opportunities to support employees’ evolution.
- External factors:
o Supply and Demand: it means the availability of the qualities that
company is looking to hire in the market, so if the demand is seeking a
high specialized calibers and the supply from market is not sufficient, at
this time company will have to consider internal recruitments from
within.
o Labor Laws in the market: it defines the type and conditions of the
employment according to the location of the company and this will
influence the recruitment efforts. If the law is legislating a specific age to
hire from, diversity % and disabled %. If there is a labor union, it will
restrict the management and HR freedom in the selection of candidates.
o Reputation: the image of the company is a direct factor to impact the
recruitment efforts; just imagine if a big company is seeking to hire a
telecommunication engineer and the company is well known of high
turnover due to improper working conditions; this will impact the
recruitment process and will affect the number and qualities of the
applicants.
7) Discuss the most successful maintenance & retention methodology provided
to highly performing employees. Explain the logic used to support your
answer.
Maintenance and retention strategy are the set of policies companies adopt in order to
retain its employees and reduce the turnover and ensure employee engagement. The
main goal is to balance between meeting the expectations of employees without
losing vision of the company's goals thus, it can ensure a maximum return on
investment. I see the most successful retention programs combine the following
aspects:
- Salary and Benefits Competitiveness: a lot of studies and surveys confirm that
almost 45% of employees who quit is because of reasons related to salary. This
reason is followed by career development and opportunities, and better benefits.
This 45% is driven by financial stability, health care insurance that keep
employees secured, car and transportation programs that really matters for
employees. Employees can compare themselves to the market and see the
financial status and benefits their colleagues, friends working in the same field,
age, sector and see how their companies are competing.
- Managers and Management Style: there is a common say that people don’t leave
their jobs, they leave their bosses. People follow the leaders and a bad leader will
create negative working environment that mess all the company. So, it is a must
while training the managers on technical stuff, it is mandatory to train them on
how to lead, inspire and motivate employees.
- Employees Engagement: company must provide an engagement culture to ensure
that employees are actively involved and are proudly punishing the clock in.
Disconnected employees are an active searching for opportunities outside the
company. Thus, companies should focus on an engagement programs like training
and learning programs, that makes people highly engaged. Provide a career
evolution and advancement and career opportunities; this will create a ladder for
employee so he knows what he/she needs to move to the next steps in his career.
Also, rewarding programs is a great tool to give employees sense of achievement
that brings satisfaction whether it is intrinsic or extrinsic; this will retain
employees and keep them motivated.
- Be a company where employees are proud of working at: CSR programs that
companies recently started to adopt and implement will have a significant impact
on your employees proudness to work for you. At Bel, we are proud that we are
deploy several projects in our local community and support education at schools
to maintain their basic needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. Even our values impacts the
production process and care about the consumer at the end and his health. This is
an example of giving the sense of proudness about the company that you work
for.
8) Differentiate between the concepts of “Performance Management System”
and “Performance Appraisal”. Provide one example for each concept that
highlights your understanding.

Organizations start with setting their mission and vision and thus it creates its own set
of objectives and core values. The Performance management system ensures that
these goals and objectives are established and defined clearly and there is an ongoing
feedback mechanism in place. Performance Management System is a complete pack
or platform where you provide a mechanism to set objectives that will make the
company success in its mission. Then to review the employees performance through a
proper performance appraisal system, one to one meetings with line managers, give
and receive feedback. To continue the journey of employee development as identified
in his performance appraisal, company should provide tools for developing skills like
on the job training, e-learning platforms, coaching and mentoring programs. Then
assessing the objectives results at the end of the year to measure the outcomes of all
these combined efforts company provided to employees.

On the other hand, Performance Appraisal, is a part of the whole performance

management system. It is a necessary process at any organization, it is the process
where you measure and evaluate employees performance against the set of pre-
defined objectives on annual basis or whatever the mechanism. Great outcomes from
performance appraisal and one of the inputs to the Performance Management system
is creating employees’ development plans for improving employee’s performance and
productivity after the appraisal process. Performance appraisal shows employee the
areas to work on and areas to build on. This ensures a better business productivity and
success in achieving the goals.

Performance management takes a very complete approach by not just limiting the
process to the annual salary review and compensation. Performance Management
System manages employee goals in an effective complete approach. It puts a
continuous feedback mechanism in place, and it will lead to better employee
engagement because there is more recognition of employee’s efforts and employees’
rewards are given whenever necessary. While performance appraisal is mandatory
and it is a periodic and not continuous, it is a timely and automated, it is documented
through the performance appraisal forms (feedback forms), employee evaluates him-
self , then managers meet the employee to discuss his performance, give and receive
feedback and this feedback is related to what the employee has achieved rather than
how he can improve his performance.
9) Compare and contrast between the concepts of “on the job training” and “on
the job development”. Please provide one example for each concept that
highlights your understanding.

70-20-10 Model of learning and development is a widely used common approach

in the employees training to define the ideal source for employees learning. It
means that employees obtain 70% of their knowledge from on-job-related
experiences, 20% from interactions and interactions with others, and 10% from
the formal training and class-room events.

On the job training is the hands-on experience (the 70%) and it is the most useful
for employees because it enables them to sharpen their job-related skills, make
proper decisions, take challenges and learn from their mistakes while receiving an
immediate feedback on how they perform. It is more related to current state
oriented as it focuses on the necessary learning employee needs to perform his
current role.

On the job development, it is very similar to on the job training in term of

importance and mechanism but it is more future oriented, it focus on employees’
growth and evolution, it is a process that work on providing and equipping
employee with the needed skills to develop him to take part in the future
organization role according to company vision. For example, new role, new
technology will be added to the business by end of 2021, at this time there is a
need to qualify some employees to be able to match these requirements with the
future needed skills to succeed it.
10) Explain the four different sources of recruitment. Discuss their respective
advantages and disadvantages.

Recruitment sources are the pool of candidates where employer use to fulfill the
organization openings. There are two categories in the recruitment sources:
- Internal sources: is the process of filling the gap of open position from within the
company from its current employees instead of posting the vacancy to the external
job market, so the HR prefers to publish this vacancy internally for the current
employees:
o Promotions
o Internal Transfers
o Changing contract from Temporary to a permanent position
o Changing contract from Part-time to a full-time position
o Employees’ referrals

Advantages of the internal sources:

o Time to hire: it saves the time spent on identifying, attracting and offering
candidates as HR have an instant access to internal candidates and their
performance history.
o Short Onboarding, it is less timely and efforts to integrate the internal
employees as they are already familiar with the company culture.
o Cost, there is almost zero cost unlike external recruitment sources.
o Morale, this a great impact of internal recruitment, it gives employees an
indicator that company is willing to develop you and consider you in a
higher and different opportunities rather than searching for external
candidates.
Disadvantages of the internal sources:
o Deteriorate the Company Culture, employees become too comfortable
with the processes and they become unable to define any operational
wastefulness and struggle to innovate.
o Training costs, with external sources you as HR select the best match for
your vacancy so the need training should be almost zero if the recruitment
job has been made correctly. In internal sources, it doesn’t mean that
employee won’t need to be trained as he won’t be plug and play.
o Limited resources, you may find your-self as HR having several qualified
employees but not the best match you seek for the organization . for
example, if you are recruiting a new role with a fairly innovative
responsibilities that is new to the business, internal sources will be less
productive.
- External sources: is the process of filling the gap in the workforce of open
position from an external pool of candidates:
o Offline recruiting portals (Bayt.com)
o Online recruiting portals
o Recruiters
o Employment agencies
o Employment fairs
o Walk-ins
o Internships

Advantages of the external sources:

- Better quality of candidates, identifying the needed workforce and defining the
candidates’ ideal profile is a main advantage of the proper recruitment campaign
where there will be variety of qualified candidates with various capabilities.
- Increased business ideas and insights, external candidates come with their
backgrounds and knowledge from different companies and puts their ideas and
work experience in their new workplace. This means new gaining insights to
business.
- Company image, external recruitment is an opportunity for the company to
market the business and mark the company as an employer of choice through
participating in the employment fairs, and sponsoring career events.

Disadvantages of the external sources:

- Time consuming, this is the biggest drawback of the external sources which is the
time spent to fulfill the vacancy, screening lots of CVs, interviewing the
shortlisted candidates and offering them and notice period.
- Cost, all the steps mentioned above are reflected in cost and money where you
make job postings to a recruitment platform or participate in employment fairs or
any of the external sources.
- Incompetent Calibers Risk, there are always several ways that candidates might
approach to manipulate the interviewer during the interview and deceive them to
show them that I am the best fit and this is happens as a result you don’t know the
candidate’s actual performance as they are stranger for the HR.