Short Q & A

1) What do you mean by compensation?

Ans: Compensation is the total amount of the monetary and non-monetary pay
provided to an employee by an employer in return for work performed as required.

2) Define Reward?
Ans: Reward is the benefit that is offered or given in return for some service or
accomplishment of some act. Reward is a method to sustain and reinforce desirable
behavior, such as wage rate that increases with the productivity of the worker.

3) Define Recruitment?
Ans: Recruiting is the process of generating a pool of qualified applicants for
organizational jobs.

4) What is selection?
Ans: Selection is the process of choosing individuals who have relevant
qualifications to fill jobs in an organization.

5) What is HRM?
Ans: Human Resource Management is the organizational function that deals with
issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management,
organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation,
communication, administration, and training.

6) What is 360 degree performance appraisal?

Ans: 360 degree performance appraisal, also known as 'multi-rater feedback', is the
most comprehensive appraisal where the feedback about the employees’
performance comes from all the sources that come in contact with the employee on
his job.
360 degree respondents for an employee can be his/her peers, managers (i.e.
superior), subordinates, team members, customers, suppliers/ vendors - anyone
who comes into contact with the employee and can provide valuable insights and
information or feedback regarding the "on-the-job" performance of the employee.

7) What is Workforce Diversity?

Ans: Any perceived difference among people: age, functional specialty, profession,
geographic origin, life style, tenure with the organization, or position. Diversity
simply refers to human characteristics that make people different.

8) What is equal employment opportunity?

Ans: A system of employment practices under which no individuals are excluded
from consideration, participation, promotion, or benefits because of their race,
color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicap, or veteran status.

9) What is career advancement?

Ans: Career advancement can be defined as “progression through a sequence of
jobs, involving continually more advanced or diverse activities and resulting in wider
or improved skills, greater responsibility and prestige, and a higher income”

10) What is Human Resource Development (HRD)?

Ans: Human Resources Development is a framework for the expansion of human
capital within an organization; it is a combination of Training and Education that
ensures the continual improvement and growth of both the individual and the
organization.

11) Define Human Resource Planning (HRP)?

Ans: The process by which management ensures that it has the right personnel,
who are capable of completing those tasks that help the organization reach its
objectives.
It involves projecting future manpower requirements and developing manpower
plans for the implementation of the projects.

12) What is Competency Mapping?

Ans: Competency Mapping is the process of identifying key competencies for a
particular position in an organization and then using it for job evaluation,
recruitment, training and development, performance management, succession
planning etc.

13) What are industrial disputes?

Ans: Industrial Dispute refers to a disagreement between employers and workers.
Some common subjects for industrial disputes are wages and conditions,
occupational health and safety, unfair dismissals or environmental issues.

14) Define trade union?

Ans: A trade union (or labor union) is an organization of workers who have banded
together to achieve common goals in key areas, such as working conditions.

15) What is Strategic Human Resource Management?

Ans: Strategic Human Resource Management refers to aligning initiatives involving
how people are managed with organizational mission and objectives and the
organizational use of employees to gain or keep a competitive advantage against
competitors.

16) What is Contract Ratification?

Ans: Contract Ratification refers to the act of acceptance or confirmation of a
contract.
 Long Q & Ans

1) Differentiate recruitment from selection?

Ans: Both recruitment and selection are the two phases of the employment process.
The differences between the two are:
a. The recruitment is the process of searching the candidates for employment and
stimulating them to apply for jobs in the organization WHEREAS selection involves
the series of steps by which the candidates are screened for choosing the most
suitable persons for vacant posts.
b. The basic purpose of recruitments is to create a talent pool of candidates to
enable the selection of best candidates for the organization, by attracting more and
more employees to apply in the organization WHEREAS the basic purpose of
selection process is to choose the right candidate to fill the various positions in the
organization.
c. Recruitment is a positive process i.e. encouraging more and more employees to
apply WHEREAS selection is a negative process as it involves rejection of the
unsuitable candidates.
d. Recruitment is concerned with tapping the sources of human resources WHEREAS
selection is concerned with selecting the most suitable candidate through various
interviews and tests.
e. There is no contract of recruitment established in recruitment WHEREAS selection
results in a contract of service between the employer and the selected employee.

2) Explain the criteria for a good performance appraisal system?

Ans: The characteristics of an effective performance appraisal system are:
a) Consistent with the strategic mission of the organization.
b) Evaluation related to job description.
c) Clear criteria: Individual has a right to know the criteria by which they will be
evaluated.
d) Employee must know who is responsible for evaluating their performance.
e) The person evaluating be trained in the use of evaluation tool and be skilled in
conducting evaluation interview.
f) Well developed plans and well implemented plans for monitoring the evaluation
process and the toos
g) Viewed as generally fair by employees.
h) Useful as administrative and development tool.
i) Useful in documenting employee performance.

3) What are the different types of Interviews?

Ans: The common types of interviews are as follows:
a) STRUCTURED INTERVIEW The structured interview uses a set of standardized
questions that are asked of all applicants. Every applicant is asked the same basic
questions, so that comparisons among applicants can more easily be made.
b) SITUATIONAL INTERVIEW The situational interview is a structured interview that
is composed of questions about how applicants might handle specific job situations.
With experienced applicants, the format is essentially one of a job knowledge or
work sample test.
Interview questions are based on job analysis and checked by experts in the job so
they will be content valid.
c) BEHAVIORAL DESCRIPTION INTERVIEW When responding to a behavioral
description interview, applicants are required to give specific examples of how they
have performed a certain procedure or handled a problem in the past.
E.g. How did you handle a situation in which there were no rules or guidelines on
employee discipline?
d) NONDIRECTIVE INTERVIEW The nondirective interview uses general questions,
from which other questions are developed. The interviewer asks general questions
designed to prompt the applicant to discuss herself or himself. The interviewer then
picks up on an idea in the applicant’s response to shape the next question. For
example, if the applicant says, “One aspect that I enjoyed in my last job was my
supervisor,” the interviewer might ask, “What type of supervisor do you most enjoy
working with?”
e) STRESS INTERVIEW The stress interview is a special type of interview designed to
create anxiety and put pressure on the applicant to see how the person responds. In
a stress interview, the interviewer assumes an extremely aggressive and insulting
posture. Those who use this approach often justify its use with individual who will
encounter high degrees of stress on the job, such as a consumercomplaint clerk in a
department store or an air traffic controller.
f) PANEL INTERVIEWS: In a panel interview, several interviewers interview the
candidate at the same time. All the interviewers hear the same responses. On the
negative side, applicants are frequently uncomfortable with the group interview
format.

4) Explain different methods of performance appraisal?

Ans: The Common Performance Appraisal methods are as follows:

1) Category Rating Methods:

The simplest methods for appraising performance are category rating methods,
which require a manager to mark an employee’s level of performance on a specific
form divided into categories of performance. The graphic rating scale and checklist
are common category rating methods.
a) GRAPHIC RATING SCALE: The graphic rating scale allows the rater to mark an
employee’s performance on a continuum. Because of its simplicity, this method is
the one most frequently used.
b) CHECKLIST: The checklist is composed of a list of statements or words. Raters
check statements most representative of the characteristics and performance of
employees. The checklist can be modified so that varying weights are assigned to
the statements or words. The results can then be quantified. Usually, the weights
are not known by the rating supervisor because they are tabulated by someone
else, such as a member of the HR unit.

2) Comparative Methods:
Comparative methods require that managers directly compare the performance of
their employees against one another. Comparative techniques include ranking,
paired comparison, and forced distribution.
a) RANKING: The ranking method consists of listing all employees from highest to
lowest in performance. The primary drawback of the ranking method is that the size
of the differences among individuals is not well defined. Ranking also means that
someone must be last. It is possible that the last-ranked individual in one group
would be the top employee in a different group. Further, ranking becomes very
unwieldy if the group to be ranked is very large.
b) FORCED DISTRIBUTION: Forced distribution is a technique for distributing ratings
that can be generated with any of the other methods. However, it does require a
comparison among people in the work group under consideration. With the forced
distribution method, the ratings of employees’ performance are distributed along a
bell-shaped curve. Using the forced distribution method. This method assumes that
the widely known bell-shaped curve of performance exists in a given group.
There are several drawbacks to the forced distribution method. One problem is that
a supervisor may resist placing any individual in the lowest (or the highest) group.
Difficulties may arise when the rater must explain to the employee why he or she
was placed in one grouping and others were placed in higher groupings.

3) Narrative Methods
Managers and HR specialists frequently are required to provide written appraisal
information. Documentation and description are the essence of the critical incident,
the essay, and the field review methods. These records describe an employee’s
actions rather than indicating an actual rating.
a) CRITICAL INCIDENT In the critical incident method, the manager keeps a written
record of both highly favorable and unfavorable actions in an employee’s
performance. When a “critical incident” involving an employee occurs, the manager
writes it down. A list of critical incidents is kept during the entire rating period for
each employee. The critical incident method can be used with other methods to
document the reasons why an employee was rated in a certain way.
b) ESSAY The essay, or “free-form,” appraisal method requires the manager to write
a short essay describing each employee’s performance during the rating period.
The rater usually is given a few general headings under which to categorize
comments. The intent is to allow the rater more flexibility than other methods do.
As a result, the essay is often combined with other methods.
c) FIELD REVIEW The field review has as much to do with who does the evaluation
as the method used. This approach can include the HR department as a reviewer, or
a completely independent reviewer outside the organization. In the field review, the
outside reviewer becomes an active partner in the rating process. The outsider
interviews the manager about each employee’s performance, then compiles the
notes from each interview into a rating for each employee. Then the rating is
reviewed by the supervisor for needed changes. This method assumes that the
outsider knows enough about the job setting to help supervisors give more accurate
and thorough appraisals.
4) Management by objectives (MBO) specifies the performance goals that an
individual hopes to attain within an appropriate length of time. The objectives that
each manager sets are derived from the overall goals and objectives of the
organization.

5) Behavioral Method: Behavioral approaches hold promise for some situations in

overcoming some of the problems with other methods. Behavioral rating
approaches attempt to assess an employee’s behaviors instead of other
characteristics; Behavioral rating approaches describe examples of employee job
behaviors.