13 Jan understanding the work in

Midterm Exam

Question 1

This type of pay is often given to employees upon involuntary termination, and in some cases also includes continued medical insurance under the company’s policy.

Sympathy pay

Continued employment pay

Resignation pay

Severance pay

Question 2

These describe the terms of employment that are set between management and union bargaining representatives.

Collective bargaining agreements

Joint employment agreements

Employee relationship agreements

Workplace requisite agreements

Question 3

This strategic human resource concept allows employees to work the hours that are most suitable to them in order to meet both their personal and business needs.

Flextime

Reward time

Free time

Personal time

Question 4

What is type of pay system rewards employees for partially or completely attaining a predetermined work objective?

Incentive pay

Seniority pay

Merit pay

Skill-based pay

Question 5

What US federal law established a national minimum wage for employees involved in commerce (rather than just those employed by companies working for the US government), as well as prohibit most employment of minors in oppressive child labor?

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Equal Pay Act of 1963

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938

Question 6

What are responsible for guiding the activities of a particular company in the market?

Tactical decisions

Strategic decisions

Informative decisions

Worker majority decisions

Question 7

Which of the following would be an example of a non-monetary reward?

All of the above

Vacations

Medical insurance

Day care assistance

Question 8

What is the primary factor that will prevent companies from growing in the next decade?

Caps on executive pay in some organizations

Increased government regulations

The inability to attract and retain employees

Increased global competition

Question 9

This is a way in which companies often trim their payroll responsibilities by encouraging higher paid workers with more seniority to voluntarily leave the company earlier than previously planned.

Early retirement programs

Resignation plans

Employee expenditure plans

Severance plans

Question 10

This group is directly involved in producing goods and delivering services for a company.

Executives

Line employees

Managers

Staff employees

Subsection

Question 11

What governmental agency enforces the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (in addition to enforcing many other employment discrimination laws)?

EEOC

ATF

WWE

NAACP

Question 12

This law makes it illegal to discriminate against people with physical and mental disabilities both within and outside employment settings, including public transportation, public accommodations, and employment.

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990

Executive Order 11246

The Older Workers Benefit Protection Act

The Civil Rights Act of 1991

Question 13

This amendment to the US Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, individual states, and Indian Tribes.

The Fifth Amendment

The First Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1

Article I, Section 8

Question 14

A policy that applies to all company employees, but unintentionally hurts a protected group disproportionately would be what form of discrimination?

Disparate impact

Disparate treatment

Situational discrimination

Disparate causality

Question 15

This act strengthened the Equal Pay Act of 1963 by now requiring employers to show that pay disparities are job related rather than sex-based. This act also prohibits employers from retaliating against employees who share their salary information.

The Davis Act

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Paycheck Fairness Act

Question 16

What are the revised guidelines introduced in 2004 for determining whether jobs are exempt from FLSA overtime pay provisions called?

Overtime Nonexempt Rules

Fair Pay Rules

Glass Ceiling Act

Bennett Amendment

Question 17

Which of these was given as a reason why union influence has diminished?

Technological advances

All of the above

Foreign automobile manufacturers producing higher quality vehicles

Union companies demonstrating lower profits than non-union companies

Question 18

These types of jobs are subject to the FLSA overtime provisions?

Equal

Nonexempt

Nonequal

Exempt

Question 19

This was enacted in order to allow employees who are terminated, laid off, or have a change in their employment status to temporarily remain on the employer-sponsored medical insurance plan.

The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA)

The Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA)

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 (COBRA)

The Civil Rights Act of 1991

Question 20

Construction contractors, working on government contracts valued at more than $2,000, must pay their laborers and mechanics what type of local area based wage according to the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931?

Prevailing wage

Minimum wage

Prevalent wage

Discretionary wage

Subsection

Question 21

For a merit pay system to work for a company using the lowest-cost competitive strategy which two conditions must be met?

Employees are creative risk takers & the company’s competitive strategy has a long term focus.

Employees are creative risk takers & pay increases are tied to productivity.

Pay increases are tied to productivity & productivity levels are maintained over time.

Productivity levels are maintained over time & employees are creative risk takers.

Question 22

This ratings error term refers to managers who have a tendency to allow their initial judgment about an employee to ignore or distort their appraisal of that employee’s actual performance?

Critical incident error

The first-impression effect

Bias error

The similar-to-me effect

Question 23

Which evaluation system requires that supervisors compare each employee to every other employee, identifying the better performer in each pair?

The critical incident technique

Paired comparison

Forced distribution

Hierarchical

Question 24

Which of the following is an advantage of seniority pay systems?

They encourage employees to continue to increase their skill sets

They reward exemplary performance

They reward employees on an objective basis

They help to promote product quality

Question 25

Among the various performance appraisal techniques, this appraisal system is the most defensible in court because it is based on actual observable job performance behaviors.

Forced distribution

Paired comparison

360 degree performance appraisals

Behaviorally-anchored rating scales

Question 26

This type of performance rater’s error occurs when the rater generalizes bad behavior on one aspect of the employee’s job performance to the employee’s over-all performance.

Negative leniency error

Negative halo effect

Error of strictness

Negative impression errors

Question 27

Which performance appraisal tool is most often used with managers and professional employees?

Comparison systems

Management by objectives

Behavioral systems

Trait systems

Question 28

Which performance appraisal error reflects the tendency to rate every employee at the low end of the rating scale, regardless of actual performance?

Negative halo error

Contrast errors

Errors of strictness

Error of central tendency

Question 29

This term refers to the minimum pay increase that employees view as a significant change in their compensation amount?

Minimal pay incident

Just-meaningful pay increase

Satisfactory compensation payment

Halo effect increase

Question 30

Which performance appraisal system displays illustrations only of positive behaviors shown by an employee in various job dimensions?

Behavioral observation scales (BOS)

Management by objectives (MBO)

Behaviorally-anchored rating scales (BARS)

Critical incident technique (CIT)

Subsection

Question 31

This incentive plan has a buy-back provision.

ESOPs

Rucker

Scanlon

Improshare

Question 32

Behavioral encouragement plans work best as an incentive for which type of competitive strategy?

Cyclical

Differentiation

Lowest-cost

Highest quality

Question 33

Which of the following is true concerning incentive pay?

Motivates employees to be more productive, but does little to control payroll costs.

Awards are granted in one-time payouts.

Incentive levels are generally subjective in nature.

The award is earned only when the predetermined work objective is totally completed.

Question 34

Which of the following is true about the level of risk involved with incentive pay?

The level of risk is lower for higher-level employees than those who are lower in the job structure.

The level of risk decreases as incentive pay represents a greater proportion of total core compensation.

The level of risk depends on the extent to which employees control the attainment of a desired goal.

The level of risk is dependent on subjective performance appraisals.

Question 35

Which of the following is true of most general stock compensation plans?

Company stock represents partial equity in the company.

The company stock shares represent equity segments of equal value.

Stock options refer to what an employee can do with the stock once they purchase it.

Employees own the stock upon purchase.

Question 36

Which gain sharing program measures productivity physically rather than in terms of dollar savings, and emphasizes the rapid completion of products by employees?

Rucker

Management incentive plan

Improshare

The Scanlon Plan

Question 37

The general rule of thumb is that short-term company goals last less than how long?

1 month

5 years

6 months

1 year

Question 38

Gunther Rohn was rewarded for making a suggestion that saved Ewe and Eye Electronics thousands of dollars. Which type of incentive compensation approach might have worked best?

Group incentive programs

Ganagement incentive plans

Employee stock ownership plan

Gain sharing plan

Question 39

Which gain sharing plan focuses on lowering the percentage of labor costs using a value-added formula?

Behavior encouragement plan

Improshare

Scanlon Plan

Rucker Plan

Question 40

This group incentive system was designed to provide employees with financial incentives for increasing customer satisfaction, increasing productivity, lowering costs, or improving safety.

Gain Sharing

Team based

Small group

Profit sharing

Subsection

Question 41

Skill variety, task identity, autonomy, and feedback are the elements that make up this theory.

Position requisite

Job characteristics

Position components

Job demands

Question 42

Teams that have members learn scheduling, coordinating, training, and leading others are emphasized in what type of work team?

Supervisory work teams

Management teams

Non-supervised work teams

Self-regulating work groups

Question 43

Pay-for-knowledge and skill-based pay are two types of person-focused pay programs that fall under this pay category.

Service based

Competency-based

Innovation-based

Stair-step

Question 44

Jamie earned a raise in pay when he finished the training for the Technician 2 position. He will receive another raise when he finishes the training for the Technician 3 position. The company is probably using which type of pay program?

The stair-step model

The skill blocks model

The job-point accrual model

The cross-departmental model

Question 45

Which of the following are the two main reasons given for adopting pay-for-knowledge programs?

Smaller labor markets and strategic outlines

Market monopolies and company turnover

Technological innovations and increased global competition

Market monopolies and lower labor costs

Question 46

Which of the following is a characteristic of job-based pay?

It rewards employees on their promise to make positive contributions to the work place.

It compensates employees for the number of jobs in which they possess the skills to perform.

It compensates employees for the jobs they are currently performing.

A reward is based on the successful acquisition of work-related skills or knowledge.

Question 47

This is considered “at the heart” of person-focused pay programs.

Management

Innovation

Training

Data

Question 48

In this pay-for-knowledge model, employees are rewarded for increasing their skills within a single job family, even if the skills do NOT build on each other.

Cross-departmental

Stair-step

Job-point accrual

Skill blocks

Question 49

This term refers to the degree to which the job enables the employee to work on it from start to finish.

Skill variety

Task significance

Task identity

Feedback

Question 50

What is one of the main differences between a skill blocks model and a stair-step model?

The skill blocks model only emphasizes horizontal skills.

The stair-step model addresses depth, while the skill blocks model emphasizes both horizontal and vertical skills.

Stair-step models do not apply to jobs within the same family.

Employees do not progress to more complex jobs in the stair-step model.

Subsection

Question 51

The federal GS classification system is divided into how many classifications?

21

6

10

15

Question 52

Developing internally consistent job structures affects the competitive strategy of a company. Which of the following is a potential constraint on competitive strategy?

Internally consistent job structures lead to less routinization.

Internally consistent job structures potentially create far more bureaucratization within an organization.

Internally consistent structures potentially reduce a company’s rigidity to respond to moves by the competition.

Internally consistent job structures potentially cause the definition of jobs to become less fluid.

Question 53

This replaced the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, and identifies 23 major occupational groups.

American Occupational Classification Network

O*NET

Standard Occupational Classification System

Occupational Information Network

Question 54

Which job evaluation method entails ordering jobs on the basis of extremes?

Classification

Paired comparison

Factor comparison

Alternation ranking

Question 55

What was the main effect created by the revisions to the ADA regulations passed in 2008?

It is now easier for an individual seeking protection under the ADA to establish that he or she has a disability within the meaning of the ADA.

Costs will be contained much more than in the past.

Companies may no longer perform job analyses to see if they comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

There are more hurdles for individuals seeking protection under the ADA to pass through in order to weed out false claims.

Question 56

In the job analysis process this term represents a group of positions that are identical with respect to their major tasks.

Job family

Occupation

Job

Element

Question 57

These two are job evaluation techniques.

Market-based & job content

Market-based & appeals-based

Compensable content & job-based

Compensable content & job content

Question 58

Which job evaluation plan is most widely used by companies due to its ability to balance internal and external market considerations?

Ranking

Factor comparison

Point method

Classification

Question 59

Universal compensable factors are derived from which federal Act?

Fair Labor Standards Act

Civil Rights Act of 1963

Equal Pay Act

Americans with Disabilities Act

Question 60

Which job evaluation technique orders all jobs from lowest to highest according to a single criterion?

Point method

Paired comparison

Simple-ranking

Alternation

Subsection

Question 61 Explain the job characteristics theory. How does it tie in with intrinsic compensation?

understanding the work in which they are carrying out. Hence, developing a sense of greater personal achievement ,hence the workers are intrinsically compensated.

Question 62 Explain the compensation professional’s role in serving each of the following stakeholders: Employees, executives, and the U.S. government.