Human Resource Management

Prompt:
It is the not so distant future and the economy has come back in full force. As such many
departments, agencies, and other public entities are experiencing periods of growth. This is the case for
Agency X. Agency X is in a time of prosperity. As such, the agency is in transition, expecting continued
growth, and looking to make plans for the future. Agency X plans on a mixed strategy, where they will
both promote from within and hire from outside to fill vacancies as necessary.
You have been appointed to serve in an advisory position to help with the entirety of the
transition, including addressing legal matters, forecasting needs, advising for the hiring, selection, and
job design and analysis phases, as well as providing guidance on the form of organizational structure
best suited for a company in this time of sustained growth. As part of your advisory role you have been
asked to supply a preliminary report. Your report is to cover the topics broadly and thoroughly,
attending to the specific prompts supplied to you by Agency X.
Section 1:
1. Preliminary Legal Report:
a. Provide a preview report of any laws that are relevant to this situation. Specifically those
that pertain to recruitment, selection, and hiring practices.
b. For each, discuss why Agency Xs Human Resource department should be familiar with
the law or precedent.
2. Forecasting:
a. Agency X wants to know what the appropriate steps are in determining labor demand.
What strategies might they employ?
b. The board would like you to discuss workflow design and analysis and why this is
important to forecasting.
c. Given our movement towards growth in the agency, the board would like to know if you
would recommend a lean production strategy? Why or why not?
d. Agency X is in need of both short term and long term fixes to the growth and vacancy
dilemma– what do you suggest as options for avoiding a labor shortage for both these
timeframes and why. Is there any strategies you suggest we avoid?
e. Finally, as requested, Agency X has provided the following numbers below in a format of
a transitional matrix. Please advise which positions are in most need of human capital
(those that have experienced the most loss) and how you came to this conclusion.

Agency X Year: 2020
Year 2015: Project Coordinator Project Manager Project Accountant Project Team Member No longer in Organization	Project Coordinator Project Manager Project Accountant Project Team Member No longer in Organization .75 .00 .00 .00 .25 .10 .78 .00 .02 .10 .01 .05 .84 .05 .05 .01 .05 .02 .65 .27 .25 .10 .05 .27

Section 2:
Now that you have provided Agency X with critical information about their broad legal duties, human
resource needs, and suggested strategies for filling them, Agency X seeks your advisement on the
recruitment, hiring, and selection processes:
3. Hiring/Recruitment:
a. General advisement:
i. What should our position announcements include?
ii. What recruitment strategies are available for use? Which do you recommend
and why? Which do you suggest we avoid?
iii. What sort of things can we do to increase our chances of hiring high quality
applicants?
b. What are we legally permitted to do during a hiring process?
i. Can we use credit reports, criminal records, drug tests, medical evaluations? Is
there times where these items should or should not be used?
c. How can we be sure that we are not discriminating?
i. What classes of individuals are protected?
ii. What are: utilization analyses, goals and timetables, action steps, and the three
types of discrimination?
iii. How can we measure if we have discriminated?
d. (Do any of your answers or suggestions change for internal promotions/recruitment?)
4. Selection:
a. How should the selection process proceed? Describe the steps in the process that you
would recommend.
b. What selection methods should we use? Specifically, what criteria should we utilize and
what documents/processes/performances should we request?
i. Are certain criteria more valid than others?
ii. What does this generally have to do with validity, reliability, generalizability, and
utility?
iii. How can we validate our measures?
c. Presuming you have advised the use of an interview:
i. What are some questions we should ask? Are certain types of questions better
than others (in terms of validity or otherwise)?
ii. Is there anything you would advise us against asking? Why?
d. (Do any of your answers or suggestions change for internal promotions/recruitment?)
Section 3:
Now that we know how to properly recruit, select, and hire applicants, Agency X would like a little
information on position and organization management.
5. Position Management:
a. What is job design? What about job analysis?
i. Why are each important?
ii. When should each be done?
b. How can we decide on proper compensation?
i. What is a labour market survey and how does it fit into this process? Is this all we
need to consider when issuing pay to our employees?
ii. Are there any relevant laws about compensation we should be aware of?
c. With all these new hires the company is debating changes to its organization structure.
Discuss the pros and cons of product versus function based organizations