Compensation and Benefits

What is the longest a job description should be?

1 Page

A job incumbent is:

An employee that is currently working in a job that you are studying

Eligibility refers to:

Being able to participate in the system and to certify on each skill or competency

To create a strategic total rewards plan, you need to understand all of the following except:

Benefits

A company cannot have a hybrid strategy.

False

Understanding the total rewards system will not allow you to create a meaningful total rewards plan.

False

The mean can be heavily influenced by:

Outliers

Which of the following would not be considered a strategic benefit?

Overtime pay

Which employee benefit is a company not legally required to provide?

Paid leave

Intangible rewards include all except:

Paid time off

A _______________________ takes HR out of the role of policing excuses for absences and places responsibility for managing the days off on the employee.

Paid time off bank

__________________ are an important part of the modern workplace.

Social relationships

A compensable factor is a:

Statement of what the organization values

A drawback to designing your own survey is:

Time

Managing total rewards is an art and a science.

True

Understanding weaknesses can help ask the question:

What can we not do?

Understanding threats can help ask the question:

What societal flaws can hurt the organization?

Understanding opportunities can help ask the question:

Where can we improve?

A graphic rating scale is:

Where raters rate the extent to which the job involves the compensable factor

Job-value structure does not answer the question of:

Whom to recruit for jobs

Which benefit is a statutory benefit that is administered by both the state and federal governments and allows employees to receive compensation for job-related injury or illness?

Workers' compensation

Organizations use pay grades and ranges to monitor how well pay rates are conforming to the pay plan. _____________ is frequently used to measure this conformity.

compa-ratio

Employees attribute their own behavior to being ______________ or ________________.

self-chosen; imposed

SWOT stands for:

strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats

Job analysis will be _____________ if management and employees do not buy-in to it.

useless

A job family is:

A grouping of jobs that have similar functions or content

Workers in a small manufacturing company are currently paid whatever the CEO feels is appropriate. The company's new compensation specialist intends to determine the relative worth or value of each job in the company as part of setting a new salary scale. Which human resource activity will this compensation specialist be conducting?

A job evaluation

A benchmark job is:

A sample of jobs that is representative of the type, content, and level of jobs in the organization

A Reference ID is:

A series of numbers and letters that is used to reference the job

Central tendency is:

A single number that best represents a group of numbers

When employees have quality relationships with their peers, it can create a climate of ________________________ that provides Intangible Rewards to employees.

Acceptance AND Collectiveness

sunset clause specifies a program's temporary nature in order to allow the organization to ____________ the program according to the results it produces.

Adapt

A reward survey is:

Aggregations of reward information gathered from other market organizations

Human Resource Strategy is to ______ business strategy and CSFs.

Align

Which of the following is not an example of a job family?

All are considered job families

Which of the following job families would not be affected by total rewards?

All job families are affected by total rewards

There are three distinctions that define an individual bonus. Which of the following is not one of the three?

All of the above ( it is a monetary reward given to a single employee based upon that employee's performance, bonuses do not accumulate into base pay, Individual bonuses provided as a lump sum to employees generally make it easier for employees to perceive the value of the reward)

Which approach is not a way to establish internal reward alignment?

All of the above (Classification approach, Job comparison approach, Point factor approach)

Reward forms include:

All of the above (Salary, Retirement, Intangibles)

The purpose of a pilot program is to better understand:

All of the above (The design parameters, how the program is received, the impact of the program)

Strategic measurement means that that the definition of criteria are all conceptually and empirically connected to the:

All of the above (employee, unit, organizational outcomes)

The purpose of grades is to:

Allow jobs creating the same amount of value for the organization to be treated in the same way

In a traditional interview, one advantage would be:

Allowing for exploration and asking for clarification

The employment relationship is:

An agreed-upon basis for organizations and people meeting each other's needs

What is merit pay?

Annual increase based on past performance

The relative level involves which of the following:

Any of the above (Leading the market, Lagging the market, Matching the market)

A traditional interview does not consist of:

Asking about family history

The mean is also known as the:

Average

Total rewards includes:

Base salary and benefits

Broadbanding allows employees to do all of the following except:

Be promotable within a given time period

A downside to the comparison approach is it:

Becomes inefficient as size of company grows

Of the following, which most aligns with the Strategy Shift?

Being involved in business with a value-driven purpose

A company that produces poker chips intends to benchmark its rewards system.Which method should be used to select the benchmark in this scenario?

Benchmark competitors

Through the use of __________________, an organization is going to create a link between its reward structures and the external markets.

Benchmark jobs

A firm publishes a monthly newsletter highlighting top employees and their contribution to the community and firm.Which benefit would the firm derive from this decision?

Better alignment with the employee purpose principle

Self-reported information is important because:

Both A & B (t provides an additional source of data that can help make your overall reward estimates more reliable AND Data sources often are the exact sources that employees use to define market rates and their own reward expectations)

Rucker plans have a ___________ base on metrics.

Broader

A manager is confronted by an employee who says she is thinking about a job offer from another company. Subsequently, the manager wants to collect verifiable data on what competing organizations are paying so the organization can match up with the market. From where can the manager collect this data?

Bureau of Labor Statistics

In the United States, the _________ conducts a National Compensation Survey to measure broad reward practices and levels.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

How can central tendency in compensation be used to improve a market analysis?

By finding the single number that represents how many people are paid

Another name for flexible benefits plans could be:

Cafeteria-style plan

________________________ refers to the direct monetary pay given to an employee in exchange for their contributions to the organization.

Cash compensation

Fringe benefits have become quite ____________ to compensation plans.

Central

In which approach would it appear that jobs are categorized by job descriptions?

Classification approach

Rucker plans provides incentives for:

Collaboration

Which pay system is often used in sales jobs to motivate employees to increase both the number and size of sales that are made?

Commission

_____________________ reward systems are most often used for jobs with a sales component and provide employees a set percentage of the sales that they make.

Commission-based pay

In a dynamic-role based job:

Compensation plans need to facilitate change

An employee has worked for the same company in two locations over the course of 20 years in Europe and North America. The employee has been trained as an international trade specialist and has been promoted to manager of international operations. Which pay basis should be used to compensate this employee?

Competency-based pay

Which of the following is not a readily available way of obtaining reward information:

Competitors compensation plan

Team performance:

Comprises the collective actions of groups of employees

Reliable measurement means that an employee's level of skill, competency, or experience can be measured ___________ across employees and raters.

Consistently

After the deductible has been reached, organizations often have a ___________ approach in which the insurance only pays for a portion of medical expenses.

Cost-sharing

Job analysis needs to be _____________ to achieve buy in.

Credible

The primary outcome of SWOT analysis is to list out:

Critical Success Factors

Which challenge to market analysis is present if a company expands into an international market that has marginally trained workers?

Cultural norms for compensation

In the differentiation strategy, the costs of the organization will be passed on to the:

Customer

A _______________ is where employers require the employee to pay up to a certain amount in medical expenses before the insurance begins.

Deductible

An employee is assigned the task of designing the job-value structure at his company. The employee has defined which jobs are within the organization and how they are related. What is the next step in defining the job-value structure?

Determining job importance

The point factor approach does all except:

Develops revolutionary ideas for job analysis

Similar to the piece rate, the ________________ is where an organization will pay $xx per unit and then pay more per unit after a certain number are produced.

Differential piece rate

The most fundamental question of internal reward alignment relates to the number of ____________ in an organization.

Distinct reward structures

When low distributive justice occurs, which of the following changes will employees not make?

Earning lower rewards

Overlapping grades allow for ___________ career management as employees are promoted up through their own function or take a lateral position in a different function.

Easier

In order to understand total rewards, managers need to understand both the ________ and _____________ value of those rewards.

Economic, informational

This is a benefit to using generic questions in an interview:

Efficient in time

When distributive justice is low, procedural justice receives a lot of_________________.

Employee attention

The value in having policies that slow the process of topping out include all except:

Employee development

Organizational performance includes all but:

Employee satisfaction

Which provision applies if a job is covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act?

Employees who work more than 40 hours in a week must be paid time and a half for each hour they work over the 40 hours.

Red circle rates refer to:

Employees whose pay is above market range

Green circle rates refer to:

Employees whose pay is below market range

Distributive justice perceptions are based upon __________ views of the distribution of rewards in the organization.

Employees'

Cash compensation is monetary pay from ____________ to __________________.

Employers; employees

Choose the answer which does not complete the blank: internal reward alignment is how _______ the relative value of all jobs in an organization is.

Enjoyable

Distributive justice is also known as the:

Equity theory

The Law of Unintended Consequences can appear in the:

Expectancy theory

Employees should always be provided an ___________ for the reward decision.

Explanation

If an employee can leave your organization and retain the benefits of living in a particular location, this will expand the benefits your organization can accrue from positive externalities.

False

In the development stage it is not important to also design a training support system that is customized to the skills or competencies in the system.

False

It is not important to have both the internal reward alignment process and the external reward alignment process in place.

False

Meaningful work would be considered a discretionary employee benefit.

False

One disadvantage to a profit sharing plan is that when the organization has a profit loss, employees owe a certain percentage of their income to the organization.

False

Pay is not a broad category that refers to the monetary compensation that is provided to an employee in exchange for their work.

False

State, county, or city governments conduct some form of compensation survey. These sources would have great utility for smaller, local labor markets. This data is very specific and provides data on most benchmark jobs.

False

The world is changing, and organizations do not have to change with it.

False

There is not a degree of correspondence between pay grade size and range size.

False

Total Reward Systems do not need to be reviewed to ensure that they are not penalizing such OCBs and instead provide a degree of encouragement for those helpful behaviors.

False

With the principle of overlap, it is impossible that an employee in pay grade three could be paid more than an employee in pay grade four.

False

Which benefit program is federally mandated and allows employees time off for the birth of a child?

Family and Medical Leave

Which of the following industries best demonstrates the cost leadership strategy?

Fast food

This is a disadvantage to using generic questions in an interview:

Financial cost

For compensation levels a ___________________ needs to be established.

Floor and Ceiling

In choosing benchmark jobs, organizations should be careful to ensure adequate representation for all of the following, except:

Government mandates

It is important that multiple people had input into the process. This can be done through all except:

Government mandates

When jobs were grouped into________________, it was for the purpose of treating them the same for compensation purposes.

Grades and bands

________________________ ties rewards to the collective actions and results achieved by teams, groups and units in the organization.

Group-based variable pay

Organizations can establish _____________, wherein organizations or employees put pretax funds into an account upon which employees can draw for medical expense reimbursement.

Health savings accounts

Having a panel:

Helps ensure consistency of standard across employees AND Increase an employee's perception of the procedural justice of the system

____________________ is provided for many federally recognized holidays.

Holiday pay

Without any grade structure, a job-based pay strategy could involve ___________ of different reward strategies in one organization.

Hundreds

An employees' satisfaction with work is heavily influenced by ____________________.

Immediate supervisor

Scanlon plans focus on __________________.

Improvements in labor costs

Having a panel ___________the reliability of the system as having multiple people viewing the performance creates a more accurate picture of the employee's behavior.

Increases

One advantage of using subscription information from a third party is:

Industry specific

Through transformational leadership, employees can receive greater ________________ from their membership in the organization.

Intangible rewards

A firm has strong alignment between their core principles and the principles of the employees. As part of their communication system, the firm decides to put out a monthly newsletter highlighting top employees and the good that their work is doing in the community and at the firm.Which benefit would the employees derive from this decision?

Intangible validation of their efforts under the purpose principle

The rollout of capability-based pay systems, like all reward system changes, should be accompanied by:

Intensive communication

Justice theory has three types of justice. Which is not included?

Interchangeable

Employees will compare their rewards to those both __________ and ___________ to the organization.

Internal, external

At which step in job analysis do employers determine the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of a job?

Interview incumbents

What is the next step in the job analysis after identifying the job and observing the workplace?

Interview incumbents

The advantage of the job comparison approach is that it is:

Intuitive and holistic

To what does internal reward alignment refer?

It refers to how an employee's rewards compare to rewards received by others in the organization.

Individual characteristics should be categorized into two categories:

Job analyses, strategic utility

In which approach are jobs compared and "winning" or more "important" jobs get points?

Job comparison approach

In which approach would it appear that jobs are ordered based on rank and file?

Job comparison approach

Several jobs have been grouped into job families based on their functions within the organization. Compensation levels must now be determined to establish internal award alignment. Which part of the job structure describes this human resources activity?

Job evaluation

aWhich two approaches apply to internal reward alignment?

Job-based approach AND individual-based approach

KSAO's stand for:

Knowledge, Skills, Ability, and Other

Which type of market gives job seekers more negotiation power than employers?

Labor-driven

Which type of market gives job seekers more power in negotiating terms of employment?

Labor-driven

_________________ can have an important impact on employees and the meaning they perceive in work.

Leaders

Of the following, which most aligns with Transformational Leadership?

Leading through directions, stories, & actions

Within the cost leadership strategy, the customers will be charged ________________.

Less

Having a scale that would rank abilities from Unable, Somewhat Able, Able, Very Able, Extremely Able, is an example of:

Level definitions

____________________ provide(s) a payout to survivors of the employee upon his or her death.

Life insurance

Within the cost leadership strategy, a business will have a ____________ cost structure.

Lower

When the core purposes of a business align with the values of an employee, then that employee will perceive value in ________________ his or her relationship with the organization.

Maintaining

What industry is commonly known for using the piece rate system?

Manufacturing

Which compensation method is an annual pay increase based on past performance that is added to an employee's base compensation?

Merit pay

Which method for addressing wage and salary compression does an employer use to pay for future performance based on past performance?

Merit pay

The median is the:

Middle number

Generally, an organization that follows the differentiation strategy will be able to pay their employees:

More

The larger, overlapping ranges make it ______ likely that employees can make such moves without having to dramatically raise or lower their pay.

More

An employee fell off a ladder while working and broke a bone.Why did this person receive workers' compensation coverage?

No-fault principle

In a niche-focused strategy, an organization will have to compete with the following strategies:

None of the above

Which job analysis technique is used to collect information by monitoring the work of employees?

Observation

With the increased use of laser-based vision correction, about ________ of plans also cover that procedure.

One-quarter

Because of profit sharing plans, when an _______________ is profitable, the employees receive a portion.

Organization

Gain sharing attempts to align the interests of the __________ with the interests of the ______________.

Organization, employees

An employer has several job incumbents come together to analyze a job. Which job analysis method is used in this scenario?

Panel interview

A professor who has been at a public university for eight years became aware of a website that lists the salaries of all public sector employees in the professor's state. On the website, the starting salaries of two new professors hired in the department were listed as higher than the veteran professor's current salary.What is the major issue being described in this scenario?

Pay inversion

Job evaluation provides the basis for developing a network or configuration of ________ that make up a rewards structure.

Pay rates

Job analysis is gathered by ____________.

People

Organizations get work done through:

People

______________________ are used when the employee is free to not come into work, even if they are not sick.

Personal days

Intensive communication can be damaging if there is:

Poor participation AND Unrealistic expectations

Cost leadership focuses more on:

Price

As gain sharing is intended to align interests, it will do so by doing all of the following except:

Productivity losses

Interactional justice perceptions grow out of whether or not managers and other personnel show _________________________ to employees in their pay-related interactions.

Professionalism and respect

A _______________ is designed to distribute a portion of the firm's annual profits back to the firm's employees.

Profit sharing plan

An employee is getting bored with her job because she has mastered her basic work activities. What is a good way to keep this employee motivated?

Provide a wider variety of tasks to accomplish

A firm is looking for ways to reward its employees and motivate them to work harder. The firm decides to allow top-performing employees to spend a certain portion of their day working on independent projects that they feel can benefit the firm in the future.Which type of reward is this firm offering?

Psychological reward

It is better to have a _____________ approach in job analysis.

Quantitative

Of the following, which most aligns with the Person-Organization Fit stye?

Recruiting for talent as well as match to the organization

Spot awards draw upon __________________ in that they allow for very short gaps between the demonstrated performance and the reception of the reward.

Reinforcement theory

Job descriptions often contain information about the _________ that are important for accomplishing the job.

Relationships

A company implemented actions to improve its return on investment on human capital. The company wants to be the premier employer in the state. The first step was giving more rewards for jobs compared to its competitors. Which type of reward system is this company using?

Relative

The bulk of job descriptions do not include which of the following:

Requirements

Generally speaking, the eligibility should be ____________ to ensure that the number of employees certifying is in line with current and future needs for that capability.

Restricted

What is the foundation of external reward positioning in an organization's overall compensation program?

Reward surveys

Which of the following would not be included as an intangible reward?

Salary

Base pay includes:

Salary or hourly wages

Relationships at work include all of the following except:

Self

______________________ exist within the range of the broad band and are applied to specific job families to provide guidance on appropriate compensation levels.

Shadow ranges

Rewards strategies that work in the ______ term, while the firm is niche focused, may be forced to change in the _______ term.

Short, long

______________________are used for employees and paid even though they do not attend work but the expectation is that an employee is actually unwell when the days are used.

Sick days

In a ____________________, managers are given a cash budget from which they can immediately draw to provide employees with instant recognition of a high performance.

Spot award system

_____________________ provide employees the right to purchase a set amount of shares of stock for a set price.

Stock options

Data aging refers to:

The adjustment of market reward information to take into account how inflation has likely changed the market rates since the data were collected

What is a key concern when designing a variable pay system?

The behaviors that are rewarded need to match the behaviors that are most valued to the organization.

What is the relationship among laws regarding pay?

The benefit to employees dictates which law is followed.

An employee is immediately terminated after being caught embezzling from a firm. The employee has received good but not outstanding performance reviews and is in good health. The employee is a parent of two young children and is not currently enrolled in school when terminated. The employee begins seeking gainful employment immediately after being terminated. How will this situation affect the employee's eligibility to qualify for unemployment compensation?

The employee will be unable to qualify because the employee was terminated for cause rather than involuntarily.

Dispersion represents:

The gap between two data points

A human resources professional at a large law firm needs to fill an accountant position. The job description provides information about the compensation range, firm location, number of employees in the company, minimal qualifications, and company values. Which part of the job description did the human resources professional fail to include?

The job content

Which element of a job description includes the knowledge, skills, and abilities that an employee needs to perform the job at a satisfactory level?

The job specification

What is the definition of a leading market rate strategy?

The organization provides more of a reward than its competitors.

A medical supply company recently announced it is offering a week-long, all-expenses-paid vacation to Hawaii for the salesperson who sells the highest number of a new model of hospital beds in the upcoming quarter. Why might a salesperson be unmotivated in this situation based on the instrumentality perception of expectancy theory?

The salesperson has won similar competitions in the past, but his company retracted the rewards that were offered.

The job value structure represents:

The structure of jobs internally positioned according to their relative value

Why is it important to evaluate pay systems and keep them current?

To attract top employees

Job descriptions can also reference any _______ involved in doing the job.

Tools

A firm bases its pay systems on rewarding the best employee with a large bonus, while giving only standard pay to all the other employees. Additionally, the employee's picture is posted on the wall with a notice about the accomplishment. Which employee motivational theory is this organization practicing?

Tournament theory

This theory explains why people purchase lottery tickets:

Tournament theory

Which of the following is not a Purpose Principle?

Transformational Management

The CEO of a web development company gives employees a lot of freedom to develop new applications, pays employees by the hour, and allows employees to work as needed to develop applications. Because of this approach, the payroll costs vary quite a bit. The CEO would like to get costs under control and make payroll costs more stable.Which approach can be used to bring payroll costs under control and make them more stable in this situation?

Transition employees from an hourly pay model to a salaried pay model

All capability-based pay systems require sources of skill- or competency-related information.

True

All organizations use some form of hierarchy to organize employees.

True

As organizations systematically define their activities in light of their values, there will be a gradual shift towards being involved in businesses with a more value-driven purpose.

True

By using pay form-specific strategies, organizations can create more customized reward systems that are more likely to differentiate them from their competition in the labor market.

True

CSFs take into account both internal strengths of the organization and the external values of customers and markets.

True

Care must be taken to ensure that the distribution of spot awards is based upon legitimate performance behaviors, guarding against a perception that the spot awards are only given to the managers' preferred employees.

True

Cash compensation can have an influence on the employee's perception of how much they are valued at the firm.

True

Dental insurance supports employees in preventative and routine dental expenses.

True

Employee perception of the organization has potential to lead to turnover and performance.

True

Every reward system should be reviewed to ensure that there are policies in place to address each driver of procedural justice.

True

Flexible benefit plans allow employees to allocate a defined number of benefit units to various programs to design a package that more closely matches their definition of value.

True

Geography has a significant impact on how an organization should define its labor market.

True

Human beings have an inherent need for justice in social exchanges.

True

If pay rates are set based upon what a job was three years ago and not what it is today, then it will not meet the needs of the employees doing the job today.

True

It is wise to leave a buffer zone around the current pay rates to ensure that the range is adequate.

True

Job descriptions are simple and cannot contain every detail relating to the job.

True

Job evaluation is a tool to help organizations create internal reward alignment that is both equitable and conducive to effective employee performance.

True

Key personnel throughout the organization should be involved in the data's collection, synthesis, and documentation.

True

Location is one of the largest pieces of the intangible rewards pie.

True

Many forms of employee benefits and intangible rewards are difficult to quantify.

True

Markets are one way to establish the price for any good or service.

True

Merit pay budget and cost of living adjustment pay increases for all employees to account for inflation.

True

Once jobs are broadly organized into such a job structure, the next step is to create a mechanism for assigning their relative value in the organization.

True

Organizations would be wise to recognize that employee choices are often driven more by what they perceive reality to be than what reality actually is.

True

Pay grades are useful as they allow organizations to simplify reward systems because similar jobs can all be treated in the same way.

True

Reinforcement and expectancy theory would both recommend that contingencies in pay be made very clear. TrueFalse

True

Stock options are often reserved for executive compensation plans.

True

The ACA has implications for continued coverage of dependents, lifetime limits on coverage, premium increases, and preexisting conditions clauses in insurance plans.

True

The first challenge in creating a capability-based pay plan (or "system") is to define those individual characteristics that create value for the organization.

True

The goal of job analysis is to understand the work involved in creating value for the organization.

True

The goal of job evaluation is to create a way to measure the value (and relative value) of each job in the organization.

True

The primary reasons that organizations use performance-based pay is to provide an incentive for the types of behaviors and outcomes that enable higher performance.

True

The quality of these peer and team relationships can have a significant influence on employees experiences at work.

True

The selection of benefits should focus on those benefits in the best position to influence choices to join and remain with the organization.

True

The total rewards perspective is broad enough to capture leadership styles in the organization, one of the intangible drivers of employee satisfaction and motivation.

True

Total Rewards are one of those decisions that businesses make that influences their cost structure and their ability to provide those low costs to customers.

True

Using pay grades is useful because it allows the organization to establish different pay strategies for different pay grades.

True

Utilization rates refer to the extent to which employees are using the different benefit options.

True

When a reward system explicitly attempts to vary rewards based upon the capabilities of the employee, it is referred to as capability-based Pay.

True

When you think about a company's health benefits or retirement plan, you are thinking about employee benefits.

True

Within individual-based systems value is assumed to derive from the characteristics of the person within the job, and therefore pay should be driven by the knowledge, skills, experience, or competencies of that individual.

True

Which of the following is not a primary concern when integrating data from multiple rewards surveys?

Understanding government mandates

Gain sharing plans typically are at the ___________that would include a significant number of the employees in a particular location.

Unit-level

Broadbanding allows organizations to:

Use a few broad bands to organize work for pay purposes

_____________________ would be made available as a break from work, with no constraints on why the employee wants to use the time.

Vacation time

Relationships can either add to or reduce the ___________ employees receive from their employment and performance.

Value

Transformational Leaders inspire employees in a way that they see:

Values AND purpose

A pay-form specific rewards strategy is:

Varying pay level strategy across reward types

When employees have a ___________ in the design of the compensation system they are more likely to see the system as procedurally fair.

Voice