HR 434

Take Home Exam #1

Due Sunday night of week #4
Name:___Cynthia Hopwood_____

1. (10 points) What changes are occurring in the workforce relative

to the kinds of work employees are performing?
Before computers and robots performed the work in manufacturing
companies, employers spent up to 40 cents on the dollar for base pay
and compensation packages for employees. With computerization
and robotization of manufacturing firms this figure has declined as has
employment in the manufacturing economy. Today, less then 20
percent of the workforce is involved in manufacturing, more working
in service-related industries and jobs. More then 70 percent of all
workers perform what are considered service jobs. Most service-
sector organizations are heavily labor intensive, and it is not unusual
for service-related companies to spend 40 cents and sometimes as
high as 80 cents of each revenue dollar for employee compensation
costs.

2. (10 points) Discuss what is meant by the term exempt employee

and the various exemption criteria established for identifying this
group of workers.
An exempt employee is one that the minimum wage and overtime
requirements of the FLSA do not effect, provided they meet certain
requirements regarding job duties and responsibilities and are
compensated ‘on a salary basis’ at not less than stated amounts.
Subject to certain exceptions set forth in the regulations, in order to be
considered “salaried,” employees must receive their full salary for any
workweek in which they perform any work without regard to the
number of days or hours worked. This rule applies to each exemption
that has a salary requirement. An executive must have a primary duty
of managing the enterprise, department, or subdivision and direct the
work of two or more employees. He or she must have either hire/fire
authority or have his/her recommendations given particular weight.
An administrator must have a primary duty of performing office or
non-manual work directly related to the management or general
business operations of the employer or the employer’s customer and
exercise discretion and independent judgment with respect to matter
of significance. Learned professional must have the primary duty of
 performing work that requires advanced knowledge, and the
knowledge must be in a field of science or learning that is customarily
acquired by prolonged course of specialized intellectual instruction.
Other professional exemptions apply to creative professionals and
teachers. Computer employees must have a primary duty of applying
systems analysis techniques and procedures; or of designing,
developing, documenting, analyzing, creating, testing, or modifying
computer systems or programs based on and related to user or system
design specifications; or of designing, documenting, testing, and
creating; or modifying programs related to machine operating
systems; or of a combination of the above duties. Those employees
doing outside sales must have a primary duty of making sales or
obtaining orders or contracts for services or the use of facilities for
which consideration will be paid by the customer and be customarily
engage away from the employer’s place of business.

3. (10 points) Briefly describe the three major classes of society and
their seven subsets.
The three major classes of society are upper-, middle-, and lower-class
divisions and they can further be separated into ultra-rich and wealthy
for the upper class; upper-, middle-, and lower-middle for the middle-
class; and for the lower-class they are separated into working poor and
poverty. The three major classes are divided by income with the
upper-class making $250,000 to over $1,000,000 a year. The middle
class income ranges from $35,000 to $250,000 and the lower class
makes under $35,000 a year. With such a wide range in income, the
classes are further broken down into sub-classes. The upper class has
two divisions: the wealthy, whose income ranges from $250,000 to
$1,000,000 and can develop savings and investments that will ensure
a good life. For the ultra-rich, their income is over $1 million a year
and they live a care free life. The middle class is broken down into
lower-middle class with salaries ranging from$35,000 to $60,000.
They need to be careful on what they spend their money on as they are
one step away from returning to the lower-income class. The middle-
middle class salaries range from $60,000 to $100,000, they have a
little extra to spend and are able to purchase the ‘fun’ items they want
without much worry. The third middle class is the upper-middle
class. They have a salary that ranges from $100,000 to $250,000,
financial investments become significant and ski trips, vacations in the
 tropics and tours of Europe are affordable to them. Finally the lower-
class is divided into two classes. The poverty class has an income
under $19,000 and they do not enjoy the ‘good life’. Most do not
have full-time jobs; many are illiterate and school dropouts. Housing
is hard to come by and many spend 20 to 25 percent of their income
on rent and utilities. The people living in this social class are
economically, socially, and intellectually impoverished. Finally the
working poor’s salary ranges from $19,000 to $35,000 and are one
step away from the poverty class. This range of individuals typically
are on food stamps, live in government subsidized housing and rely on
government assisted medical care.

4. (10 points) Why is it necessary to perform a job analysis?

It is necessary to perform a job analysis so management and
employees have an adequate and accurate identification of the job
content, what is required in that job and be able to adequately set pay
ranges for the job. It also provides the employees job specifications,
working conditions, and employee job performance and the
organization will be able to accurately identify the required tasks,
knowledge and kills necessary to perform the job and under what
conditions they must be performed.

5. (10 points) What is meant by internal equity? What is the

relationship between internal equity and job evaluation?
Internal equity is the ranking of all jobs to each other relative to their
value to the organization. Successful completion of certain kinds of
job responsibilities also makes significantly greater demands on the
physical, emotional, and intellectual well-being of the employees.
These job-related differences must be recognized in an orderly and
objective manner as possible to ensure equitable relationships between
rates of pay provided by the organization and employee contributions.
So the relationship between job evaluation and internal equity is when
the company decides the job is one of the most important then it will
be rank high in relation to other jobs.
6. (10 points) Define a compensable factor and give a few examples.
Compensable factors are paid-for, measureable qualities, features,
requirements, or constructs that are common to many different kinds
of jobs. Because these factors normally do not represent identifiable
job activities, specific observable behaviors, or measurable outputs,
they are synthetic in design, this means that these factors are a
 composition or combination of qualities, features, or requirements of a
job that, taken together, form a coherent whole. The universal
compensable factors of skill, effort, responsibility, and working
conditions have the federal government’s stamp of approval.
Although the definition for these 4 factors are not concrete but the
U.S. Department of Labor has defined them:
• Skill: The experience, training, education, and ability required
to perform a job under consideration-not with the skills an
employee possesses.
• Effort: The measurement of the physical or mental exertion
needed for performance of a job.
• Responsibility: The extent to which an employer depends on
the employee to perform the job as expected, with emphasis on
the importance of job obligation.
• Working Conditions: The physical surroundings and hazards
of a job, including dimensions such as inside versus outside
work, excessive heat or cold, and fumes and other factors
relating to poor ventilation.

7. (10 points) What is the role of a job evaluation committee in job

evaluation and who should be included in the committee?
The role of a job evaluation committee is:
1) To rank and rate jobs, because of the major influence to job pay,
the pressure becomes more intense the closer the committee gets to
final stages of ranking and rating jobs.
2) Select a job evaluation method; this is also the one that is most
important and difficult.
3) Choose benchmark jobs; a selection of jobs that adequately
describe a wide span of responsibilities, duties, and work
requirements enhances the success of any job evaluation program.
The committee should consist of 3 to 10 individuals but the fewer the
members the easier the job. The job evaluation committee should
have one to three permanent members with at least one of them being
from the human resources office and/or the compensation department
and rotating members representing the unit whose jobs are being
evaluated.
8. (5 points) Explain the reason for the trend towards broad generic
job descriptions versus narrow specific job descriptions.
In a narrow specific job description the employee knows exactly what
his duties and responsibilities are. There is no question as to what is
expected of him. Companies are moving towards broad generic job
descriptions, (or called class descriptions) so management can have
more flexibility in assigning work to a specific employee or group
without having to reevaluate the job description and/or rewrite the job
description. The broader job descriptions identify all or at least the
major tasks performed by all or a major group of employees but not
all employees will perform all the task within the job description.
With companies that have become unionized or are highly structured
may have employees saying, “that isn’t in my job description” which
causes problems when special ‘projects’ come around and the
company needs someone to work it but it is outside of their ‘job
description’.