HRM 7600 Module 4 Midterm: Four HR Situations Example

Four Situations, Four Decisions: An HR Midterm on Modules 1 to 4

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

HRM-7600: Human Resource Management - Talent Management

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Four Situations, Four Decisions: An HR Midterm on Modules 1 to 4

The HRM-7600 midterm presents four situations, one for each of the first four modules, and asks for analysis and best-practice recommendations. Each answer below identifies the issue, applies the course concepts from DeNisi and Griffin (2020) and research, and recommends specific actions.

Question 1: Building an HR Function at a Growing Software Firm

Situation: A software company has grown to 300 employees in three years. The founders handle hiring, an outside firm runs payroll, and there is no HR department. Managers make inconsistent pay offers, two employees have complained about a manager's conduct with no process to respond, and the founders ask what HR should do first.

Analysis: The firm has outgrown informal people management. DeNisi and Griffin (2020) describe HR responsibilities as both operational, keeping the organization compliant and running, and strategic, shaping the workforce to fit the business. The immediate risks are operational: unhandled complaints create legal exposure and damage trust, and inconsistent offers create pay inequities that will surface as the firm grows. The strategic need is just as real, since a software firm competes on talent.

Recommendation: Hire an experienced HR leader who can do both kinds of work, and in the first ninety days set up a complaint and investigation process, an employee handbook reviewed by counsel, and pay ranges for the main job families. In the next six months, build a structured hiring process and a simple workforce plan tied to the product roadmap. The trade-off is that managers lose some freedom in hiring and pay, which founders may resist, but that freedom is what produced the inconsistencies.

Question 2: A Religious Accommodation Request

Situation: A warehouse employee asks not to be scheduled on Saturdays because of religious observance. The supervisor says Saturday is the busiest day, coworkers already complain about weekend shifts, and denying the request would be simpler.

Analysis: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act obliges an employer to make reasonable accommodation for a worker's religious observance and practice short of undue hardship. In its 2023 decision in Groff v. DeJoy, the Supreme Court held that an employer refusing accommodation must show the burden would be substantial for its business as a whole, judged by the practical effect given the employer's nature, size and operating costs; showing a cost only slightly above trivial is no longer enough. The Court also said that coworker dislike of religious practice or of accommodating it is not by itself a defense. DeNisi and Griffin (2020) emphasize that HR decisions must be made within the legal environment, and this is a clear case.

Recommendation: Do not deny the request on the supervisor's reasoning. HR should meet with the employee, explore options such as a Sunday-through-Thursday schedule or voluntary shift swaps, and document the efforts. If a large warehouse can cover Saturdays through scheduling, which is likely, the request should be granted. The trade-off is some added scheduling effort and possible coworker frustration, which managers should address by distributing weekend work fairly rather than by refusing accommodation.

Question 3: Experienced Agents Leaving a Call Center

Situation: A health insurer's call center introduced a target of six minutes average handle time per call. Within six months, voluntary turnover among agents with more than two years of experience rose from 18 to 31 percent a year, while turnover among new agents was unchanged.

Analysis: The pattern points to dysfunctional, avoidable turnover caused by a management decision. Experienced agents handle the most complicated calls, which take longer, so a single target penalizes the people the center most needs. Allen et al. (2010) caution against assuming that pay drives departures and advise diagnosing the specific reasons particular groups leave. Here the timing and the group affected suggest that the metric made experienced agents feel unable to do their jobs well. Losing them also raises costs, since replacing an experienced agent requires recruiting, weeks of training and a period of lower quality.

Recommendation: Confirm the cause with exit and stay interviews, then replace the single target with measures weighted by call type, adding first-call resolution and member satisfaction. Create a senior agent role that takes escalated calls and is measured on resolution rather than time. Track turnover among experienced agents monthly against the 18 percent baseline. The trade-off is that average handle time may rise and staffing costs with it, but resolving calls on the first contact reduces repeat calls, which partly offsets that cost.

Question 4: Replacing Unstructured Interviews at a Regional Bank

Situation: A regional bank hires about 200 tellers and personal bankers a year. Branch managers interview candidates informally, each with their own questions. Quality of hire varies by branch, and a manager has been accused of favoring candidates who share his background.

Analysis: Selection decisions should rest on methods that predict job performance and treat candidates consistently. DeNisi and Griffin (2020) stress reliability, validity and legal defensibility in selection. Sackett et al. (2022), reexamining decades of validity research with corrected methods, estimated the average validity of structured interviews at about .42, among the highest of common methods, compared with about .19 for unstructured interviews and about .31 for general cognitive ability tests. Unstructured interviews also leave room for the kind of bias the complaint alleges.

Recommendation: Conduct a job analysis for teller and personal banker roles, then write a fixed set of job-based interview questions asked of all applicants, score answers on behaviorally anchored scales and use two interviewers each time. Add a short work sample, such as handling a simulated customer request, and monitor selection rates by group for adverse impact using the four-fifths guideline. Train managers and audit a sample of interview records each quarter. The trade-off is reduced managerial discretion and more time per hire, but the bank gains better predictions of performance and a defensible process.

Conclusion

Across the four situations, the same discipline applies: identify the real issue, place it in its legal and organizational context, use evidence about what works, and recommend actions with their costs. That approach connects the HR function, decision making, turnover and selection into one way of managing people.

References

Allen, D. G., Bryant, P. C., & Vardaman, J. M. (2010). Retaining talent: Replacing misconceptions with evidence-based strategies. Academy of Management Perspectives, 24(2), 48-64. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.24.2.48

DeNisi, A. S., & Griffin, R. W. (2020). HR (5th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Sackett, P. R., Zhang, C., Berry, C. M., & Lievens, F. (2022). Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection: Addressing systematic overcorrection for restriction of range. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(11), 2040-2068. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000994