M.B.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION, MAY 2017
(Second Year)
Human Resource Management
Time 3 Hours Maximum Marks 70
SECTION A × 5 15)
Answer three questions
Q1) Manpower planning
Staff development
Job evaluation
Employee welfare
Suspensions
Industrial democracy
SECTION B × 15 45)
Answer three questions
Q2) List out the functions of personal office.
Q3) Discuss about employee training methods employed in an organization.
Q4) Describe the techniques of job analysis.
Q5) What are the various benefits and incentives available to employees?
Q6) Explain about laws that regulate the employee compensation.
Q7) Discuss about various forms of workers' participation in management.
SECTION C
(Compulsory)
Q8) Case Study
Effectiveness of Well-timed Training in Fostering Employee Competency
Modern Textiles is in the business of producing garments and has an average annual turnover
of Rs. 3 billion. Since a large volume of its products is exported, the company has
been very conscious of its quality commitment. It provides induction training to every
new employee for two weeks and then on-the-job training by a supervisor for four
months. This had been proving sufficient for the workers in meeting the clients'
quality expectations even while maintaining the high volume of production.
As part of its ambitious expansion programme, the company recently imported ultramodern
machinery to double its production capacity. After the machinery was installed,
the production volumes increased as expected, but the reject rates too rose dramatically.
Consequently, the cost of production increased and the export deadlines too became
very tight. The management discussed the issue at the different levels of the organization
and held the machine operators' inadequate knowledge and improper handling
of the new machines as the primary reason for the unusual rejects. To remedy the situation,
the HR department hurriedly organized the necessary training programmes for the
employees' handling this machine and the reject rates situation started to improve.
Meanwhile, the production manager found the HR department at fault for the crisis and
blamed it for not undertaking training-needs assessment among the production department
employees. Howeser, the HR department retorted by saying that barely three
months before the arrival of the new machine, a routine training-needs assessment had
been made among those employees but it had revealed no pressing training requirements.
On their part, the HR personnel held the production manager responsible for
failing to inform them about the imminent arrival of the new machine at the time of the
assessment of the training necessities. The blame game continued.
Questions
From your perception, who is responsible for the whole incident resulting in high reject
rates and the other associated problems?
If you were the HR manager, what would you do to avert this crisis?
What should be the long term strategy of this company in terms of the training policy
and process?