Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani

Work-Integrated Learning Programmes Division

Second Semester 2016-2017
Comprehensive Examination (EC-3 Regular)

Course No. : MM ZC441

Course Title : HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Nature of Exam : Open Book
Weightage : 45% No. of Pages =2
Duration : 3 Hours No. of Questions = 2
Date of Exam : 08/04/2017 (FN)
Note:
1. Please follow all the Instructions to Candidates given on the cover page of the answer book.
2. All parts of a question should be answered consecutively. Each answer should start from a fresh page.
3. Assumptions made if any, should be stated clearly at the beginning of your answer.
Read the caselet carefully and answer the following questions:
I.You joined as HR Manager in a startup company namely “Preshai Consultancy”, a consultancy
company that caters to software services for various clients. As a start up, you have major
responsibilities in designing performance appraisal sheet and salary design. Each of these issues
are catered in the following way:
Performance Management: You decided that performance planning will involves two stages:
goal setting and goal discussion. It will be done at the beginning of the appraisal period. The goal
sheet will have four perspectives i.e Adherence to schedule, quality of work, customer
satisfaction, adherence to budget. Individual goals will be drawn from the corporate goal and are
mutually agreed between the employee and their manager. Each goal then has a measure and a
target to be evaluated against too. After the measure has been set, each goal is then assigned a
weightage depending on the criticality of the goal. The weightage can range from 1 to 5. During
self-evaluation, where employees is expected to rate themselves on hard deliverables, the
employee is also expected to rate themselves on certain identified attributes (learning and
analytical ability, decision making, communication skills, teamwork, organizing skills) too. The
rating for attributes will also ranges from 1 to5.
Appraisal evaluation for the employee is done by the manger as well as by the manager's
manager. This helps keep any bias at bay. The employee is given a rating at the end of the
process. The rating depends on the performance against a set objective as well as the difficulty
score of the objective. The total score of the employee is the sum of the performance score and
the attribute score. After the evaluation process is over, the performance scores of employees are
rationalized. Since the system to appraise the employees is a rating system, it has loophole too.
There are chances that a certain group may have an advantage over another because of having a
lenient boss. In the rationalization process, the scores of all employees are bundles in groups so
that they could be put in one of the five allocated performance band A to E. The appraisal
information is used to identify training courses and other developmental interventions. Future
objectives for both task accomplishment and individual skills development are based on the
results of the evaluation
Salary Design: As start up, the salary of employees was based mostly on those prevailing in the
surrounding community. However, now you believe that it is the right time to consider designing
formal pay structure and hence set up “compensation committee” for it. After extensive job
analysis, committee identified following job as benchmark jobs: Team Engineer, Senior
engineer, Data base Administrator, Financial Executive, Quality Assurance, and Project
Manager. Committee feels quite strongly that 500 point methods will be the right job evaluation
methods. With extensive exercise, following points were assigned to each benchmark job
respectively: 100, 200, 130,130, 260. 360.

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Market survey was conducted for benchmark job. Market survey indicated that on average team
engineer gets Rs 1800; Senior Engineer Rs 3000, Data base admin 2000, financial executive Rs
2200, Quality assurance Rs 3500 and Project Manager Rs 7500 per week. Also the committee
decided to follow a policy of paying his employees about 5% above the marker rate, a policy that
you believe reduces turnover and foster employee loyalty.

1. Based on the information given in caselet , draw graphic scale performance rating. “There
are chances that a certain group may have an advantage over another because of having a
lenient boss. In the rationalization process, the scores of all employees are bundles in
groups so that they. could be put in one of the five allocated performance band A to E”.
What bias is being mentioned here and how have you planned to resolve it.
[5 + 5 = 10]
2. You are asked to determine salary of “Project leader “with 320 as job points in alignment
with companies pay policy. [10]
3. Suggest some incentives plans that you will provide to “project manager”. Comment on
some of the statutory compulsory benefit plan. [5]

II. Nitin joined Agrawal Textiles as production worker in January, 2003. Agarwal textiles were a
leading player in the textile industry and offered employees high wages as compared to other
players. All these motivated Nitin to join the firm. In the month of June, the supervisor received
orders from the top management that they should speed up the production process as demand for
products had reached a peak in the market. Most of the workers had to work over-time and Nitin
was one among them. In his previous job, any over-time would be paid and other benefits of
working overtime like food and transportation facilities for employee were taken care. After a
month of over-time, Nitin found that he was not being paid and also observed that the supervisor
was being biased towards some employees by giving them travel allowances etc. for over-time.
Some of his friends on the floor said it was a common practice and there was nothing much they
could do about it. When he took up this matter with the supervisor, he did not get a satisfactory
reply. The supervisor displayed a care-not attitude and was arrogant in his behavior. Nitin was
advised by his colleagues to calm down as the supervisor had the strong support of some union
leaders and was warned that in case he planned to take up this issue with the management, he
would probably lose his job. Nitin felt that someone had to take up the cause of the workers and
decided to report this matter to his higher authorities. Since management was under pressure of
delivering goods, the management didn’t pay much attention to his problems. In addition, the
supervisor started troubling Nitin by harassing him on the job. He now started taking active part
in the union activities and started instigating his co-workers against the supervisor and the
management. The management, unaware of all this, was busy pursuing its production targets to
meet the market demand.

4. What went wrong at Agarwal textiles and what steps should be taken to prevent such
problems in the future? Why Nitin started taking active part in the union activities?
[5 + 5 = 10]

5. “Why collective bargaining fails in our country? Elaborate. Critically examine any two
important recommendations of Mr. G Ramanujam’s Committee Report on the various
provisions governing Industrial Relations in India [5 + 5 = 10]

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