Free SHRM SHRM-SCP Exam Questions

A 50-year-old family-owned restaurant has a good business model. Repeat customers are greeted by name, and their preferences are remembered. The owner visits each table to engage in conversation. Food quality is high, merging home cooking with new cuisine. The environment is elegant, welcoming, and unrushed, and the restaurant is known for its celebrity customers. Visitors to town make advance reservations.

Business decisions are typically made in family meetings. In the next six months, the owners plan to open a new location, but they worry about maintaining the same quality of personal service and name brand at the restaurant locations. The owners have relied on immediate family, relatives, and close friends to primarily staff the restaurant, since outsiders without a family connection tend to quickly leave the business. Long-time employees take advantage of time off, yet the owners are reluctant to use discipline for fear it will anger the family. The owners' children have expressed concern about continuing in the business, receiving educational degrees in marketing and management with anticipation of launching their new careers.

Realizing that they must bring on additional staff for the new location, the owners hire an HR representative with large restaurant chain recruiting experience. In addition to identifying a renowned chef to hire who currently lives in another country, the owners want to establish a bonus program. They also want to implement policies and procedures to avoid attendance issues in the future.

What steps should the HR representative take to support implementing an attendance policy that meets the owners' business strategy?

A successful global energy company attracts entrepreneurial candidates with the desire to be highly compensated through an aggressive and competitive rewards program. Incentive pay is determined through a forced ranking system managed at each business unit through open group discussions about individual employee performance and contribution. The organization's structure is relatively flat; therefore, business units are empowered to adjust the unit strategy and approach as needed.

A highly analytical executive vice president (EVP) of the most productive business unit consistently states that managers are unnecessary as only leaders will advance and be rewarded. In this unit, employees are challenged to lead and to demonstrate innovation in all facets of the work. Employees who receive poor performance reviews often leave the organization, as they are ignored by leadership. As a result, turnover is high in this unit, but there is always a steady flow of candidates ready to fill vacancies due to its success.

During the performance review period, a new VP in this unit becomes fearful of being categorized as a manager versus a leader and decides to speak with the HR director to obtain guidance. The HR director recognizes that similar concerns have been captured in exit interviews and the annual survey.

With the high turnover in the EVP's business unit, the HR director is concerned about succession planning. Which action will best assist in succession planning efforts?

A 40-year-old company is acquired by a 100-year-old company. Both companies have strong cultures.

The acquiring company's chief people officer establishes a team of business and HR professionals from both companies to assess their respective cultures and develop and enact an integration strategy. The HR director from the acquired company is asked to serve as that company's lead representative on the integration team.

A few weeks into the integration team's work, the HR director notices significant differences between the companies' cultures. While some aspects of the companies' cultures seem to be merging, many of the acquiring company's cultural norms are taking precedence as the united culture is being solidified. This situation is being fueled by the fact that a majority of the newly selected executive team members are leaders from the acquiring company.

How should the HR director go about preparing employees of the acquired company for the forthcoming cultural changes?