Question:
In the CIPD exam you have three hours to complete the paper. Section A is a case study and in Section B you are required to answer five questions. The two sections are equally weighted – so you have roughly 1.5 hours to answer Section B. There are five questions on this paper, so aim to complete it in 1.5 hours. There is no word limit.
These questions have been taken from recent CIPD exam papers for this module:
- The Workplace Employment Relations Surveys (WERS) carried out in the UK since 1980 have tracked a long term decline in trade union membership. The proportion of the workforce that joins unions is now around half of what it was 30 years ago.
- What do you think are the major reasons for this trend?
- What are the main advantages and disadvantages of this trend from the perspective of the HR function?
- The term ’employee engagement’ has become central to the language of HRM since it was first coined in the late 1990s. But people still tend to disagree about what exactly it means. Some see it as a genuinely innovative concept, while others argue that it is no more than a new term meaning essentially the same thing as ’employee commitment.’
- Drawing on research, explain how an ‘engaged’ employee is different from a ‘committed’ one?
- What steps could your organisation take in order to increase its levels of employee engagement? What would be the advantage of taking such steps?
- One of the most widely cited and longest-established theories about human motivation at work is labelled ‘equity theory.’
- Briefly explain the thinking behind equity theory and the contribution it has made to our understanding of human motivation in workplaces.
- How might equity theory underpin decision-making when an organisation is proposing a round of redundancies?/li>
- Research sponsored by CIPD looked in detail at managers’ perceptions of times that they made the transition into new leadership roles (Leadership Transitions: Maximising HR’s Contribution. 2008). It found some striking differences between the responses of men and women. Women are much more ambivalent than men. Only 49% of the women surveyed believed that their last promotion had had a positive effect on their lives, compared to 65% of men. Women were also twice as likely as men to report that their promotion had had a negative effect on them.
- Why do you think that so many more women seem to be ambivalent about their promotions than men are?
- What steps can HR managers take to help reduce this ambivalence?/li>
- Despite the recent recession, competition among employers for high calibre graduate recruits is very strong. The larger, private sector organisations attract by far the most applications from ambitious and able graduates, although some public sector employers such as the civil service and the BBC are also popular choices.
- Why are so many new graduates particularly attracted to the prospect of joining larger, private sector employers?
- What advice would you give to a small start-up business that was keen to employ a cohort of able new graduates over the next three or four years?
Solution:
The decline of union membership and collective bargaining should be a cause for concern. That’s because trade unions are good for workers and for the economy too. Strong unions help working people secure a fair share of the income that we collectively generate. The decline of union membership and collective bargaining has led to a growing power imbalance at work and contribute to a massive rise in inequality. Even the chief economist of the Bank of England has recognised that the decline in union density has contributed to the slowest period of wage growth in over a century…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Please contact us to receive support, guidance and tutorial services regarding all the sections of this assessment based on your overall expectations and background
Email address: rankedtutorials@gmail.com