This dynamic business
simulation game will help the participant gain a better understanding of the strategic
issues of a human resources department. For use in a college class or human
resource training program, teams of 2 to 5 people establish objectives, plan
their strategy, and then make the required decisions dictated by these plans.
The decisions are forwarded to the instructor who uses the instructor program
to calculate the results. Several iterations of the decision calculations are
made. A FAQ (frequently asked questions) section for students and instructors
is included in the student manual.
You may download the latest version of the Instructor's program below,
after obtaining the password from the author, Jerald Smith. When the download
screen appears and you have entered the ID and password, click to
"Save" and not "Open" the zip file. Save the file to your
hard disk; we suggest you create a folder on your C: drive named
"HumanResources." Once you have the zip file on your C: drive, then
right click on the file name and select extract all files. Along with the
Instructor program (HumanResources.exe), we have added 3 additional microsoft
files which should have been included with Microsoft Windows© but may not be on
your computer. These 3 files should remain in your "Human Resources"
folder so they can be found by the program if they are needed.
ONLY
instructors who have adopted the simulation and ordered student manuals
may download the latest copy of the software.
Contact the author, Jerald Smith, for a password. Click
here to send email to Jerald Smith. If you
do not hear from Jerald Smith within 3 days, contact the co-author Peggy
Golden.
The most common Instructor error in running the simulation is to forget to run the MERGE routine (the second item on the menu). If students have submitted their decisions via the decision file created by the student program, you do not select the "Instructor Enters Decisions" on the menu as students have already entered their own decisions. Go to the "Merge decisions" selection. Then run Compute. We suggest you print the Administrator's report next to show you if there were any glowing errors in the student decision entries. The Administrator's report will also give you some information to use when you enter the "Instructor's Message to Students" which comes up in running the "Print Student Reports" routine from the menu.
After you are comfortable in running the simulation you may want to experiment with changing one or more parameters. We suggest changing only one or two in a quarter so students can handle the changes.
Students are always overwhelmed by all the rules and information they must digest during the first quarter or two. While students can use the forms to calculate budget use and how many employees to hire but if they are REALLY confused, you can help by emphasizing that they should make sure to hire the employees shown in the right hand column of the top section, "Estimated Vacancies you should fill." Please emphasize these are estimates and the actual number of employees that quit may be slightly different (this is a real world situation of the problem of forecasting employee turnover).
Note: Larry Siebers of Utah State has shared his syllabus and several
forms for the simulation. The url is at the bottom of this page.
Teams (of from one to 5 students) in the
class will be managing a medium size organization that will be competing with other
teams (up to 20). The simulation can be programmed to simulate a profit or
non-profit organization that is in manufacturing or service. The instructor
will inform teams of the industry to be simulated. Each organization in this
simulation will be managed by a team of three to five people. The organizing of
the team will be left up to each team.
Teams are expected to establish objectives,
plan their strategy, and then make the required decisions dictated by these
plans. Decisions are submitted to the instructor periodically. These decisions
are input into the computer, which produces a report for each team concerning
the firm's results. This is done for several iterations (minimum for learning
effect is seven, maximum 12).
OVERALL SCENARIO
The team is to assume the position of a newly
appointed personnel director of an organization of approximately 660 employees.
The organization has grown rapidly, and the human resource department
(and functions) have not kept pace with this growth. The Chief Executive
Officer (CEO) has instructed the department to get the human resource function
organized and build a strong HR function. The organization may be in production
or services, profit or non-profit. Currently there is no union involved, but
the industry is slowly becoming unionized. At the lower levels there are both
semi-skilled and skilled workers (about 500). The firm has no policy on
promotions and has hired into the upper levels of management from the outside
as well as promoted from within. Responsibility for training now resides
primarily with department heads and is strictly on-the-job type training. The
economic conditions in your region are good and unemployment rates are average.
The team's performance will be judged against
the goals the team sets (formally or informally) in terms of the ability to
manage a budget, unit labor cost, quality, morale, grievances, absenteeism,
accident rate, and turnover. The team does not have enough budget
to do everything that is needed in the organization. The team must make choices
as to what is most important to you and concentrate the budget on those
factors. The team will, in a sense, be competing with all other teams on the
items mentioned above. However, in terms of direct competition, the team is
only competing with other firms in the local labor market for new employees.
The other firms (teams) in the class will comprise the local labor area.
Potential
academic adopters may contact their local Prentice Hall representative for an
adoption copy or via web page http://www.prenhall.com/mischtm/examcopy_fe.html
Corporations
or individuals interested in purchasing ten or more copies,
please contact:
Corporate Sales
Department, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River NJ
07458
Email: mailto:corpsales@prenhall.com
Voice (201) 236-7156 Fax (201) 236-7141
Instructors
may contact the authors via Email for questions:
Jerald
Smith: simulations@att.net
Peggy
Golden: floridapg@yahoo.com
Students (and professors) have written and
asked us what decision factors affect certain outcomes, like Morale. We do not
want to advise you what decisions to make so will describe how we view some of
the factors in a "real world" situation. Having said that we need to
warn that an outcome like employee morale is difficult to describe due to its
complexity. A natural response by students will be, "but we do not have
the budget to increase all the outcomes." This is true in the simulation
as in the real world. Budgets are finite. That is why the authors urge the team
to establish what it feels is important and concentrate on those selected
factors. Other outcomes may suffer but that is to be understood.
In the list below a few rationales are given
as to why a certain factor is included. The factors not specifically defined will
require YOU to reason why they are a factor, and if they are a minor factor or
a major factor.
Optimum Training Budget: Enough to train all
promotions per the suggested amounts in the manual plus some amount above this
figure to train others.
Quality: Consists of Quality budget, safety
of the work environment, training budget, employee participation policy, lack
of grievances, and a high regard for performance appraisals.
Productivity: Sufficient training, plant
safety, employee participation in generating more efficient production
function, orientation of new employees. Higher productivity is shown on the
report as productivity per employee; therefore fewer employees will be needed
to produce the level of production required in a given quarter. This has the
effect of lowering production cost per unit.
Grievances: Presence of an effective
grievance procedure, a HRIS system, employee participation (if employees
participate in operations they will be less likely to file a grievance, good
training.
Absenteeism: Training (workers feel they are
better equipped to be promoted and to be retained should a downturn occur),
safety, quality of the product produced (pride in what one is doing increases
job satisfaction and willingness to be at work everyday), employee
participation policy.
Accident Rate: Training, safety, employee
participation, turnover.
Morale: Wages and fringes compared to other
firms and to the industry as a whole, quality index (if an employee is a part
of a firm that produces a high quality product, he/she should have a higher
level of morale), employee participation, grievance
level.
Success of minority and female hiring: As you
may have noticed, just because you would like to hire a certain percentage,
that percentage may be difficult to achieve. This is because ALL firms are
competing for the available pool of QUALIFIED people in these groups.
We think we have given you some of the
factors involved with the simulation outcomes. We encourage your team to
discuss other factors which may be involved.
2. DISCHARGING EMPLOYEES
A team in Julie Zalatan's
class asked would morale be affected if they discharged excess workers.
Our Answer:
Yes, it will hurt morale somewhat but if it is just a few people, morale should
be back to normal within one quarter. Don't forgot, you will x number by
attrition automatically (# expected vacancies next period).
However, it is also a good time to discuss social responsibility to employees.
I personally would not fire any, but keep them on an extra quarter and let
attrition bring it down to probably what they need. This would give the empoloyees 3 months notice, lets them begin to look for new
jobs, and they can always clean up, paint up, fix up the plant or
facility....or loan them out to a social servie agency
while paying their salary (e.g. like the loaned executive program in
united way). The cost will increase the cost of production per unit for a
quarter but it is not a hugh cost.
1. Changes are made
to a student manual each time the publisher reprints the manual, mostly as a
result of instructor feedback. At this time, the 7th printing (of the first
edition) is the most up-to-date version. Used manuals are never the latest
printing! To ascertain the version of the manual, check the series of numbers
on the inside title page back cover. Just above the ISBN number about 2 inches
from the bottom you will find a series that for the first printing was
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
As the manual is printed again, the publisher drops off the number on the
right. Therefore, the 3rd
printing will read
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
We hope this will help you determine which manual you have and which manuals
your bookstore is selling.
2. To clarify questions concerning the report
on page 15 of the manual, it is the LAST quarter for the department. Therefore
columns 1-9 at the top of the page are for that quarter, and the lst two columns are the projections for the next quarter . Therefore, the important columns for the team
assuming the management of the department are columns 6 (Avail this quarter),
10 (Est Vacancies next qtr), and 11 (Total employees
required next quarter).
3. Prof Paul Reagan asks "How do I
correct an input error from a team's previous quarter's response?"
Start the program and select "Instructor
Enters Decisions." Select the team number you want to correct in the
"Company Number Box."
Enter the new decisions and save the file.
Go to the main menu and click the MERGE FILES routine, then COMPUTE. That is
it!
4. A question from Professor Julie Indvik led to the creation of this example for the
"Budget Planning Form-Type 2" which is in chapter 7. The numbers in
this example are the actual beginning values from the student report on page
15.
BUDGET
PLANNING FORM - Type 2 (modified)
2. While
column 2 and 5 happen to be the same this quarter, in future
quarters they will not be as the
"required for production" will vary in future quarters.
3. Must hire or promote sufficient
number to satisfy column 5.
To finish the example:
Column> 1 2
3
4 5
6 7
8 9
Total
Less Net Reqd for Total #
to # to # tohire Gross
Avail Est Number productn number
Hire promote due to Hires
Prev Vacan
of this
needed
promo (col 6
Level Qtr cies Emp
qtr (col
4-3) tions + col 8)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
5
20 1 19
20 1 _1__
_0_a _1__
4
25 2 23
25 2 _1__
_1_b _0_a _1__
3
50 5 45
50 5 _3__
_2_c _1_b _4__
2
60 6 54
60 6 _1__
_5_d _2_c _3__
1 500
50 450 500
50
_50_
_5_d _55_
Check Totals
64
64
Error Check:
Gross hires Col 9 (64) must equal Vacancies Col 2 (64).
In this example, I decided to promote a few people and hire the balance.
The balance of the Budget Planning Form -
Type 2 is to budget the total
amount available to the team in a quarter. A common error (or purposeful entry)
is to budget less training for promotees than the amount
suggested
on page 6 (col 4). Not training those newly promoted
will result in increased turnover of those promoted.
Syllabus and
Forms
A SAMPLE SYLLABUS AND SIMULATION FORMS
Larry Siebers of Utah State has shared his syllabus and several
forms for the simulation.
Click here for this
information.