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The president of a global automotive business headquartered in the U.S. is conducting annual global all-employee meetings. The president travels with the executive staff, which includes the chief financial officer (CFO), the chief HR officer (CHRO), and the chief technology officer (CTO), to all the factories around the world to deliver key messages to the employees.

The employees gather in large meeting rooms for the presentations, which focus mainly on successes from the past year and priorities for the new year, followed by a question-and-answer session. The president delivers most of the presentation, the CHRO presents on employee engagement and development initiatives, the CFO presents on the financials, and the others participate in the question-and-answer session.

Within a two-week period, they travel to meetings in China, Malaysia, Ireland, and several large U.S. sites. In addition to the presentations at each site, they take facility tours and have one-on-one meetings with front-line employees of their functional organizations and with key talent while they are on site. It is a rigorous schedule, but it is very important to the president, who is committed to building a strong global team and organization.

While the president is presenting to a room full of factory associates in Tianjin, China, the CHRO notices that many of the associates are whispering to each other. The president appears flustered. What action should the CHRO take to understand the reason for the employees' behavior?

A global, 10,000-employee, performance-driven manufacturing company recently instituted a major cultural shift with the board's announcement of a new CEO. The CEO outlined a revitalized focus on performance and productivity, including an update to the 100-year-old company's culture, vision, and values. The CEO tasks a newly hired chief human resources officer (CHRO) with developing a new performance management system aligned to these changes.

The CHRO researches the history of the company's performance management system and discovers that, although employees have usually achieved individual targets, the company has not hit its overall performance and financial targets even once. The CHRO determines that significant elements in a new performance management system would be stronger management capabilities and increased individual accountability.

After careful analysis, the CHRO recommends an approach. The CHRO believes that this new system will create a way to differentiate performance among employees at all levels as well as identify high-potential future leaders. It also creates a way to identify poor performers, giving the company an approach to close performance gaps through various developmental activities. Finally, the new performance system will bring transparency to the way employees are evaluated.

Which long-term success measure should the CHRO use in reporting to the senior leadership team regarding the new performance management system?

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 company operates in a very cost-focused environment, keeping its customers in the forefront of every decision they make. A recent merger has doubled the company size and expanded the product offerings to better serve customers. Each of the merged organizations had a significantly different approach to HR's service delivery. However, despite these and a number of other differences, the merger went ahead.

The merged company recently hired a new senior director of HR, selected primarily due to her expertise and experience in mergers and acquisitions. She reports to the CEO and the president of the newly merged company and has been tasked with leading the integration activities from an HR perspective.

The HR director recognizes immediately that, aside from needing to get the new HR organization established, HR service delivery is critical due to increasing cost pressures, a larger global workforce, and increasing internal and external customer expectations. She has met with her new HR team and key business stakeholders to obtain valuable feedback and proposals.

How can the director best gain support for the HR structural changes she wants to make?