HR Trivia - 10 Questions

This is a podcast episode where the host introduces a game of trivia. The questions cover various topics related to HR and career development. The purpose of a performance appraisal is to assess an employee's job performance and provide feedback. Onboarding refers to the process of integrating and orienting a new employee into an organization. A mission statement defines the organization's purpose, while a vision statement outlines its future goals. An employee handbook provides guidelines and policies for employees. Diversity and inclusion in the workplace refer to creating a diverse and inclusive environment. A job description includes the main components of a specific job. Human resources play a role in the recruitment and selection process. Protected characteristics under anti-discrimination laws include race, gender, and disability. The purpose of a disciplinary process is to address misconduct or performance issues. Employee engagement refers to the level of commitment and involv Hello, hello friends. I am super excited for today's episode because I'm doing something a little bit different that I have never done before. So whether you are a small business, if you're a business owner that maybe is listening to try to pick up some free HR advice or tips and tricks or just some general HR knowledge or if you're a job seeker, I think this episode is going to be appealing to both of you as well as just anybody who loves to talk all things career and you want to learn a few things today, a few educational things. I'm going to play a game of trivia with you. So at the beginning of the episode, I'm going to ask 10 questions and then I'm going to go through and break down the answer to each of those 10 questions. It's going to be a quick one. So stay tuned and enjoy this one. Hey there, you professional ambitious working mama. Welcome to the Christian Career Coach Podcast. Do you want to achieve remarkable success and experience unwavering faith in your professional journey? Do you find yourself up late at night searching for answers on how to make more money, maintain a positive work-life balance and achieve exponential career growth? Do you wake up with big ambitious goals only to feel overwhelmed and uncertain when faced with setbacks, frustrations and unexpected challenges? Well, you're in the right place. I'm Susan Edwards and on this podcast, we tackle those exact concerns head on. We dive deep into strategies to propel your income, accelerate your career growth and help you align your work with your faith. So if you're tired of feeling stuck and you're ready to embrace extraordinary success, unwavering faith in a purposeful life, then join me on the Christian Career Coach Podcast. Together, we'll navigate the obstacles, find clarity amidst chaos and unlock your true potential. Get ready for inspiration, actionable advice and powerful insights that will empower you to conquer your fears and create the fulfilling career you've always dreamed of. Let's walk this transformative journey together. Welcome to the Christian Career Coach Podcast, where ambition meets faith and your dreams find their wings. Hey, amazing listeners, I want to share an exciting opportunity that can help you thrive in your career while aligning with your Christian values. As a devoted Christian career coach, I offer personalized one-on-one coaching sessions designed to empower you to achieve remarkable career growth, maintain a healthy work-life balance and increase your salary. If you find yourself yearning for more money, missing certifications or lacking certain job qualifications, I'm here to guide you through the process. With my expertise and faith-based approach, we'll address these challenges head on and help you overcome them. Together, we'll develop strategies to bridge the gaps and position you for success. Work-life balance is crucial, especially for Christian moms with ambitious career goals. I understand the importance of maintaining harmony between your personal and professional life. Through my coaching program, you'll learn practical techniques to prioritize what truly matters, ensuring you can excel in your career while still nurturing your family and faith. Now let's talk about career growth and the desire for a higher salary. I am here to help equip you with the tools and insights you need to advance in your profession and increase your earning potential. With personalized guidance and a faith-based perspective, we'll unlock opportunities for growth, help you negotiate your worth and create a path that aligns with your aspirations and Christian principles. To take the first step towards transforming your career, I invite you to book a free 30-minute career clarity call with me. During this call, we'll dive into your goals, address any obstacles and explore how Christian career coaching can accelerate your journey. Don't let missing certifications or qualifications, work-life balance concerns or stagnant salary hold you back. Together, we'll navigate these challenges and unlock your God-given potential. To book your free career clarity call, simply visit my website at www.ForwardsCareerServices.com. Let's embark on this transformative journey towards more money, career growth, work-life balance and a higher salary, all while staying rooted in your Christian faith. I can't wait to connect with you and guide you towards the abundant career you deserve. Visit www.ForwardsCareerServices.com today and take the leap towards a fulfilling and prosperous professional life. Hello, hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Christian Career Coach Podcast. I'm Susan, your host, and today we are having a little fun. We are going to talk about trivia questions. I'm going to ask you some trivia questions and I want you to put a little bit of thought. Here's what I would like for you to do. Listen to all 10 questions, jot down what you think the answers are, pause the episode, you know, write out what you think the answers are, and then listen to the end of the episode where I give you the answers to each of these HR questions. So we are going to dive right in with question number one. Question number one is, what is the purpose of a performance appraisal? What is the purpose of a performance appraisal? Okay, trivia question number two is, what does the term onboarding refer to in the context of human resources? What does the term onboarding refer to in the context of human resources? Question number three, what is the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement? What is the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement? Question number four, what is the purpose of an employee handbook? What is the purpose of an employee handbook? Question number five, what does the term diversity and inclusion mean in the workplace? What is the term diversity and inclusion mean in the workplace? Question number six, what are the main components of a job description? What are the main components of a job description? Question seven, what is the role of human resources in the recruitment and selection process? What is the role of human resources in the recruitment and selection process? Question number eight, what are some examples of protected characteristics under anti-discrimination laws? What are some examples of protected characteristics under anti-discrimination laws? Question number nine, what is the purpose of a disciplinary process? What is the purpose of a disciplinary process? And lastly, question number 10, what does the term employee engagement mean and why is it important? What does the term employee engagement mean and why is it important? Okay, so let's dive in to the answers to each of these questions and some of them are pretty simple and you probably knew all of these answers or a lot of these answers or maybe you just knew some of these answers or maybe you think you knew but maybe you're going to learn something new. So okay, question number one was what is the purpose of a performance appraisal? This is something that is standard. I think everybody knows about this, maybe even you know as a teenager, as an entry level employee, you have heard about these. You've probably received one of these or at least one of these throughout your career but obviously the purpose is to assess an employee's job performance and to be able to provide feedback on the employee's strengths, areas for improvement and then to set some goals. That tends to be the piece that gets forgotten the most in these performance appraisals. In my past experience, these were always done on an annual basis because it's easier and operational managers just don't have time to do this. So I've seen some companies that have gone years without having any formal documentation on an employee's performance and it's sad because an employee's performance can be affected by so many things outside of work and this is a great way for managers to have those conversations with the employee, not only to discuss work things but to get to know them better and to offer help and guidance with things that maybe stem from outside of work but are affecting the workplace and ultimately their performance which could ultimately impact their job and their employment. So that's the the answer for what is the purpose of a performance appraisal. Okay so my question number two was what does the term onboarding refer to in the context of human resources? I am curious to know if you got this one right because I've actually seen this used by different companies in a very wrong context. So when you are referencing human resources and onboarding, what this refers to is the process of integrating and orienting a new employee into an organization. This includes providing necessary information, training, and support to help them adjust to their new role. This is not just HR's responsibility their first week to get all their paperwork filled out, show them where the bathrooms are, tell them what the rules are, provide a little new hire orientation. This goes on for many times 90 days, sometimes up to six months you can be onboarding somebody depending on how big your company is, how much responsibility they have in their new position, and just levels within the organization. So onboarding doesn't just stop with the human resources department, this continues on and it is the managers and supervisors responsibility to really impact this process. HR can provide all of the basics and information up front, but it is up to the managers and supervisors to carry that on and enforce everything. Okay, question number three was what's the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement? In my last two companies, I have actually had to either do this on my own or participate, not my last two, but actually several times I've had to do this throughout my career and participate or solely create a vision and mission statement. And this is not something that's easy to do, especially as a new person coming into an organization that is already in existence. So for clarification, a mission statement outlines the purpose and reason for the existence of the organization. A vision statement describes the future aspirations and goals of what the organization wants to achieve. So when you think about vision, think about your eyeballs and think about seeing and think about seeing in the distance. Like if you're driving your car or if you're riding and you can see off into the distance, that's vision. Vision is looking into the future, whereas the mission is really the purpose why that organization exists. Okay, what's the purpose of an employee handbook? This is question number four. And the purpose of an employee handbook is to provide employees with essential information about company policies, procedures, expectations, benefits, and other important guidelines. This is not to be mistaken for your procedural manual or your standard operating procedures. This is not the place for all of those. This should really be a guidebook that only has the essential information. So when an employee has a question about X, Y, or Z, whether it's attendance or holidays or organizational structure, who reports to who, those are the types of things that need to be in the employee handbook. Step by step instructions for how to take a reservation or how to properly provide service for a customer or something like that, that's an operating procedure. That is not something that needs to go into the employee handbook. You need something separate. As an employer, you need to have that procedural manual. Same thing you would think of as a menu. So if you're making soup and there's a specific menu for it, you know, there's specific ingredients and how long things need to boil and does something need to be frozen or whatever those things are, you're going to have a recipe for that. The recipe is the operating procedure. It's how to make that particular soup. And the operating procedure is how to do that operation. So would you put your recipes in your employee handbook? No. Again, expectations, benefits, yes, your benefits definitely need to be in there. What kind of benefits you offer to the employees and any other important guidelines that I can't think of any specific examples right now, but I definitely have created handbooks many a times, reviewed, updated all of those things. So I have seen these over and over and over again, but it's been a while actually since I've done this, at least a few years. But anyway, so that's the answer to trivia question number four, the purpose of the employee handbook. Okay, question number five is a recent topic and I'll give you my opinion on this after I give you the answer. But what does the term diversity and inclusion mean in the workplace? That's the question. The answer is diversity and inclusion refer to creating a work environment that values and embraces individual differences. This includes race, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, abilities, and ultimately it's to foster a culture of respect and equality. So there is a lot of confusion when it comes to equality versus equity. And I think a lot of this really gets jumbled up in fancy words. You know, back in the day, 20 years ago, even 15 years ago, even 10 years ago, we had to do these things called affirmative action plans. And that's what diversity and inclusion was. That's what it was called. It was called affirmative action. And essentially what it did was gave you information as an employer on your workforce, and it was the demographics of your workforce. And so if your workforce was limited in a certain ethnicity or age group, back then it was just race, gender, age, and ethnicity. All the others really didn't get included until the last five or so years. So if your workforce, let's say, you didn't have anybody working for you over the age of 50, your affirmative action plan would show you that clearly your hiring practices need to be revamped and you need to start to target individuals that are over the age of 50. And so that's ultimately what happened with an affirmative action plan. I've had to do these. I've had to do them manually and electronically, so I am familiar with them. However, the result was never, it never took into consideration a lot of outside factors. Like if you live in a rural area and those people just don't live there, or if you live in a college town and people over the age of 50 just don't live there. You know, those are the types of things that were never really considered in those types of plans. Now, diversity and inclusion is, it has changed. It's not so much an effort for you to change your recruiting habits or practices, but it is ultimately a guide for training within the workplace to teach people how to respect one another. That's ultimately what it boils down to. Treat others the way you want to be treated. If someone has a disability, if someone has, you know, if their sexual orientation is different than yours, they just want to be treated the same. They just don't want to be treated any differently. And so that's ultimately the goal of diversity and inclusion. Okay, moving on to question number six. What are the main components of a job description? This might be one that you don't know, so I want to help you understand this and hopefully there's some business owners listening to this episode. But the answer is that those main components include the job title, a summary of the role, the essential duties and responsibilities, qualifications and the skills that are required to do the job, the reporting relationship, as in who will this person report to, and then any specific physical or environmental requirements. Those are all of the main components that make up the job description. Okay, question number seven is what is the role of human resources in the recruitment and selection process? I love this question because this is my favorite part, I think, of HR is recruiting and selecting. The answer to this question is human resources obviously plays a very crucial role in the recruitment and selection process. From the beginning, they are the ones that advertise job openings. They are the ones that are going to screen and shortlist candidates. They're going to conduct interviews, do the background checks, and ultimately they're going to assist in the hiring decision-making process. That can include things like comparing wages, so doing a compensation analysis of the role and maybe comparing it to others that are in that same role and making sure that everything is in alignment and it's within a budget. It could also include providing guidance and coaching those managers on how to actually do an interview because, believe it or not, human resources are really the only ones that get this special training in how to conduct an interview. So many operational managers have never actually interviewed somebody before when you approach them for the first time and it's a learning experience and a learning curve for operational managers. Now obviously the ones that have been doing it for 5, 10, 15, or more years, they're going to be more experienced and way more comfortable conducting interviews. However, it is very important that human resources oversees this part of the process because there are legalities, as with everything, certain things that can and cannot be asked, certain things that operational managers may not know about and HR is there to keep them in check. So that is the role that human resources plays specifically for the recruitment and the selection process. Just to add on to that, the selection process is obviously the final part. It's who's going to be selected for this position. So assuming that you've interviewed multiple candidates and seen several candidates that are qualified, they fit your organization, they're within budget, human resources is going to look at things more objectively and be able to provide some insight and guidance through this decision. So if you are in operations and you find yourself in this situation, it is important that you seek out the help, the advice, and the guidance from your human resources team, your human resources manager, your human resources director, somebody that can actually guide you in an objective way for this selection, for the actual selection process. Okay, moving on to question number eight, what are some examples of protected characteristics under anti-discrimination laws? And I think most people would be really familiar with race, color, national origin, gender, religion, age. If you didn't know age is a good one, did you know that the Age Discrimination Act starts at age 40? So 40 and above, those are the people that are protected under the ADEA, the Age Discrimination and Employment Act. But also some others include now, disability status, genetic information, and I feel like they're adding to this every year. So this is another one of those things where it's really important to seek out the guidance of someone in HR, someone that's familiar with this and can help guide you if you're, if you find yourself in a situation where an employee needs to be disciplined, or if you're making a hiring decision, or I mean all sorts of things in the workplace that really your HR department, your HR team needs to help you with. So if you don't have an HR team, I would highly suggest you get one, whether it's in-house or external. This is the reason why these things are so, so important, because anti-discrimination, you know, discrimination laws are covered under the EEOC, and there's a lot of different legislation, equal employment, ADA, ADEA, there's so many different laws that protect so many different categories of workers. So business owners and operational managers are not expected to know all of this information off the top of their head, but I bet you if you go to any HR person that has been working in HR for at least 10 years, they're going to be able to rattle off these things to you very quickly and give you just a short piece of advice or guidance depending on your situation. So that's just some examples of some characteristics that are protected under these anti-discrimination laws. All right, question nine was what's the purpose of a disciplinary process? This should be pretty easy, but obviously the purpose is to address and correct employee misconduct or performance issues. If you do this the same way with each and every employee, this is how you remain fair and consistent with your procedures, and you're able to maintain a more productive and respectful work environment. You don't want the first time that you're speaking to an employee about a performance issue or about their misconduct, misconduct being don't wait too long to address it. Address it immediately. Performance issues, the same thing. Address these immediately. Don't wait for your annual review process and then rattle off a bunch of things that you think the employee did wrong over the past year. Meet with your employees. Talk to your employees. Give them feedback constantly and address issues immediately, and that is an easy way to keep your workforce productive, keep them engaged, and have that mutual respectful relationship between employee and manager, employee and owner. Keep that in mind, but that's ultimately the purpose. The purpose is to address it up front and correct the behavior before it gets worse. And the last question for our HR trivia is, what does the term employee engagement mean and why is it important? Well, employee engagement refers to the emotional connection and commitment that employees have towards their work, towards the organization, and towards the goals of the workplace. This is extremely important because when your employees are engaged, they're way more motivated, they're way more productive, and they're way more likely to stay with the organization for a longer period of time. This obviously is going to have positive results. This is going to positively impact the overall performance and the retention. So when you think about everything being driven to the bottom line, when you think about that P&L statement, when you look at your numbers on a monthly basis, if you want a way to increase that, focus on your employee engagement. Focus on those relationships. Do what you can to improve the weakest relationships on your team, and you will start to see that number increase on your bottom line. And that's just simply because when workers feel heard, when they feel like you understand them as their boss, when employees feel valued, when they feel like they actually have a relationship and they know you as an owner or as their boss or as their supervisor, they're more engaged. Employee engagement is so important for their emotional well-being. When you think about the mental health crisis, think about building relationships with your teammates. And yes, these are your teammates. You built this team as a supervisor, as a manager, as an owner. You have built this team, and they are your team. So the same way that you would treat a teammate on your softball team or your volleyball team or your cheerleading squad or your basketball team, all of those, that's how you want to treat these folks. You know what's going on in their personal lives. You know what to check on. You know those that don't like to reveal too much about their family and their personal life, but they'll talk all about work or they'll talk all about a project on the side or something like that. Build those relationships. Get to know your people and build up that employee engagement. Okay, so that wraps up this episode of our 10 HR Trivia Questions, and I really hope that you learned something new from this, and I hope you didn't get too bored. Hopefully it went by pretty quickly for you. What I do want to say is, oddly enough, it has actually taken me three weeks. I kid you not, three weeks and five different recordings. Oh boy, I wish I could make this up, but five different times I've had to stop and start recording on this episode. That's just the way my life is these days. You know, when you've got two kids that are age seven and five, they definitely keep me on my toes. They keep me busy, and yeah, so that's a, this is a long one, but definitely one that I think brings a lot of value to an organization, and I hope that even if you're an owner or an employee or a supervisor or whatever level you are or whatever level you aspire to be, I hope that you were able to take something from this episode, learn from it, and then go apply it in your workforce or in your workplace. Maybe if that's not today, maybe that's a year from now, maybe that's 10 years from now, but take all this information. If you want more information, I'm happy to give you more resources. Feel free to reach out. Send me an email. Jump on my website, of course, forwardscareerservices. You can certainly find me on Instagram, forwards.career.services. So I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next one. Hey there, Ambitious Mama. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Christian Career Coach Podcast. If it resonated with you and provided valuable insights, I'd love for you to take just 30 seconds and share this episode with a fellow Christian professional who may benefit from the career advice and inspiration. Together, we can uplift and empower more women on their professional journeys. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Oh, and one more thing that would mean the world to me. Could you leave a review? Your feedback and support light me up and let me know that this podcast is making a positive impact in your life. As we continue this journey together, remember that you're not alone. I understand the joys and challenges of being an ambitious mama, and I'm here to cheer you on every step of the way. So march your calendar because I'll meet you back here next Tuesday for another episode filled with valuable insights and practical tips. Until then, keep chasing your dreams, balancing your roles with grace, and shining brightly in your career and family life. Transcribed by https://otter.ai