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In this exercise, students are asked to assume the role of a project manager for Kaymak Consulting, a 210-employee management consulting firm located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Students must work in groups to determine how much of a merit increase each of six analysts should receive during their next salary review. They make their decisions while considering the values that the organization would like to encourage. Background information on each analyst, along with current salary, are provided in the exercise. The task is to determine the most fair and effective method for dividing the pool of funds for salary increase among the six analysts.

Natalie Wilson, a human resources administrator at League Plastics, a manufacturer of parts for the recreational vehicle industry, was worried that she would be blamed by her supervisor for an increasing number of workers' compensation claims. After gathering data on the ever-worsening safety record in the facility and taking notes about where injuries were occurring, Wilson knew she would need to act before the company's workers' compensation policy came due for renewal. She needed to put together a plan that would start reducing injuries for the rest of the year, and she needed to persuade her supervisor to implement it.

For this exercise, students are asked to assume the place of the two founders and owners of a web-based company called Good Authority. The venture was launched one year earlier and has been successful, although the two owners are finding it difficult to continue operating the company during their spare time while working full-time hours at their day jobs. Recently, an investor offered to fund the salary and payroll expenses for one employee, allowing the two owners more time to grow and expand the business. The students are tasked with effectively designing a job for the new employee to allow the two owners time and energy to focus on the future and success of the business.

In this exercise, students are asked to assume the role of a project manager for Kaymak Consulting, a 210-employee management consulting firm located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Students must work in groups to determine how much of a merit increase each of six analysts should receive during their next salary review. They make their decisions while considering the values that the organization would like to encourage. Background information on each analyst, along with current salary, are provided in the exercise. The task is to determine the most fair and effective method for dividing the pool of funds for salary increase among the six analysts.

Nora is an intelligent, hard-working employee in her first managerial role. As she attempts to move from a role as a contributor to that of a leader, she struggles to effectively manage her workload, her boss, and her team. While she is prepared to do what it takes to be successful, the characteristics that got her to her current level are not those that are needed in her new position. In other words, while she is technically adept, motivated, and customer-focused, this is no longer enough. Nora needs to identify what she can do-and what resources and support she should ask for-to fulfill her potential in this new role.

In April 2022, the founder of Camncloud, a pioneer in surveillance service based in New Delhi, India, was facing a dilemma about hiring a potential candidate for his new venture. Camncloud offered an end-to-end remote streaming service targeted primarily at preschools. The company’s founder wanted to use his electronics background to carve a niche segment in India’s competitive technology market, but needed help in achieving that goal. Specifically, he was hoping to build a loyal, dynamic, and committed team of high-level experts who faced difficulty in paying competitive salaries to a potential workforce of candidates that were in high demand, with constant offers from competitors. After the early departure of all three of his employees, he was being more cautious in choosing new team members who would be more committed than the previous team. However, while in the process of offering a position to a highly recommended new candidate, he encountered a roadblock. How could he resolve this difficult recruiting dilemma?

In July 2022, upon his return from vacation, Lamar Gilbert, the head of the French subsidiary of successful Swedish unicorn Virtual AB (Virtual), found himself abruptly grappling with an unsettling reality. Leo Svennson, his closest direct report, had been accused of sexually harassing two female colleagues. As he pursued an investigation into the allegations, Gilbert also realized Svennson had blatantly disparaged his authority behind his back. The French unit was in disarray and Svennson's conduct was not the only cause. Despite Gilbert's flattering track record, his influence had waned. In addition to removing Svennson, it was urgent for him to demonstrate more effective leadership behaviours and new influence tactics to put the French subsidiary back on track, before it was too late.

Workforce controversies are increasing due to automation, layoffs, changes to work arrangements, and employees’ focus on their own values and priorities. Leaders can avert conflicts by identifying goals and interests and sharing them with employees, including them in decisions, and giving them strategic roles and responsibilities.

Many companies are very bad at hiring people—although they often don’t realize this—and they cannot get better if they don’t recognize that they need to improve. This note explores the common errors organizations make when attempting to hire employees and outlines the steps they should take to hire better and with improved diversity outcomes. The note is written from the perspective of someone who not only has interviewed thousands of job candidates but also is familiar with the literature on recruitment and selection. It serves as a practical guide that leans heavily on existing research.

Many companies are very bad at hiring people-although they often don't realize this-and they cannot get better if they don't recognize that they need to improve. This note explores the common errors organizations make when attempting to hire employees and outlines the steps they should take to hire better and with improved diversity outcomes. The note is written from the perspective of someone who not only has interviewed thousands of job candidates but also is familiar with the literature on recruitment and selection. It serves as a practical guide that leans heavily on existing research.

Behavioral nudges can play an outsize role in closing the gender gap and increasing the number of people from underrepresented groups that a company hires. When these small, easy-to-implement, and often inexpensive interventions are applied to candidate attraction, recruitment, and onboarding, they can help make diversity and inclusion a natural feature of a company and capture its measurable competitive advantages.

Talent marketplaces can free employees and managers from the constraints of traditional who-you-know networks and help organizations match the right people to the right projects. Booz Allen launched a talent marketplace pilot project to achieve those goals and give people more control over their career paths. During year one, the company successfully navigated several challenges, including slow user adoption and cultural pushback. Apply these lessons learned to your company.

The case highlights the courage, tenacity, and drive of a young woman pursuing her law degree part-time while working full-time in a financial role in Maryland. She applied to a posting for a government relations role in her parent company’s head office in Washington, D.C. The job involved advocacy work with members of the US Congress, which aligned with her interests even though it was intended for candidates several levels above her current role. However, given her interest in the opportunity, she reached out directly to the hiring executive, bypassing her manager and circumventing her organization’s standard human resources processes and protocols. She left the call with a request for an interview, although she thought that it could result in either a rapid climb or a painful fall from grace with reputational risk, which could impact her future career. Time would soon tell.

The case highlights the courage, tenacity, and drive of a young woman pursuing her law degree part-time while working full-time in a financial role in Maryland. She applied to a posting for a government relations role in her parent company's head office in Washington, D.C. The job involved advocacy work with members of the US Congress, which aligned with her interests even though it was intended for candidates several levels above her current role. However, given her interest in the opportunity, she reached out directly to the hiring executive, bypassing her manager and circumventing her organization's standard human resources processes and protocols. She left the call with a request for an interview, although she thought that it could result in either a rapid climb or a painful fall from grace with reputational risk, which could impact her future career. Time would soon tell.

Disagreements about identity, diversity, and justice are some of the thorniest conversations taking place in today’s workplaces. Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow, cofounders of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at NYU School of Law and coauthors of the book Say the Right Thing, offer leaders four strategies for interactions that can foster empathy and respect and help rein in anger and defensiveness.

Cynet Systems Private Limited (Cynet) was a subsidiary of Cynet Corporation, a technology services firm providing staffing support for US clients. The Cynet team in India was based in smaller Indian cities such as Karnal and Dehradun. When a lockdown was announced in early March 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country, the recruiters working for Cynet had to shift to remote work. This was a dramatic shift for the young recruiters, most of whom were recent college graduates. The onus of ensuring the client deliverable was met was on Shyam Sharma, the team leader at Cynet. At that time, the company created a centralized data reporting team, and in December 2021 the organization was still looking to enhance an analytics dashboard to better predict employee performance; further analytical insights would allow Cynet's top management to make better predictive outcomes versus what was currently being measured to evaluate performance.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W31026.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W31027.

When many leaders talk about reskilling programs, they emphasize individual career progression and the acquisition of skills that benefit company strategy. But an experiment at Vodafone showed that a more direct message focused on career relevancy increased employees’ participation in a reskilling program. Use this advice on how to be reassuring but transparent with employees when discussing this critical workforce issue.

However, this observation is inconsistent with employee observations shared with Perez. Students must, therefore, adjust the pay gap estimates to reconcile employee perceptions with the pay data. Students are provided with a cross-sectional pay data file generated for Elemental's Binary Gender Pay Report. (It is a supplemental Excel file included with the case and teaching note). Informed by employee quotes provided in the case, students perform equity analytics to estimate Elemental's binary gender pay gap. The analyses start with an unadjusted pay gap estimate and then proceed through a series of adjustments. These analyses reveal that although there is no unadjusted gender pay gap across Elemental's four divisions there are distinct pay disparities within individual divisions. A key insight of the case is that aggregating unit pay data at the organization level can mask substantial pay disparities among an organization's constituent units. Students will attribute estimated pay differences to differential treatment of men and women employees (i.e., different behaviors produce different pay) or to disparate impacts of organizational practices (i.e., equivalent treatment produces different pay). More specifically, the instructor can use the equity analytics framework (detailed in the teaching note) to demonstrate which of Elemental's divisions exhibit one of the pay disparities featured in the equity analytics 2 x 2 framework: (1) differential allocations, (2) differential valuations, (3) disparate allocations, or (4) disparate valuations. Each of the four disparity-generating processes necessitates a different approach to closing the pay gap.