1.) Describe the criteria necessary for firms to achieve sustained competitive advantage through people. To achieve sustained competitive advantage through people, organizations have to invest in human resources (Mahmood, 2015). HR will be responsible for hiring the right people for the right job, creating an exceptional workplace culture that talent wants to be part of, developing an environment in which workers have cognitive incentives to further develop their skills and thus enable the organization to differentiate itself from what competitors are doing and so on. Effective and efficient use of human capital is at the heart of every organization’s success.

2.) Discuss the different forms of employee teams.

There are a variety of different teams in the workplace: department teams, problem-solving teams, virtual teams, cross-functional teams, and self-managed teams. Department teams typically contain individuals who specialize in a certain function—for example, back-end web development in IT. A team will consist of several persons from the same department all equipped with the same skills working on a project for the department. A problem-solving team could be made of people from various organizations tasked with addressing a specific issue—like what to do when the global economy crashes as happened in 2007. A virtual team consists of workers who are not physically located at a job site but instead are all over the world and perform their jobs independently while communicating digitally. Cross-functional teams are inter-departmental teams that come together to assist in a goal that comprises the work of several departments—such as a new product launch. Self-managed teams are empowered to make decisions on their own so that they can take ownership of a project (Capsim, 2015).

3.) Identify and discuss some of the desirable traits of a trainer.

In order to be a quality...

The trainer has to be able to identify the training needs of the organization’s staff and find ways to fulfill those needs. The trainer essentially has to know everything about the organization and how the organization’s vision and core values can best be ingrained into employees through training. For that reason, a trainer should be devoted to continuous learning, embrace innovation leadership, and be efficient in terms of using capital and time wisely.
4.) Discuss the advantages of incentive pay programs.

Every organization has to find ways to motivate its workers. Sometimes those ways can include the use of intrinsic motivation; but often extrinsic motivation is required (Gerhart & Fang, 2015). The advantages of incentive pay programs are numerous for that reason. Incentive pay programs can help organizations drive sales by tying compensation to sales performance. Employees can earn more the more they sell for the company. This motivates workers to push the extra mile and can be a big factor in driving sales for the company. Incentive pay programs can also inspire greater teamwork, increased engagement among stakeholders, reductions in turnover and improvements in employee morale. Nothing motivates workers like the possibility of increased pay, and nothing is more empowering than the idea that the individual employee is master of his own fate and can determine how much or how little he will take home at the end of the year.

5.) Briefly discuss the concept of wrongful discharge, including the three exceptions to employment-at-will that can create an action.

With an at-will employment situation, the worker can be fired for no cause at all. The worker is not bound by any contract with the employer and may quit whenever he likes—but the employer may also fire the worker whenever he…