IMPORTANT NOTICE

LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR SHRM LEARNING SYSTEM FOR SHRM-CP/SCP STUDENT

MATERIALS
By opening and using these SHRM Learning System for SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP student materials
(the “Materials”), the user (“User”) hereby agrees as follows:
 That the Society for Human Resource Management is the exclusive copyright owner of the
Materials.
 Provided that the required fee for use of the Materials by User has been paid to SHRM or
its agent, User has the right, by this License, to use the Materials solely for his/her own
educational use.
 User has no right to print or make any copies, in any media, of the materials, or to sell, or
sublicense, loan, or otherwise convey or distribute these materials or any copies thereof in
any media.
SHRM and PACE Institute of Management (the exclusive partner of SHRM in Vietnam) may
pursue criminal and civil claims for any unauthorized use, misappropriation or the distribution of
any content contained in the Materials. In the case off dispute, it shall be settled and arbitrated in
Vietnam.

SAMPLE OF MATERIALS
This sample is only used for Vietnam market which SHRM Vietnam considers as a tool to help
audiences test and experience the difficulty level of English not the quality and knowledge. These
are excerpts from the full version of materials. You are prohibited from using this publication with
other training offerings or profiting from it any way.

Sample of Material - Page 1

 CONTENTS
HR COMPETENCIES
The SHRM BoCK
PEOPLE
Functional Area #2: Talent Acquisition
ORGANIZATION
Functional Area #8: Workforce Management
WORKPLACE
Functional Area #13: Risk Management

Sample of Material - Page 2

 HR COMPETENCIES

THE SHRM BoCK

This section includes excerpts from the SHRM Body of Competency and Knowledge describing
the eight Behavioral Competencies (organized into three clusters) and the 15 Functional Areas of
the HR Expertise (HR Knowledge) Technical Competency. The BoCK is the foundation for the
certification process, the certification exams, and this Learning System. It is a complex document,
but you should familiarize yourself thoroughly with it. The complete SHRM Body of Competency
and Knowledge can be found in the Resource Center.
The BoCK focuses on knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) that are both
universal and global. Universal KSAOs are accepted as good or best practices around the world;
global KSAOs equip HR practitioners to perform their responsibilities in an increasingly global
economy.
It is critical for today’s HR professionals to appreciate both the domestic and global dimensions of
their organizations and the impact these dimensions will have on HR practices. Organizations that
maintain groups of employees in different nations, offshore certain functions, or assign employees
outside the home country are obviously global. However, HR professionals are touched by global
business practices and cultures in many ways, even in organizations that appear entirely local.
Organizations may:
 Have customers located around the world.
 Rely on global supply chains.
 Employ individuals from other countries. Some employees may come from third countries
- in other words, they are not native to the organization’s home country or the country in
which they are working.
 Have culturally diverse workforces.
You may think the global references in the BoCK and the Learning System do not apply to you, but
you should master this content for the exam and develop your own global mindset. If the
organization you work for is not global now, it probably will be in the near future, or an organization
where you work in the future will be.
Figure 7 illustrates how the KSAOs are integrated in the SHRM BoCK. This integration is the
distinctive feature of the BoCK.

Sample of Material - Page 3

 SHRM Body of Competency and KnowledgeTM

An HR professional must possess the skills and knowledge required to perform sound human
resource management (HRM) practices effectively - the foundation layer of the pyramid, the three
HR Knowledge Domains. This technical expertise is only a foundation; it must be complemented
by behavioral expertise - behaviors that have been observed in effective HR professionals. To
provide an organizing framework for the behavioral competencies, SHRM has grouped them into
three clusters: Leadership, Interpersonal, and Business. These three clusters comprise the eight
Behavioral Competencies, which describe the behaviors and key concepts that facilitate the
application of technical knowledge (HR Expertise) to effective job-related behavior. The
Behavioral Competencies allow HR professionals to leverage their mastery of HRM practices and
generate “effective individual performance”. This performance contributes directly to successful
outcomes for their organizations. It is not enough to have HR knowledge and skills. An HR
professional must be able to use HR expertise with effect in the workplace. That requires a complete
array of behavioral and technical competencies.

Sample of Material - Page 4

 PEOPLE

FUNCTIONAL AREA #2: TALENT ACQUISITION

Leveraging Technology in Sourcing and Recruiting
Finding the right talent can make the difference between an organization’s success and mediocrity
or worse. At the same time organizations compete for talent, candidate expectations are rising
regarding the frequency, pace, and transparency of communication in the hiring process. As
organizations attempt to navigate the changes caused by shifting age demographics, new technology
tools, and the move toward a consumer-styled job-seeker experience, they must:
 Deliver the speed, transparency, and frequency of communication that candidates expect.
 Promote communication and outreach efforts that attract social and mobile workers.
 Incorporate active and passive strategies into the talent acquisition process.
 Ensure that the employment brand reflects the organization’s culture.
The previous discussions of internal and external recruiting methods briefly introduced the use of
the Internet (e.g., job boards, websites, and social media). The intent here is to take an expanded
look at Internet recruiting (e-recruiting) and social media - two techniques that have immense
potential to enhance sourcing and recruiting efforts.
Internet Recruiting
From the employer’s perspective, the Internet offers avenues for recruiting many types of
employees, ranging from entry-level and hourly employees to professional, managerial, and even
executive positions. HR staff is integral to directing and managing online recruitment tools. For
example, HR professionals promote job openings through:
 The organization’s website.
 Generic job boards.
 Career-specific or professional association boards (e.g., SHRM or LinkedIn).
 Social media (discussed in more detail next).
A key characteristic of Internet recruiting is the significantly increased exposure of position
offerings.
The use of the Internet as a recruitment tool is characterized by features such as:
 A voluminous number of service providers.
 Professional recruiters allowing clients to search data with more effective skills matching.
 Electronic screening of applications.
 The technology to conduct interviews over the Internet, incorporating video.
 Live chat forums with organizations answering candidate questions.
 The ability of candidates to make presentations via the Internet.
Internet recruiting, however, is not effective or culturally appropriate in all countries. For example,
it can pose significant issues related to data privacy, and it may be less effective in cultures that
value face-to-face communication over technology. In some cultures, it is inappropriate to post a
résumé on a website.

Sample of Material - Page 5

 ORGANIZATION

FUNCTIONAL AREA #8: WORKFORCE MANAGEMENT

Talent Management
Talent management refers to the development and integration of HR processes that attract, develop,
engage, and retain the knowledge, skills, or abilities of employees that will meet current and future
organizational needs. The goal is to increase workplace productivity by supporting the
development, engagement, and retention of high-value employees.
Talent management is a way of meeting challenges in the external environment, such as highly
competitive job markets, demographic conditions (e.g., bulges in the size of certain population age
ranges), or changes in technology that call for new knowledge and skills. Talent management can
also help organizations make changes in their internal environments - to reshape their workforces’
competencies or make the workforce more diverse and representative of communities and
customers.
Talent management is a strategic approach to managing human capital and as such must be aligned
with the organization’s strategy and strategic business goals. It should be perceived as a long-term
and continuous process that is most effective when it is an integrated effort and is perceived as
continuous and dynamic, always evolving with the strategic direction of the organization.
Effective talent management requires that an organization believe in its talent. Talent management
focuses on the talent of all employees, not just key leaders, and, because it is a comprehensive
process, it spans the entire career of an employee.
An effective talent management strategy is shaped by an organization’s:
 Expectations regarding the differentiation of talent.
 Overall philosophy regarding integration versus local differentiation.
 View of the role that line leaders have in the development of people.
 Philosophy regarding the movement of people across borders, businesses, and functions.
 View of the role of diversity in staffing strategy.
 Beliefs about hiring for potential versus hiring for position.
Talent Pools
The creation and management of formal talent pools is a critical aspect of an organization’s talent
management strategy. Members of a specific talent pool (e.g., high-potential employees or potential
global assignees) are employees who meet a set of formal identification criteria. These employees
typically receive specialized development and enrichment experiences above those associated with
traditional employee development.
A growing number of organizations are investing in the development of sophisticated applications,
such as applicant tracking systems and talent management suites, to help them stay in touch with
and develop strong relationships with both internal and external members of essential talent pools.

Sample of Material - Page 6

Talent pools:
 Represent an essential component of strategic business planning. When talent management
is carefully aligned with long-term business and strategic planning, the organization can
develop a well-planned approach to giving employees who have specific skill sets the
developmental experiences they need to prepare them for the future.
 Allow the organization to maximize and more effectively target employee and career
development efforts.
 Can be a useful tool for identifying and cataloging the developmental experiences of
employees who are candidates for future international assignments.
 Represent a valuable resource during crisis management. When an organization makes the
effort to identify and catalog critical skill sets and experiences, they can quickly draw on
these resources to fill in or supplement workforce gaps in times of organizational crisis.
Some additional uses for talent pools include the following:
 Talent pools can be used to help organizations identify and recognize the value of solid
performers - those individuals who keep the organization running on a daily basis but are
not typically singled out for recognition or special development experiences because they
are not part of or have not expressed interest in specialized talent pools.
 Defined talent pools may aid in clarifying or guiding compensation decisions to be sure key
talent (including high potentials and leadership candidates) are rewarded and motivated.
 Talent pools represent an additional contributor to effective knowledge management,
especially in global organizations. Talent pools of functional experts and historians serve a
vital function in preserving essential knowledge and proprietary information.

Sample of Material - Page 7

 WORKPLACE

FUNCTIONAL AREA #13: RISK MANAGEMENT

Establishing the Context of Risk Management
During this first phase of the risk management process, the organization tries to gain a sense of how
prominent a role risk plays in the organization, where most of the risk resides, and what are the
typical sources of this risk. There are different tools organizations may use to assess the market and
the surrounding environment and prevalent risks. SWOT analysis, for example, is often used to
assess strategic capabilities in comparison to threats and opportunities. PESTLE analysis searches
for environmental forces organized under specific categories - political, economic, social,
technological, legal, and environmental - to better understand organizational threats and
opportunities.
For global organizations, PESTLE data is necessary for developing a global organizational and
functional strategy. The analysis in a global context is a bit more challenging than that for a
domestic context because it requires local expertise (or at least an awareness of the local
environment).
Example:
A nongovernmental organization (NGO) that specializes in helping and protecting marginalized
target groups (such as ethnic minorities, the poor, and the needy) uses PESTLE to assess risks before
expanding operations across its borders to another country. The following PESTLE factors are
identified for consideration.
 Political: Tax policy, employment laws, environmental regulations, trade restrictions,
tariffs, political stability, and where the local government may not want goods or services
to be provided.
 Economic: Interest rates, exchange rates, inflation, wages, working hours, and cost of
living.
 Social: Cultural aspects, health and safety consciousness, population growth rates, and
various demographics.
 Technological: Ecological and environmental factors, available products and services, and
whether the NGO’s current technologies will work in the new locations or require changes
and innovation to be compatible.
 Legal: Laws that may impact the NGO’s operations and potentially differ across in-country
locations.
 Environmental: Climate changes and seasonal or terrain variations that might affect the
NGO’s service delivery methods.

Sample of Material - Page 8

Both SWOT and PESTLE information-gathering tools are discussed in more detail in the HR
Strategic Planning Functional Area in the People module.
In risk management, internal and external reviews of risk sources should also consider risks that are
cross-functional. For example, HR for a university brings together all staff for a workshop to
establish the role risk plays in their organization. They begin by listing the major stakeholders and
their expectations:
 The administration is most concerned with exceeding its annual payroll and optimizing
management of cash reserves. They want data about wage and benefit expenses reported
accurately and quickly. This is a challenge, given the wide range of job classes and benefits.
 The faculty is concerned about erosion of their benefits, particularly stipends for research
(including assistants) and travel. Research is revenue for the university, and cuts here can
threaten future revenue. Inability to perform high-quality research hurts the future
employment prospects of all levels of faculty. The main risk here is losing talented faculty
to competing institutions.
 Students and their parents are concerned about the quality of the faculty. They want the
majority of the classes to be taught by tenured professors, not adjuncts or assistants. Those
professors should come from prestigious institutions. The main risks here involve satisfying
those paying the tuition bills and attracting talented faculty.
 Facility management has to make sure that a wide variety of venues - from lecture halls to
student dormitories and cafeterias to science labs - are kept up to very specific standards of
cleanliness and appearance. Increasingly they need highly skilled technicians to support
information and control systems.
 Security has been under pressure because of several recent attacks on students and
burglaries. Some of the attacks were sexual and involved other students.
 The government has been pressuring the university to cut tuition costs for students, offer
more scholarships to disadvantaged students, and increase diversity… but not through any
form of preferential treatment.
 The community would like more access to university resources to offset the considerable
inconveniences caused by increased traffic and noise.
The HR group then considers other external sources of risk: upgrading an information system to
improve security and increase reporting capabilities, terrorism on campus, weather interruptions, a
new sabbatical policy, and an upcoming renegotiation of contracts with unions on campus.
The experience shapes the group’s perception of risk. They had been expecting discussions of
payroll systems and health and safety, but HR risk is obviously a more complicated issue at the
university.
Even a quick review of these observations raises some interesting questions. First, should the
administration be more aware of risks other than budget? Its reputation with its key payers - funding
governments, parents, students, alumni - could be damaged or enhanced by its ability to manage
other risks, such as talent retention, student security, and campus appearance. Second, many of
these risks are cross-disciplinary in nature. Budget affects faculty, who affect students. Security
affects students and community, who affect funding. How do you manage risks that are so
intertwined?
In the next phase of risk management, HR leaders at the university will take a closer look at each
of these areas, what creates risk, what is currently being done to address risk, and what else could
or should be done.

Sample of Material - Page 9