WGU c236 JUNE 2026 actual Exam Questions with 100% correct answers

Total rewards framework

three primary categories of rewards that influence our decisions to join, perform in, and stay with an organization.

These three categories are Pay, Benefits, and Intangible Rewards.

Intangible rewards

Supportive work environment, challenging work, autonomy, positive reinforcement

such as meaningful work, positive working relationships, or working location

or example, while tangible rewards can have implications for satisfying Physiological and Safety needs, the intangible rewards have a more direct impact on Social, Esteem, and Self-actualization needs.

Business Strategy

the collection of decisions, approaches, and activities that allow an organization to compete and win.

cost leadership strategy

keep the costs, and hence prices, of a product or service below those of competitors and to target a wide market

emphasizes having a lower cost product or service as the highest priority throughout its processes.

Differentiation Strategy

places a high priority on providing innovative, exceptional, and high-quality products and/or services to customers.

Niche-Focused Strategy

which an organization chooses a small and segmented market and competes only in that small arena. I

Hybrid Strategy

A combination of cost-leadership, differentiation, and niche-focused business strategies

Critical Success Factors

Capabilities, activities, customer perceptions, and market positions that allow an organization to outcompete its rivals

EX: For the fast-food restaurant, critical success factors may be the franchiser's brand, proximity to travel routes, or sources of quality and low cost employees.

Total Rewards Strategy

the combination of pay forms, plans, policies, and practices that enable long-term organizational performance.

Total Rewards Content Strategy

specifies the type, level, and combination of rewards offered to employees

For example, a fast-food restaurant may pay a modest hourly wage, offer modest health coverage only after three months of employment, and recognize employees' speed of meal preparation.

Reward Form Combinations Strategy

refers to the reward forms offered (e.g., cash, benefits, etc.) and the way in which they relate to each other.

For example, choosing to pay employees a salary is a specific reward form strategy, as is the choice to have a highly competitive work environment.

Reward Level Strategy

organizations must define what Level of each reward will be offered.

The level of reward offered can be understood in two ways.

First, the Absolute Level of a reward can be defined. Paying an employee $50,000 salary per year, for example, is a defining absolute level.

Alternatively, organizations can define their strategy relative to the market.

Relative Level

States the rewards strategy as greater than, equal to, or less than some labor market reference point

This Leading, Lagging, or Matching portion of the rewards strategy is often expressed in terms of a percentage and is the most common way that an organization defines the Level of rewards that it offers.

Ex: A company implemented actions to improve its return on investment on human capital. The company wants to be the premier employer in the state. The first step was giving more rewards for jobs compared to its competitors

Leading, Lagging, or Matching

Leading the market: is used to indicate a Rewards Strategy in which the firm is trying to provide more of a given reward than its competitors for those employees. A business may decide, for example, to pay at least 10% more than the average pay for a given position.

Lagging the market: refers to an organization providing a lesser amount of the reward than its competitors.

Matching the market: refers to a rewards strategy of providing an amount of the reward equal to the market average

Centralized Global Rewards Strategy

Organizations attempt to have a single set of policies that are determined by the organization and utilized at all locations.

decentralized Global Rewards Strategy

Rewards policies are established and monitored at the country level with each location having discretion to adapt to their unique situations and contexts.

Job Analysis Process (5 step)

1. Identify Job

2. Observe and Interview Leadership

3. Observe and Interview Incumbents

4. Consolidate Information into Job Description Draft

5. Obtain Feedback and Revise Job Description

identity Job (First Step)

Includes obtaining previous job descriptions if analyzing an existing job, descriptions of any jobs being consolidated into the new job, or labels provided to the job by those requesting the job analysis.

At this point it is recognized that the exact job title and job identification information is subject to change

Observe and Interview Leadership (Second Step)

observe the workplace and interview the organizational leadership connected to the new job. Attention should be placed on understanding how the job interfaces with other jobs in the workplace.

Observe and Interview Incumbents (Third Step)

to conduct more in-depth interviews with job incumbents to ascertain the tasks, duties, and responsibilities.

Care should be taken to interview multiple incumbents of varying experience with a common set of structured questions.

step in job analysis do employers determine the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of a job

Consolidate Information into Job Description Draft (Fourth Step)

review the information gathered from the interviews to create the draft of the job description.

This draft should note any points of uncertainty or disagreement among information sources.

Obtain Feedback and Revise Job Description (Fifth Step)

use a survey or interview based process to have the subject matter experts review the job description to ensure that it adequately captures the job.

Traditional Interview

analyst asks the job incumbent preset questions about the content, skills needed, and time spent on activities in the job.

Occupational Information Network (O*NET)

An online database containing job tasks, behaviors, required knowledge, skills, and abilities.

online database created by the United States Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration (Industry Resources) that provides an exhaustive listing of jobs and occupations.

Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH)

searchable database provides more occupation-level information about jobs and work in organizations

provides information on expected changes in demand for occupations and general Salary information.

merit pay

Anyone who has ever asked for a "raise" was asking about

Annual increase based on past performance

refers to an annual increase in future compensation based on past performance. it pays for future performance before the performance has occurred

Competency-based pay

that employee competency drives performance. Competencies are configurations of knowledge, skills, and traits that enable employee performance.

Therefore, pay level changes in these systems are based upon competencies. These systems typically are designed to apply to professional-level jobs and attempt to take into account both the number and level of competencies.

EX: An employee has worked for the same company in two locations over the course of 20 years

skill-based pay

the wage rate or salary received by the employee depends upon the skills they possess.

So, the employee with the skills needed to perform five job-related functions would be paid more than the employee who can only perform two job-related functions.

For example, at a manufacturing facility, an employee that knows how to use a band saw, a lathe, belt-sander, table saw, and sprayer will be paid more than the employee who only knows how to use the band saw and the belt sander.

Skill-based pay is most often used in the manufacturing industry or blue-collar work settings.

Experience/Seniority-based Pay

based on the assumption that the more experience an employee has, the higher their future performance can be expected to be.

Many organizations use this approach in an informal way through their salary negotiation process. As recruited employees negotiate for higher salaries, they are more likely to receive such salaries if they have greater work experience.

Also, most organizational cultures have some assumptions relating to the relationship between seniority and pay. These norms are not always explicitly articulated, however, with some unionized environments being a notable exception.

Strategic Measurement

The definition of criteria are all conceptually and empirically connected to employee, unit, and organizational outcomes.

That is, before an organization implements a reward system that pays employees a higher salary if they have certain technical skills or competencies, they should ensure that possession of these skills is important for employee performance and that the organization would benefit from greater availability and higher levels of these skills or competencies.

Reliable Measurement

an employee's level of skill, competency, or experience can be assessed consistently across employees and raters.

That is, an employee's measured level of a competency should not change depending on who assesses it. Likewise, the competency should be measured in the same way for all employees. This reliability enables the system to effectively promote skill and competency acquisition but also increases the perceived credibility of the system in the eyes of employees and managers.

Transparent Measurement

the criteria and system should be easily understood and the processes for implementing the system should also be well documented and followed.

This is particularly important for capability-based pay because such systems can often result in employees performing the same jobs receiving different pay levels. These differentials will lead employees to question the basis for the decisions, thus requiring a high degree of transparency.

Internal Reward Alignment

The Job-based Approach: to internal reward alignment assumes that organizations provide rewards based upon the job that a person holds.

The Individual-based Approach: assumes that rewards should be based upon the characteristics of the person holding a job.

The Performance-based Approach: assumes that rewards should be based upon the performance or results produced by an employee.

The extent to which an organization's Total Rewards System aligns each employee's rewards with those received by others in the organization

job evaluation

the process by which the value of each job in an organization is established. It provides the basis for developing a network or configuration of pay rates that make up a rewards structure.

Measuring relative worth of a job

Methods include;

The Classification Approach

The Job Comparison Approach

The Point Factor Approach

Job Classification Approach

creating a job structure uses logical categories and descriptions to organize the jobs.

for example

A supermarket, might have categories labeled manager, assistant manager, cashier, stocker, and custodian.

Job Comparison Approach (ranking approach)

jobs are placed in a relative hierarchy based upon how their value compares to the other jobs.

Using this approach, all jobs in the organization are compared, with points given for each comparison "won" by each job.

For example, a cashier job is compared to a management job. If the management job is judged to be more valuable than the cashier job, it receives a point.

Point Factor Approach

allocates points to jobs based upon the job's value to the organization. That is, each job in the organization is given a quantitative rating of its overall value to the organization.

For example, the marketing design job may be worth 1500 points, the financial analyst job 1300 points, and the customer service job 1000 points.

Absolute Level

reward can be defined. Paying an employee $50,000 salary per year, for example, is a defining absolute level. Alternatively, organizations can define their strategy relative to the market.

job content

Tasks, Duties, and Responsibilities

Job Specification

The knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) an individual needs to perform a job satisfactorily.

describe what capabilities an employee needs to perform the job.

Job Description Elements

Identification: Job Title, Job Family, Reference ID

Job Content: Tasks, Duties, and Responsibilities

Job Specification: Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

Relationships: Supervisor, Peer, and Customer

Tools: Technology, Information

job value structure

represents the structure of jobs internally positioned according to their relative value.

It answers the question of what the jobs are, how they are related, and the relative importance of each.

Labor-driven Job Market

when the demand for a particular set of KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities) is high and the supply of these KSAs is low.

Thus, job seekers have more power in negotiating terms of employment, including compensation rates.

Organizations compete to create value through the production of goods or the provision of services for customers in exchange for money and loyalty.

Challenges in Effective Market Analysis - Bad Data Challenge

exists because the data a company obtains about market rates may not be an accurate representation of the market.

It is often difficult to fully understand the quality of the data obtained from various sources, or how best to integrate this information, which adds error to any reward system based on that data.

Challenges in Effective Market Analysis - Job Matching Challenge

Results from difficulties in determining exactly which organizational jobs match up with each benchmark job in the wage surveys.

By carefully choosing benchmark jobs and using sources with detailed descriptions, this challenge can be partially addressed.

It is also wise, however, to carefully check the Job Evaluation and Market data for outliers that might indicate a mismatched job.

Challenges in Effective Market Analysis - Ethical Challenge

can also exist in establishing market rates.

For example, if a manager has an informal conversation about pay rates with a colleague at another organization and then uses this information to keep pay rates artificially low, is this ethical? Said another way, where does a "market survey" end and where does "price fixing" begin?

These ethical issues illustrate the importance of having clear and transparent systems for establishing market rates and job matches to minimize the opportunity for biases to enter into the system.

Central Tendency (The one best number)

to find one single number that best represents a whole group of numbers.

Just as your GPA is a single number that represents your grades for dozens of courses, in compensation we often need a single number that best represents how many people are paid, or how many organizations pay.

There are three basic ways to arrive at this number.

Reward Surveys

are aggregations of reward information gathered from other market organizations.

Any statement an organization makes about the 'market rate' of pay for a job is an estimate based upon information.

This information comes from Reward Surveys, making them of critical importance in the external positioning of your reward systems.

foundation of external reward positioning in an organization's overall compensation program

Benchmark jobs

jobs that are representative of the type, content, and level of jobs in the organization.

In choosing benchmark jobs, organizations should be careful to ensure adequate representation for different job families, organizational levels, and career points.

Therefore, jobs unique to the organization and rare jobs do not make good benchmark jobs

Principle of Control

states that the size of pay ranges should be kept sufficiently small to enable an organization to control labor costs.

Shadow Ranges

A system of smaller ranges within the pay ranges, applied to specific job families to provide guidance on appropriate compensation levels.

Compa-Ratio

used to measure this conformity.

The Compa-ratio is calculated by dividing the average pay for the pay grade by the midpoint of that range.

For example, average pay of $50,000 in a pay grade and the midpoint of that pay grade is $75,000 then the Compa-ratio is .66 suggesting that the organization is paying less than planned.

Principle of Inclusiveness

that a pay range needs to be large enough to capture the pay range of all jobs in that grade or band.

When establishing these ranges, it is important to consider not only the current compensation but also the future compensation of jobs when rates rise due to inflation or market shifts

Principle of Overlap

Says that there should be overlap in the pay ranges for successive pay grades or bands.

Pay Compression

when new employees and long-tenured employees are paid very similar amounts.

Pay Inversion

when new employees are paid more than those employees with substantial experience in the organization

Spot Awards

often given out based on weekly or daily behavior

managers are given a cash budget from which they can immediately draw to provide employees with instant recognition of a high performance.

For example, if an employee voluntarily works all weekend to get a marketing presentation done, a manager may immediately provide the employee with a $400 voucher to recognize the extra effort.

Individual Bonus

bonuses do not accumulate into base pay. That is, receiving a year-end bonus one year does not affect the employees' wages or salary for the next year.

annual or quarterly in nature

For example, if an employee is given $6,000 in the form of merit pay, then the employee receives an additional $230 in each 2-week paycheck before taxes

Tournament Theory

people are highly motivated to receive extremely valuable rewards, even when the probability of receiving the reward is quite small

Reinforcement Theory

built on the assumption that behavior is a function of its consequences

Reinforcement Principle

when positive consequences (rewards) follow a behavior, that behavior becomes more likely to be seen in the future.

Conversely, when negative consequences (punishments) follow a behavior, then that behavior will be less likely to be observed.

Timing Principle

the smaller the time gap between the behavior and the reward or punishment, the greater impact on behavior.

For example, when a manager notices an employee working extra-hard and hands them a $100 bill, we would expect greater future motivation than when the $100 is given five months later during a performance review.

Variability Principle

new behaviors are most quickly acquired when employees receive the reward every time a behavior is exhibited (low variability), but they are more likely to persist in an acquired behavior even after rewards have stopped when the behavior was not rewarded every time (high variability, also known as intermittent reinforcement).

Expectancy Theory

motivation is a function not only of the perceived contingency of the rewards, but also of how much the employee values the reward, and whether or not they believe that they can perform at the required level.

Thus, motivation results from employees having three specific perceptions: Expectancy, Instrumentality, and Valence.

Expectancy Perception

Can I perform at the level required for the reward?". This is the 'Can I?' question and grows out of employees' perceptions of the clarity of performance expectations and of their own abilities

Valence Perception

"Do I value the reward"? Employees use their personal value systems and circumstances to evaluate the extent to which the rewards being offered are rewarding to them.

Managers should be careful to note that just because management thinks the rewards are valuable does not mean that employees will also value the reward.

The value, or valence, is driven by the employee's perspective.

Instrumentality Perception

"If I perform, will I receive the reward"? This perception focuses on the contingency between employee actions and the reward, and can be thought of as the odds of reward.

For example, employees confident that their boss notices their performance and distributes rewards fairly will be more motivated than employees that do not trust management to measure performance or follow through on commitments.

No-fault principle

injured workers receive benefits even if the accident was their fault

Psychological reward

The firm decides to allow top-performing employees to spend a certain portion of their day working on independent projects that they feel can benefit the firm in the future

Distributive Justice (Equity Theory)

perceptions are based upon employees' views of the distribution of rewards in the organization.

It is also known as Equity Theory, and is based on comparisons between the ratio of employees' inputs and rewards to the ratio of inputs and rewards of others.

procedural justice

focuses on the process by which the reward distribution was determined.

For example, an employee who does not receive the pay raise that his peer received will likely have low Distributive Justice perceptions.

Interactional Justice

refers to perceptions of the extent to which the employee was treated with due respect.

These perceptions grow out of whether or not managers and other personnel show professionalism and respect to employees in their pay-related interactions.

For example, publicly announcing with laughter that an employee did not pass a certification exam would lead to low Interactional Justice perceptions.

Purpose Principle (Intangible)

states that employees derive intangible rewards from an organization's value-consistent Purpose.

That is, when the core purposes of a business align with the values of an employee, then that employee will perceive value in maintaining his or her relationship with the organization.

Content Strategy (Total Rewards Strategies)

Reward Form Strategies

Reward Level Strategies

- Lead, Match, Lag

Process Strategy (Total Rewards Strategies)

Design Strategy

Communication Strategy

Role & Control Strategy

Global Rewards Strategy

Total Rewards Process Strategies

Design Strategy: establishes the process by which the other elements of the rewards system will be created

Communication Strategy: plan for creating, sharing, and receiving information relating to its Total Rewards Systems

Role and Control Strategy: the policies and practices that allocate design, implementation, and discretionary control of the rewards system.

Global Rewards Strategy: The collection of decisions, guidelines, and policies that define how the total rewards will account for country differences.

Point Factor Approach Steps

Step One: Choose Compensable Factors

Step Two: Develop Factor Measures

Step Three: Determine Factor Weights

Step Four: Pilot Test the Job Evaluation System

Step Five: Measure Factors for All Jobs

Rating Scales

Tools used to measure compensable factors.

Include Graphic Rating Scale, Anchored Rating Scales, and Variable Distance Scales

For example, if an organization wants to measure the extent to which jobs involve the compensable factor Customer Contact, then using the Graphic Rating Scale, raters could use a 10-point scale with 1 being 'no extent' and 10 being 'a great extent'. The higher a job is rated on the scale, the more value points that it receives.

Anchored Rating Scale

Uses examples or definitions of typical behaviors to define each point along the scale.

For example,

in the Customer Contact example, 1 on the scale could be defined as "minimal customer contact: Low priority contact less than once per month" and the 10 on the scale could be defined as "Extensive customer contact: High impact contact on a daily basis".

Variable Distance Scale

Uses different point distances between each level in the scale which allows an organization to measure compensable factors in a way that takes into account the "natural breaks" in the factor being measured.

Factor Weighting

refers to determining the relative value of the compensable factors for a given reward plan.

For example, if an organization has the compensable factors labeled Customer Contact, Leadership, and Technical Expertise, it needs to decide if they are all equally important or if some should have a larger role in determining compensation levels than the others.

For example, an organization with a customer-centric strategy may define weights as follows: Customer Contact 45, Leadership 35, and Technical Expertise 20.

face validity

the extent to which the system produces relative job values that appear to be accurate and credible

Intrinsic Motivation Theory (Self-determination Theory)

Stipulates that employees attribute their behavior to internal and external causes; also referred to as Self-determination Theory.

Intangible is the sense of satisfaction you get from mastering a new skill or successful completion of a complex project. (Personal significant or meaning)

For example, when an employee works in a contingent bonus rewards system, that employee is more likely to attribute their efforts to the presence of the bonus instead of to intrinsic love for the work.

If this bonus program is removed, the employee's motivation would then be reduced because he/she attributed his/her own behavior to the presence of the reward.

Extrinsic Motivation Theory

A reward that comes from an external source

Example:

Can be a financial bonus or incentive or praise or development opportunity

job specification

describes the minimum qualifications a person must have to perform the job successfully

job description

A statement of the tasks, duties, and responsibilities of a job to be performed

Job Analysis

Primary Tool in personnel management. Manager tries to gather, synthesize, and implement the information available regarding the workforce in the concern.

Process of collecting job related data

Outcomes: Job Description and Job Specification

Info collected:

nature of job required

nature/size of organization

relationship of the job with other jobs

Job Performance Model

defines performance and outlines its causes. For example, for a customer service representative, one job performance model might specify that performance entails diagnosing and satisfying customer needs while building long-term relationships.

Motivational Preferences

Not all employees are motivated by the same rewards and systems should be designed with enough flexibility to allow for as much customization as possible.

For example, one employee may be very interested in earning money to make a purchase. For that employee a cash bonus system may prove very effective. For another employee, however, they might find more value in having more time off.

Motivational Judgement

Managers need to understand the importance of Motivational Judgement because different views of motivation might be useful at different times. In some ways, these views are compatible.

For example, reinforcement and expectancy theory would both recommend that contingencies in pay be made very clear. In other ways, the theories have some points of conflict. For example, Intrinsic Motivation would suggest that the clear contingencies in pay serve to undermine employees' intrinsic reasons for working.