SHRM Analysis 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: An HR analyst notices that voluntary turnover spikes every March. Which analytical approach best identifies the root cause?
- Exit interview sentiment analysis correlated with seasonal compensation reviews (Correct answer)
- Comparing headcount reports from January and April
- Reviewing job postings published in the first quarter
- Calculating the average tenure of employees hired in March
Correct answer: Exit interview sentiment analysis correlated with seasonal compensation reviews
Correlating exit interview data with compensation review timing reveals whether pay dissatisfaction drives the March turnover spike.
Question 2: When building a workforce planning model, which metric is most useful for forecasting internal labor supply?
- Current job vacancy rate
- Markov chain transition probabilities by role (Correct answer)
- Industry average salary benchmarks
- External labor market unemployment rate
Correct answer: Markov chain transition probabilities by role
Markov chain models use historical movement rates between roles to project how many employees will remain, promote, transfer, or leave.
Question 3: A company's HR scorecard shows high employee engagement but increasing absenteeism. What should the analyst investigate first?
- Whether the engagement survey instrument is valid and reliable (Correct answer)
- The organization's market share trends
- Competitor compensation packages
- Whether managers are applying disciplinary action consistently
Correct answer: Whether the engagement survey instrument is valid and reliable
A contradiction between high engagement and high absenteeism often signals a measurement problem with the survey itself before assuming a behavioral issue.
Question 4: Which statistical measure best describes the spread of salary data within a pay grade?
- Mean
- Median
- Standard deviation (Correct answer)
- Mode
Correct answer: Standard deviation
Standard deviation quantifies how widely individual salaries vary around the average within a pay grade, indicating compression or spread.
Question 5: An HR team wants to determine whether a new leadership development program caused an increase in promotion rates. Which design provides the strongest causal evidence?
- Pre/post survey of program participants
- Quasi-experimental design with a matched control group (Correct answer)
- Benchmark comparison to industry promotion rates
- Regression analysis of historical promotion data
Correct answer: Quasi-experimental design with a matched control group
A quasi-experimental design with a matched control group controls for confounding variables, providing stronger evidence of causality than pre/post or benchmark approaches.
Question 6: In HR analytics, what does a high 'offer acceptance rate' primarily indicate?
- Efficiency of the recruiting team
- Competitiveness of the compensation and employer brand (Correct answer)
- Quality of onboarding programs
- Effectiveness of performance management
Correct answer: Competitiveness of the compensation and employer brand
Offer acceptance rate reflects how attractive candidates find the compensation package and employer brand compared to competing offers.
Question 7: A regression model predicting employee performance has an R² of 0.12. What does this mean for HR decision-making?
- The model explains 12% of performance variance and should be used cautiously as a supplemental tool (Correct answer)
- The model is highly accurate and should drive all promotion decisions
- The model has a 12% error rate and is therefore reliable
- The model's predictors are statistically insignificant
Correct answer: The model explains 12% of performance variance and should be used cautiously as a supplemental tool
An R² of 0.12 means the model accounts for only 12% of performance variation, so it should inform but not replace holistic judgment.
SHRM Analysis 2
An HR analyst notices that voluntary turnover spikes every March.
Which analytical approach best identifies the root cause?