1. You have been working for your organization for five years. After lots of hard work, you are promoted to sales manager. One of your first tasks is to develop goals for your sales team, then make budget based on these goals. First, you look at the salaries of all the sales staff to find major pay discrepancies. Some salespeople, who perform equally well, are paid much lower than some sales staff whom you consider to be nonperformers. As you dig deeper, you see this is a problem throughout the sales team. You are worried this might affect motivation for your team if they find out what others are making.

2. You work for a small organization in the HR department. One of your web developers schedules a meeting with you, and during the meeting she says that she doesn't see any career growth for her in the organization. As a result, she confides that she is planning to leave the organization as soon as she can find another job. She is one of the best developers you have and you would hate to lose her.

How Would You Handle This?

3. Towanda Michaels is the human resource manager at a medium-size pet supply wholesaler. Casey Cleps is a salesperson at the organization and an invaluable member of the team. Last year, his sales brought in about 20 percent of the company revenue alone. Everybody likes Casey: he is friendly, competent, and professional.

Training is an important part of the company, and an e-mail was sent last month that said if employees do not complete the required safety training by July 1, they would be let go.

It is July 15, and it has just come to Towanda's attention that Casey has not completed the online safety training that is required for his job. When she approaches him about it, he says, "I am the best salesperson here; I can't waste time doing training. I already know all the safety rules anyway."

Would you let Casey go, as stated in the e-mail?

How Would You Handle This?

4. As the HR manager, you have a meeting scheduled in a few minutes with Adeline. Adeline is the accounting manager for a small firm in Boise, Idaho. She has four people who report to her, Alan being one of them. Alan manages three people in his position as account director. Adeline just left a meeting with one of Alan's employees, who complained of Alan's communication style and threatened to quit. She said that Alan belittles them and withholds information. She also complained of Alan making inappropriate comments, which were meant as a joke but were offensive.

How Would You Handle This?

5. You were just promoted to manager of a high-end retail store. As you are sorting through your responsibilities, you receive an e-mail from HR outlining the process for performance evaluations. You are also notified that you must give two performance evaluations within the next two weeks. This concerns you, because you don't know any of the employees and their abilities yet. You aren't sure if you should base their performance on what you see in a short time period or if you should ask other employees for their thoughts on their peers' performance. As you go through the files on the computer, you find a critical incident file left from the previous manager, and you think this might help. As you look through it, it is obvious the past manager had "favorite" employees and you aren't sure if you should base the evaluations on this information.

How Would You Handle This?

6.The employees in your organization are unhappy with several aspects of their job, including pay. You have tried to solve this issue by creating new compensation plans, but with no avail. You hear talk of unionizing. When you bring this issue to your CEO, she vehemently opposes unions and tells you to let the employees know that if they choose to unionize, they will all lose their jobs. Knowing the CEO's threat is illegal, and knowing you may lose your job if the workers decide to unionize;how would you handle this?