Abigail, a human resource executive in a company, coordinates with the management to plan and implement a wide range of employee engagement activities for improving the mental and physical health of the employees. these activities include personality enhancement sessions, career development lectures, and annual office trips. she also works with the management to provide employees with a platform where they can share their innovative ideas. in this scenario, abigail's initiatives fulfill the human resource management goal of:

Aquatic marine stores company manufactures special metallic materials and decorative fittings for luxury yachts that require highly skilled labor. aquatic uses standard costs to prepare its flexible budget. for the first quarter of the year, direct materials and direct labor standards for one of their popular products were as follows: direct materials: 3 pounds per unit; $ 6 per pound direct labor: 4 hours per unit; $ 19 per hour during the first quarter, aquatic produced 5 comma 000 units of this product. actual direct materials and direct labor costs were $ 65 comma 000 and $ 330 comma 000, respectively. for the purpose of preparing the flexible budget, calculate the total standard direct materials cost at a production volume of 5 comma 000 units.

The wall street journal reported that walmart stores inc. is planning to lay off 2,300 employees at its sam's club warehouse unit. approximately half of the layoffs will be hourly employees (the wall street journal, january 25-26, 2014). suppose the following data represent the percentage of hourly employees laid off for 15 sam's club stores. 55 56 44 43 44 56 60 62 57 45 36 38 50 69 65 (a) compute the mean and median percentage of hourly employees being laid off at these stores. (b) compute the first and third quartiles. (c) compute the range and interquartile range. (d) compute the variance and standard deviation. (e) do the data contain any outliers? (f) based on the sample data, does it appear that walmart is meeting its goal for reducing the number of hourly employees?

Suppose you win a small lottery and have the choice of two ways to be paid: you can accept the money in a lump sum or in a series of payments over time. if you pick the lump sum, you get $2,950 today. if you pick payments over time, you get three payments: $1,000 today, $1,000 1 year from today, and $1,000 2 years from today. 1) at an interest rate of 6% per year, the winner would be better off accepting the (lump sum / payments over time), since it has the greater present value. 2) at an interest rate of 9% per year, the winner would be better off accepting the (lump sum / payments over time), since it has the greater present value. 3) years after you win the lottery, a friend in another country calls to ask your advice. by wild coincidence, she has just won another lottery with the same payout schemes. she must make a quick decision about whether to collect her money under the lump sum or the payments over time. what is the best advice to give your friend? a) the lump sum is always better. b) the payments over time are always better. c) it will depend on the interest rate; advise her to get a calculator. d) none of these answers is good advice.