Human resources plays an important role in building a company’s competitive advantage by attracting, developing and retaining a qualified workforce that is able to focus on achieving the organization’s strategic goals. When HR focuses on developing employee policies and practices that align with the company’s goals, it plays a critical strategic role in the organization. You will write an essay that describes the role of human resources in developing and designing employee wage and benefits packages and examines the benefit management processes. Deliverables The essay for this lesson is required to be a minimum of 750 words that clearly demonstrate your understanding of the activity. Essays should have a clear introduction, thesis statement and conclusion, written in APA format (https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/). A minimum of three sources, at least two from the lesson, must be cited in-text and in the Reference list. Activity Details Step 1: Read the following questions and prompts and use what you have learned about this lesson’s objective to summarize your responses: Describe concepts for creating and communicating a compensation philosophy for domestic and global workforces. Describe the role of human resources in developing and designing employee wage and benefits packages. What is total compensation and how does HR use market-based strategies and survey data to manage total compensation packages? Discuss and analyze HR’s methods of managing wage and benefits packages in an economic downturn or in an attempt to avoid significant layoffs.