Meeting Essay: Date, Participants, Goals, Actions, Status, Skill, Knowledge.

Workplace Relationships and Conflict

Question
 
Assessment 1: Knowledge Assessment (Written Tasks)

1. With respect to encouraging a culture of respect and courteous workplace behaviour, how would you:
(a) Ensure open communication
(b) Promote respect and courtesy
(c) Manage workloads and priorities
2. Describe 2 characteristics of effective workplace relationships.
3. Specify a basic strategy for developing workplace relationships.
4. State 3 possible sources of workplace conflict.
5. If a workplace conflict situation is the result of personality clashes at work the conflict will most likely continue unless attitudes and behaviours are changed. Suggest ways that the effect of personality clashes can be reduced.
6. Once you've set appropriate goals for an employee who is underperforming in their work tasks, how would you assist that team member succeed?
7. What is the role of networking in effective workplace relationships?
8. Define, and provide examples specific to your industry, of formal and informal networks.

Meeting Plan

Meeting Date:

Participants: 

1. Agenda Preparation

- Consultation with staff who are doing underperformance in any area.
(For example: Irregular in work, Required skill for any specific project.

2. Work Update.
Describe your recent work in broad terms. Now describe: During this interval, which tasks gave you satisfaction? Why? Now describe three tasks, events, or interactions that presented a challenge. Discuss, and note recommendations here.

• Describe your recent work in broad terms.
• Describe which task gave you satisfaction
• Describe events, or interaction that lead nonperformance. 

3. Upcoming Work

• Discuss projects and challenges ahead.
• Describe your upcoming work in broad terms.
• In what areas might you need support?

4. Goals Check. Track several immediate work goals and at least one long-term career goal. Goals: Focus on advancing specific technical or professional skills as well as building understanding of the company and the industry.

Actions: Refer to the Activities Guide for action ideas.

Status: Track status as “not started,” “continuing,” or “complete.”

 

Goals	Actions  (What will you do, who will help?)	Status

5. Set next Meeting Date. When and where will you meet next? _______________

6. Agenda List. Discussion or action items you know you want to cover next meeting.

Professional Development Log

Organization Name: __________________

Team Member’s Name: ____________________

Designation: _________________ 

 

Skill and Knowledge	Level
	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor

Professional development plan 

 

Area	Activities
	Training	Work in Team	Conference	Workshop	Seminar	Course

Resources Allocation Plan

 Project Title__________________                       Project Work Title:_______________

Prepare by: __________________                      Date:_______________

Resources Allocation

 

Resources	Allocation and Sources
Project Team (Full and Part time staff)
Customer Support
Facilities
Equipment
Other

 Detailed Resources Requirement 

 

Resources	Skill Level	Associated Task	Duration required	Available time period	Cost	Unit of Cost (Hour, Day, Week, Month)
Project Team
Customer Support
Facilities
Equipment

Task 2 – Workplace Relationships and Conflict

In a large publishing company in Melbourne, a young woman, Laura, was hired as a copy editor for one of the many journals produced by the company. Seven other employees worked on this team editing this Journal, including a senior editor named Tim. Laura had worked there for about a month when she and her fellow co-workers went for happy-hour after work. Everybody had a great time and had consumed a fair amount of alcohol. When everybody was leaving the bar to head home, Tim, who had been secretly attracted to Laura since she started work at the journal, hailed a taxi and offered to share the ride with Laura. Laura accepted the offer. Once she was inside the taxi, Tim then suddenly made an aggressive sexual advance toward her. Horrified, Laura pushed him away and told him to get out of the taxi. Mortified, Tim slinked out of the cab.

Sources of Work Place Conflicts

The next day, Laura came to work with some apprehension. How would she deal with Tim? Would the taxi incident affect her job? Although Tim did not supervise her, would he try to get her fired? Tim immediately went to her office and apologized for his extremely inappropriate behaviour in the taxi. Relieved at his apology, Laura decided not to pursue the matter through any formal channels in the office. She figured that since Tim apologized, there was no need to dwell on the incident. After all, Laura was a new employee, still in the process of learning the office politics and proving herself as being a competent editor. She did not want to rock the boat or bring negative attention to herself.

Everything would have been okay if Tim had stopped at just one sincerely expressed apology. However, whenever he found himself alone with Laura, Tim apologized again. And again. He said he was sorry about the incident at every opportunity he had for three months. This constant apology was awkward and annoying to Laura. Ironically, by Tim apologizing continuously for his unwanted attention in the taxi, he was foisting another form of unwanted attention upon Laura. When he first started apologizing, Laura told him that "it was okay". After three months of many apologies, she reached a point where she asked him to stop apologizing, to no avail. Frustrated, she confided in a few co-workers about her unusual dilemma. Consequently, these co-workers lost respect for Tim.

Although the taxi incident was not common knowledge in the office, Tim sensed that others knew about it by the way they interacted with him. The incident became the office "elephant" that the employees "in the know" saw, but didn't explicitly acknowledge. Meanwhile, Laura was tired of hearing Tim apologize and her feelings of discomfort increased. So when another editor position opened up in another journal division of the company, she applied for the job and was transferred to the other journal. In her new position, she didn't have Tim bothering her anymore. But she was unhappy with her new job. The journal material was very boring. She didn't work as well with her co-workers as she did in the previous journal (excepting Tim). She realized that she really enjoyed her old job. She began to regret her decision to avoid the conflict with Tim by moving to the new job. In an effort to seek advice as to how to solve her problem, Laura decided to consult with you as the Office Manager.

Analyse the situation and develop a Management strategy that is reflective of, and conducive to, maintaining effective workplace relationships.  In your discussion, outline how you will collect all relevant information and how you will take into account social, ethical and business standards.

Workplace Relationships and Conflict

Task 1

Work Place Culture and Behavior

1. Communication in a work place is considered to be an important factor which builds interpersonal relations between the workers and also aligns the values of the employees in workplace to create desired results. Communication in workplace occurs in both formal channels and informal channels. In order to facilitate open communications in a work place, the top-level management should encourage and motivate the employee to engage in communications regarding any matter which can be grievances, suggestions, issues. This will also the management to establish a better structure of the business and also bring about clarity in the overall operations of the business (Schermerhornet al. 2014). In addition to this, the business should also encourage informal communication which can be done by establishing teams and engaging the teams in personality development activities such as debates, group presentations which can ensure that informal lines of communication is developed and the employee are engaged in the same. It is aknown fact that the employees are very much motivated and attain a level of satisfaction when they are engaged in informal communication and the same helps to keep the environment of the workplace cheerful and positive.
2. The senior management of the business also needs to set certain rules and regulations which can promote ethical behavior in the business. The code of conduct helps the management of the company to keep the employee’s activities and behavior in check and thereby ensure that such can generate respect and courtesy from the employees of the business. In addition to this, the level of qualification and seniority and experience in the business also helps senior management in achieving respect and courtesy from the employees of the business(Hanna, Crittenden and Crittenden 2013).
3. The work loads and priorities of the business are based on the decisions which are taken by the top-level management of the company. The work load and priority can be set on the profitability of the activities or the work in which the business engages. The work load of the business can be segregated on the basis of departments so as to ensure that the work load is comparatively lesser. The priority is set by the demand or urgency of the activity which can on the request of the client or on the request of the management so as to complete the work as early as possible.

2. Characteristics of Effective Work Place Relationship

The essential characteristics which makes a relationship in a workplace effective are discussed below in details:

• Trust: This is regarded to be an important and the basic foundations which is related to building any relationship in a workplace environment. In a trust filled work environment, individuals tend to seek help from other coworkers so that the work can be effectively done and employees can effectively do one another’s work without any unnecessary oversights(Holmes and Stubbe 2015).An example can be given of a doctor who allows his assistants to give any injections to patients such as anti-septic injections even if the doctor is not present in the clinic. It has also been seen that the persons who have trust in one another at workplace are more motivated and strives to achieve and perform even better.
• Diversity: This may be explained as the ways in which the view points of different individuals varies from one another. This allows the business to have a variety of opinions which is good for the overall development of the business. The diversity in people can be related to difference in age, race, caste, creed or any other distinction(Dutton and Ragins 2017). The diversity broadens the thought process and opinions in a business and provides a scope for different employees to learn from one another.

3. Developing Work Place Relationships

The basic strategy which can be involved in the process of building up effective work place relationship is development of the skills of communication with the people. The level of communication skills that an individual has provides the individual with an advantage to interact with others effectively(Marsick and Watkins 2015). Another trait which is regarded to be important in case of inter personal communication is that skill of active listening which involves pay attention to what the other person is trying to communicate and understand the meaning and intention of the same and also appreciate the other person. Another key constraint is that the individual who are involved in communication process needs to keep their emotional intelligence level at appropriate level as this affects the whole communication process. If the above mention points are followed than the individual would be able to build strong work place relationships with others.

4. Sources of Work Place Conflicts

There are various sources of conflicts which can arise in a workplace and some of these are mentioned below:

1. Interpersonal Conflicts are the most common form of conflicts which occur in a business and such are the results of office politics, gossips or rumours. In addition to this, there may also be other conflicts which arises in a workplace such conflicts related to racial or personality styles or even languages(Horton, Bayerl and Jacobs 2014). The above mentioned are common sources of conflicts in a workplace.
2. Change: In the modern and dynamic world where the change in business structure and processes are eminent. Various conflicts also arises due to changes which takes place in the business(Ada 2014). Changes in management and technological changes creates most number of conflicts in a business as per research.
3. External Factors: The external factors which affect the business also creates conflicts in the business(Branch, Ramsay and Barker 2013). External factors such as economic pressures, changing markets, inflationary pressures and several other factors contributes to the conflicts which are created in a business.

5. Reducing Personality Clashes

Personality clashes occurs when there is a difference in the personality traits of individuals which results in conflicts in a business which is definitely not good for the business(Lux, Hutcheson and Peden 2014). The various strategies which can be adopted by the business for reducing personality clashes are given below:

• The basic strategy which a person can adopt to sort out personality conflict is that accepting the personality difference which exist between the employees which can defuse any tension or stress environment.
• Ensuring and maintaining a professional behavior in the workplace often helps in avoiding of personality conflicts and confrontations between the employees of the business.
• Another strategy which is applied by the business is related to identifying the source from the conflict arises and this helps the employees to understand the real issues due to which the conflict actually happened(Doshy and Wang 2014).
• In case all the other strategies which are mentioned above fails, the problems can be taken to the management so that an appropriate solution can be achieved by both the parties of the business(Hershcovis and Reich 2013). In such a situation, normally the management separates the work process of the employees so that no further scope can be provided to the business for any conflicts.

6. Overcoming Under Performance of Employees

In a work place, the goals are set by the top-level management and all the employees are expected to achieve the targets of the business. The targets of the employees can be achieved by providing effective motivation to the same. If the employee is motivated enough than the target can be achieved easily. The methods which the business can adopted for the purpose of motivating the employees are by providing extra benefits, incentives for overtime, benefits in kinds, leaves and other benefits as well.

7. Role of Networking

Networking may be defined as the simple process of developing and nurturing relationship which an individual develops in a workplace(Gibson, Hardy III and Ronald Buckley 2014). This also is related to the relationship which the individual forms which the people which are external to the business. The role which is provided by such networks are given below in point form:

• Networking helps to create opportunities for the employees to create contacts so that in case of promotions or job transfers can easily be affected.
• Networking in an workplace helps the employees to entrust secrets which the employee does not want everyone to know and thus it provides a source where employees can confide in. In addition to this, it is very much helpful when employee get into troubles.
• In addition, the work peer relationship which is developed in a workplace often acts as a source of motivation for employees(Frenkel, Bendit and Kaplan 2013). If effective networks are developed in a workplace, employee wants to come in workplace and effectively contribute.

Sources of Work Place Conflicts

8. Formal and Informal Networks in Workplace.

Formal communication networks may be defined as the communication network which is established through official lines of communications. In order words the relationship which an employee is able to build with the senior management of the company falls under formal network. For example: Conversation which is carried out with the senior managers discussing any matters related to general management.

Informal networks are chain of lines which are unofficial in nature and which is generally between employees of the same department or different departments. There are generally gossips and communication which is related to informal topics. For example: Informal communication about general gossips or rumours between two employees of the same department

Task 2

Meeting Plan

Meeting Date: 10/06/18

Participants: Departmental Representatives

1. Agenda Preparation

The management of the company will be focusing on the targets which are set by the management for departmental performance and any underperformance of employee will be investigated and corrective measures will also be taken. The management will also be discussing the goals of the business and also establish the ethical standards which the employees of the business are to follow. The management will also be discussing the specific projects and the person who will handle the same.

2. Work Update

The board work area of the management is to formulate strategies which are related to general management of the business and also monitors the performance of every department and individuals in in order to estimate the level of production of the business. In addition to this, the allocation of work for specific projects is also the responsibility of the senior level management. In the meeting the senior managers will be deciding the policies which are to be followed by the business in order to achieve the long-term business objectives of the company.

The level of satisfaction in work depends on the performance of the individual who are engaged in the operations and also depends on the results which the business can achieve.

3. Upcoming Work

In this part, the management will be discussing the work and activities which the management is planning for future and also discuss any challenges which might be associated with the same. This might be related to any projects which the management of the business is planning for the future and includes all the roles which are to be played by different management teams.

4. Goals

5.       Goals	Actions  (What will you do, who will help?)	Status
Achieving Profit Growth	Ø  Increase the productivity of the employees Ø  Increase the level of services or production of the business Ø  Proper advertisement and promotion of the product	Started
Diversifying the Product line	Ø  Proper planning and introduction of the same Ø  Allocation of resources to the new product	Not yet Started
Establishing the business as a brand	Ø  Effective promotion of the product Ø  Maintaining highest level of quality Ø  Make further improvements in the product	Started

The next meeting will be conducted on 27^th June 2018 and the place of meeting will be same as always. The key discussions will be implementation of phase 2 of product diversification strategy of the business and also review the performance of the departments in term of production.

Personality clashes

Professional Development Log

Organization Name: ABC Ltd

Team Member’s Name: Mathew Brian

Designation: _________________ 

Skill and Knowledge	Level
	Excellent	Good	Fair	Poor
Communication	ü
General awareness and Problem solving ability		ü
Academic and Training Skills		ü
Analytical and Decision-making skills			ü
Innovative approaches			ü

Professional development plan 

Area	Activities
	Training	Work in Team	Conference	Workshop	Seminar	Course
Production	ü	ü		ü
Administration	ü	ü	ü	ü	ü	ü
Sales	ü	ü		ü	ü	ü
Marketing	ü	ü	ü	ü		ü

Resources Allocation Plan

Project TitleNew Product Development        

Prepare by:Senior Management          Date:10/06/18

Resources Allocation

Resources	Allocation and Sources
Project Team (Full and Part time staff)	The project team will be allocated funds and necessary material which are necessary for the project. The management can take the funds through loans from banks.
Customer Support	Skilled workers with good communication skills and problem solving ability which can achieved by effective recruitment process.
Facilities	Providing support services to the business in terms of any requirements
Equipment	The various equipment and machine required are supplied which can be done on taking the assets on lease or purchasing the same.

Detailed Resources Requirement

Resources	Skill Level	Associated Task	Duration required	Available time period	Cost	Unit of Cost (Hour, Day, Week, Month)
Project Team	High	Development of products	6 months	9 months	$ 1.8 million	$ 2 million / day
	High	Research and Development	6 months	9 months	$ 2.7 million	$ 3 million/ day
Customer Support	Medium	Communication with clients	1 month	1 month	$ 1,00,000	$ 10/ per hour
	Medium	After Sale services	1 month	1.5 months	$ 5,00,000	$ 10,000 / month.
Facilities	low	Support services	6 months	9 months	$ 2,00,000	$ 5/ day
Equipment	High	Handling and Installation of Machines	2 months	2 months	$ 1.5 million	$ 50,000 per week
	High	Repair and Maintenance	1 month	1 month	$ 9,00,000	$ 30,000 per week

Assessment 2

Background

Sexual harassment has been a very sensitive issue in the society for a long period of time. Sexual harassment has mainly been faced by women as they have been the casualties of these kind of behaviour. In the current time period the extent of sexual provocation has been high for working women. This addresses the fact that the sexual harassment and provocations have been high within the working environment (Chan 2016). These kinds of issues have been taken care of by the Australian Human Rights Commission and they look at sexual provocation to be any kind of unwelcomed sexual conduct, which mortifies, annoys and threatens a person (Jalal et al. 2018). This case study is based on such an incident and therefore this report is constructed in order to construct an ethical management strategy with the help of which these kind of issues can be mitigated and a better working environment can be maintained. This case study relates to the sexual harassment faced by Laura, who is new employee to the company as a copy editor. She was sexually harassed by her colleague Tim, after office hours in a taxi and later on apologised as well. The extent of apology went so far that she was compelled to take a transfer. However, she is not happy about the transfer as she was much happier in the earlier journal division. 

Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment refers to any kind of actions and molestations that have been done to a man or a women without their permission. There are two kinds of harassments and they are known to be Hostile and Quid Pro Quo (Congress 2017). In case of sexual favour, it is known to be Quid Pro Quo and therefore according to the case study, it is seen that the incident between Laura and Tim is known to be hostile.

Predictors of Sexual harassment

There are four kinds of predictors and they are known to be the individual factors, work environment factors, organizational structure and job associated factors.

Individual Factors: This relates to the behaviour of the individuals and in this manner can be understood that Tim had a feeling for Laura and therefore after office hours he forcefully tried to sexually harass her.

Motivation and Goal-Setting

Organizational Structure: The extent of sexual harassment has been seen in the in the organizational structure as well as it is mostly seen that harassments are seen from the higher level management to the lower level of employees (Ferguson, Thornley and Gibb 2016). This is seen in this case study as well as it is seen that there Tim being the senior employee tried to sexually harass Laura.

Work Environment Factor: The frequency of sexual harassment is high in the offices where the working environment is not effective (Baer 2015). The sex attitude of the employees have an impact on sexual harassment and therefore in this case Tim because of his attitude tried to take advantage of her.

Strategy

This factors have led to the creation of management strategy with the help of which such issues can be mitigated and thereby better working environment can be created and the employees of the company will be satisfied.

 Commitment: The Company needs to be committed towards the safety of their employees. It is due to this fact that several kinds of awareness programs and relationship campaign can be maintained with the help of which the employees would be able to understand the value of the morale of the other employees and thereby maintain respectful and cordial relationship (Demirtas and Akdogan 2015). This can be seen with the demonstration of the respectful attitude and behaviour among the employees. The organization has even constructed a harassment policy that would precisely identify the behaviour and the the after effects for not complying with it. In case these kind of behaviour is seen then the company undertakes swift actions with the help of which these issues can be resolved and strict actions can be taken against the accused.

Construction of the work place behaviour standards: It is essential for every organization to to follow their workplace behaviour and thereafter convey the expected standard with the help of the code of conduct and even in the agreements. The company needs to maintain a statement that would constitute of the policies and these policies need to be conveyed to the employees with the help of the social media and emails (Dehghani, Mosalanejad and Dehghan-Nayeri 2015). The company undertakes the strategy of undertaking the process of reporting and thereafter responding to the events of the behaviour that are unreasonable. The maintenance of the standards within the company would be helpful in the development of a better working place and the maintenance of workplace ethics.

Development of respectful and productive workplace relationship: In order to terminate harassment, the company is looking forward to the development of positive leadership process and this can be done with the help of supporting, mentoring and training the managers and the employees. The company is looking forward to the development of an effective teamwork that would be lead to better relationship among the employees and the managers. The employees as well as the management are conveyed precisely about all the policies and the decisions of the supervisors (Michalos 2017). It would be responsibility of the company to make sure that the management acts within a timely way in accordance to the unreasonable behaviour and thereby become aware of it.

Construction of safe working system: The organization has to construct a safe working process with the help of which frequent feedback of the employees would be attained and the role of the employees would be determined with the help of which better performance can be attained. The frequent monitoring of the workloads and the process of staffing mitigates the excess working hours thereby open communication can be attained.

Responding: The effectiveness of the managers is helpful in reacting to any kind of unethical events that have been taking place within the company. The time that would be taken in order to respond to any kind of events need to be mentioned on a prior basis with the help of which all the issues can be mitigated in an effective manner and thereby maintenance of the work ethics can be established.

Conclusion

The management strategy that has been constructed in this report would be helpful for the management in the maintenance of the work ethics and thereby the employees as well as the management would be satisfied and they would be performing in an effective manner. The strategy would be even be helpful in the creation of a better communication system and therefore an open structure would be maintained so that these kind of unethical behaviour would be mitigated. Hence, it can be said that issues like sex harassment within the working environment can be mitigated.