Employee Relations Conflict: HR Case Study

Unit II Case Study

Read the following article from Unit II’s Required Reading (located in the Unit II Study Guide): 

After reading the article, analyze the scenarios provided below, and choose one to discuss in your case study paper. In your case study, be sure to address the following items:

1. Begin the discussion by identifying which of the scenarios you chose.

2. Include a brief statement that identifies your style of conflict management.

3. Use the information provided in this unit to develop a process to resolve the conflict.

4. Describe how you would handle the workplace investigation for the chosen scenario.

As a result of a merger, the organization decided to decentralize its human resource management (HRM) functions and create area human resource (HR) generalists across the United States. One of their responsibilities is to handle all employee relations issues. You report directly to the senior vice president of HRM in the corporate headquarters in New York, and there is a dotted line reporting relationship to the vice president of field operations in your area, which is located in the Midwest. You just arrived at your new location for this position about six days ago. 

Armed with the information you have learned in Units I and II and aided by your own experience and ability to research, please read the scenarios below, and select one for this assignment. Please answer the questions, and follow the guidelines presented:

Scenario #2:

While conducting HR audits in the offices throughout your area, the newly promoted area director catches up with you to see how his offices are doing, and he invites you to lunch. While at lunch, he confides in you that he feels very uncomfortable with a certain highly regarded branch manager because she is always touching him inappropriately, and she does this in private as well as in front of her staff and vendors. He has politely asked her in private to stop this flirtatious behavior, explaining that it was unprofessional and that it makes him uncomfortable. Her response was to laugh it off, and she told him he was just too uptight. 

She is a top performer, and he does not want to lose her or fire her; however, he asks you to talk with her to reinforce his request to stop the behavior.

What is your response to the area director? Based on your knowledge of employment law, conflict management, and investigation procedures, what would be the best way to handle this situation? For example, what laws are involved? Where do you start?

In this situation, you are the employee relations representative for the organization. What is your role in the investigative process? Describe the steps you will take to investigate this employee complaint, and explain how you will resolve the conflict.

In your response to the scenario you have chosen, follow the guidelines below:

1. Be sure to include academic sources to support your positions/conclusions. You are required to use at least two outside sources beyond the required reading for this unit.

2. Be sure that your analysis is highly relevant, thorough, and remains on topic.

3. Accuracy should be strong, with close attention to detail in all parts of the assignment.

4. Writing should be clear and concise with solid sentence structure and should be free of grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors.

5. Your paper should be at least three pages in length.