Investigating Workplace Incidents: Strategies and Solutions for Effective Conflict Resolution

Module 4 – SLP

BUILDING WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIPS

Assignment Overview

View the following video on workplace investigations:

Gregg Learning. (2018).  HR basics: Investigations 2e  [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTLA9KJiG2E

View this video about a breakroom brawl:

Urban Vids. (2019).  Massive fight at their workplace  [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wePI6cYHoHQ

SLP Assignment

Well, we must say that not all workplace tensions escalate to this level! However, when they do, there are follow-up steps that need to be taken.

In this assignment, you will focus on conducting a workplace investigation. You are an HR specialist assigned to investigate this breakroom brawl. Identify your approach and discuss why you chose the steps you recommend to investigate the situation. No one was seriously hurt, and the plant owner does NOT want the police called due to bad publicity. The labor union at the plant did nothing to stop the fight and perhaps was involved. The plant owner/manager does, however, want to find out from your approach how and why this happened and who is responsible. Be sure to also discuss what next steps might be available to prevent this from happening again. You wonder if coaching, counseling, and/or corrective actions are warranted.

You may need to add fictitious names and other realistic, but fictitious, information to round out your SLP 4.

Support the concepts in your paper with at least two high-quality references (peer-reviewed academic journal) from the Trident Online Library.

Submit your 2- to 3-page paper by the module’s due date.

SLP Assignment Expectations

Your SLP submission will be assessed on the criteria found in the grading rubric for this assignment:

· Meets assignment requirements

· Critical thinking

· Writing and assignment organization

· Use of sources and mechanics.

· Timeliness of assignment

Module 4 – Background

BUILDING WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIPS

A start to maintaining good employee relations is to comply with the employment laws. (Look back to the Module 1 Background for a quick review of some of the major compliance issues.)

Even if activities in the workplace do not rise to the level of noncompliance with laws, it is important that workplaces are perceived by all parties to be efficient, equitable, and open to employee voice.

Let’s continue with this topic of building workplace relationships by viewing the following video:

Ash, E. (2019).  Building relationships [Video]. Alexander Street: A ProQuest Company. Available in the Trident Online Library, Academic Video Online database.

Employee Relations in a Union-Free Environment

Many times, employee relations break down because of interpersonal conflicts. The video below encourages employers to take a proactive approach to employee relations so that problems and issues are resolved at the lowest level.

So, what can we do as individuals to handle disagreements at work? View the following video that provides you the simple STABEN model on how to work through disagreements amicably.

Byrne, J. (2013, April 22).  Conflict resolution in 6 simple easy steps  [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSGy5yvC0hM

Not surprisingly, sometimes at work employees and supervisors disagree and cannot get past the issue.

The video below encourages supervisors to take a proactive approach to employee relations so that problems and issues do not escalate. The video about a supervisor-employee relationship displays two different outcomes with one obviously being the desired outcome:

Review the following video:

Handling Workplace Bullying  – From LinkedIn Learning

And, if the issues continue, the three basic types of dispute resolution available are mediation, arbitration, and litigation. Read the following for a summary of each. There are also links to good sources in this article.

Staff. (2020). What are the three basic types of dispute resolution?  Program on Negotiation. Harvard University.  https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/dispute-resolution/what-are-the-three-basic-types-of-dispute-resolution-what-to-know-about-mediation-arbitration-and-litigation/

Resolving Differences with Union Help

There are times when the relationship between the employer and groups of employees breaks down and one or both sides feel they need help from a third party. This is when a labor union might appear attractive to employees in their attempts to improve workplace conditions.

Let’s briefly look at some of the reasons people seek unionizing their workplace and join unions. For instance, they may feel their economic needs are not being met with their current wages and benefits and believe that a union can help them receive better economic prospects. Fairness in the workplace is another reason why people join unions. They may feel that scheduling, vacation time, transfers, and promotions are not given fairly and feel that a union can help eliminate some of the inequity associated with these processes.

Note: In MGT412 we have a Module devoted to the development of union influence in the U.S. In that course we discuss the history of unions, reasons for decline in union membership, union labor laws, and the process employees go through to form a union. But for our purposes in MGT407 taking a look at current union challenges helps us to understand that there are other ways to solve issues, especially in light of knowing the challenges of unionization.

Current Union Challenges

As you learned in previous HR courses, employment relations concern the relationship between organizational leadership and employees via union group representation and collective bargaining.

In decades past, most employment terms were confined to basic employment relationships, such as individualized, informal, or based on verbal agreements. These situations give employers almost complete discretion (or “managerial prerogative”) over the main elements of employment relationships: hiring; firing; remuneration; work scheduling and duration; work intensity; work breaks; discipline; and workplace health and safety.

In the absence of labor market protections for workers—through unions, collective bargaining, works councils and state labor market regulation—employers have faced very few, mostly weak, constraints on their choices to abuse that power. Such constraints derived from societal norms, religious law, labor market exigencies—such as skill shortages—and forms of early collective regulation of skilled work through and within organizations like craft guilds (Deakin, as cited in Wilkinson, Dundon, Donaghey, & Colvin, 2018).

The advent of industrialization brought to the forefront the need for worker protections, and thus the creation on unions and collective bargaining. In the early years of industrialization, workers were often abused, underpaid, fired without warrant, and overworked. Therefore, and keeping in mind that there were no employee protection laws in place in the U.S. at that time, there was a need for some sort of organization to develop that protected workers from these and other types of abuse.

The formation of unions was itself fraught with challenges, corruption, and abuse. For instance, in the early 1940s in Flint, Michigan, non-union workers were often beaten and sometimes killed by union members in an effort to get them to join the local union. This caused some people to join the union, but it also caused others to leave the industry for other positions, such as joining the military or the Michigan State Police.

Since those dangerous days, things have changed to the good for a lot of workers in the United States and this is because of the many laws enacted that protect all workers, not just those in factories or other union-backed industries, such as teaching and police officers. Just six of these laws (DOL, n.d.) are:

Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Act: Workplace safety and health.

Workers’ Compensation: Covered by laws in each state, not a federal law.

Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA): For employee benefit security and it regulates employers who offer pension or welfare benefit plans.

Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (Landrum-Griffin Act): Deals with the relationship between unions and its members.

Family and Medical Leave Act: Requires employers of 50+ employees to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave to eligible employees.

Veterans Preference: Gives veterans and eligible persons special employment rights with the federal government.

This is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to protections provided by state and federal agencies within the United States. You can read more about each of these as well as the other 12 areas of protection found on the Department of Labor web page, Summary of the Major Laws of the Department of Labor:  https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/majorlaws

Sources of the above:

U.S. Department of Labor. (n.d.)  Summary of the major laws of the Department of Labor.  https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/majorlaws

Wilkinson, A., Dundon, T., Donaghey, T., & Colvin, A. J. S. (2018).  The Routledge companion to employment relations [Books 24×7 version]. http://library.books24x7.com.ezproxy2016.trident.edu/toc.aspx?bookid=137778.

Module 4 Summary

In this final module, we examine the topic of resolving differences in the workplace so that positive work relations result. Most employers want to create work environments that are attractive to potential and current employees. At times, however, the relationship between employer and employee is unsteady. Sometimes, there are significant differences between the needs and wants of the two sides.

We hope by taking this course you have learned that Human Resource Management with a Human Capital focus is a dynamic, multifaceted, challenging field of study that melds together several different disciplines. If you decide to pursue a more in-depth study of HRM, the Bachelor’s in HRM is offered at Trident as well as the Master of Science in Human Resource Management. If you pursue the Master of Business Administration, there is a concentration in Human Resource Management offered.

In all of our HRM courses, we pursue topics introduced in this class as well as other people-related topics. Compared to undergraduate study, at the graduate level, the topics are presented with a larger critical thinking component, enabling students to explore in more depth some of the many HRM strategies that contribute to overall business success.

Required Readings

Ash, E. (2019).  Building relationships [Video]. Alexander Street: A ProQuest Company. Available in the Trident Online Library, Academic Video Online database.

Addressing and resolving conflict  – From LinkedIn Learning

Conflict Resolution For Beginners  – From LinkedIn Learning

Conducting investigations  – From LinkedIn Learning

Make a Dent Leadership. (2019).  5 types of conflict in the workplace and how to handle them [Video]. YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7-bbd1F9bk

Staff. (2020). What are the three basic types of dispute resolution?  Program on Negotiation. Harvard University.  https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/dispute-resolution/what-are-the-three-basic-types-of-dispute-resolution-what-to-know-about-mediation-arbitration-and-litigation/  Shareable content per Harvard website.

Urban Vids. (2019).  Massive fight at their workplace  [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wePI6cYHoHQ

Backward: Getting it Right from the Start (p. vii-viii), Chapter 1: When All Else Fails: Terminating the Employment Relationship (p. 1-17),  Chapter 2: Document, Document, Document (p. 19-38), Chapter 3: Coaching, Counseling, and Correcting (p. 39-56) in:   Walters, C. (2017).  From hello to goodbye: Proactive tips for maintaining positive employee relations. Society for Human Resource Management. Available in the Trident Online Library.