Case Study
You are the newly appointed people practice professional at REBU, an organisation operating globally within the gig economy. REBU offer users the facility to arrange and schedule transport using their mobile application software. Currently the organisation offers transportation and food delivery services across the globe.
Its main offices are based in Austin, however it has offices in 75 locations across the world with most being in the USA. Over the last 12 months, REBU has seen its profits rise by 54%, mainly in the food delivery sector.
One of the emerging trends is sustainability and moving to more electric transport with an objective to have zero-emissions within the next 10 years.
REBU have been successful, particularly in the last 12 months. However retention of staff is a problem, with turnover increasing by 5% every quarter.
During exit interviews, some of the key reasons stated for leaving are working conditions and wages. To achieve its aims and objectives REBU need to review the employment relationship to create better working lives which would result in less turnover and more successful organisational performance.
2.1 Distinguish between organisational conflict and misbehaviour, and between informal and formal conflict.
2.2 Distinguish between official and unofficial employee action.
2.3 Assess emerging trends in the types of conflict and industrial sanctions.
3.1 Explain the principles of legislation relating to unfair dismissal in respect of capability and misconduct issues.
3.2 Analyse key causes of employee grievances.
3.3 Explain the skills required for effective grievance and discipline-handling procedures.
3.4 Advise on the importance of handling grievances effectively.
Design a short training session for the line managers of REBU, addressing how they can manage conflict in the workplace. Your presentation pack and supporting notes should include:
an analysis of the key causes of employee grievance within REBU (AC3.2).
ï‚· An explanation of at least two skills required to successfully handle grievances and disciplinaries at work and the importance of handling these effectively so REBU can avoid legal claims (AC3.3, 3.4).
ï‚· A table, outlining one official and one unofficial action an employee might take during conflict, explaining their key features and distinguishing between them (AC2.2).
ï‚· An assessment of the emerging trends in conflicts and industrial sanctions *AC 2.3).
ï‚· A distinction of the following three methods (conciliation, mediation and arbitration) that REBU can use to resolve conflict formally before it escalates to an employment tribunal. Include similarities, differences and key features of your two chosen methods (AC2.4).
ï‚· An explanation of the principles of the key legislation relating to unfair dismissal law and outline the process an employer should follow with regard to with capability and misconduct issues within REBU (AC3.1).
Your evidence must consist of:
Presentation pack and supporting notes of approximately 1800 words
you will need to design a short training session for the line managers of REBU, addressing how they can manage conflict in the workplace. Your presentation pack with supporting notes will need to cover: an explanation of the differences between organisational conflict, misbehaviour, and what is meant by informal and formal conflict, as well as an analysis of key courses of employee grievances within REBU.
You will also need to provide an explanation of at least two skills required to successfully handle grievances and disciplinary work and the importance of handling this effectively so that REBU can avoid legal claims.
You will produce a table outlining one official and one unofficial action that employees might take during conflict, explaining their key features and distinguishing between them. You will provide an assessment of the emerging trends in conflict and industrial sanctions. You will choose to alternative means of resolving disputes, such as conciliation, mediation and arbitration, explain how REBU can use this to resolve conflict before it escalates to an employment tribunal. You will need to include some similarities, differences and key features of your two chosen methods.
Lastly, you will provide an explanation of the principles of the key legislation relating to unfair dismissal law and outline the process an employer should follow with regards to the capability and misconduct issues. So here you need to prepare a set of slides in PowerPoint and supporting notes in a Word document.
It is recommended that you produce one slide per criterion, six in total. Your presentation slides should be visual and graphically represent the content you are presenting. And when addressing the design of the training session, remember your audience: the managers of REBU.
So your language needs to be professional and your explanations of concepts in plain language, so everybody can understand. In this section, you will address Assessment Criteria 2.1 and 3.2.
For Assessment Criterion 2.1, you need to identify and explain the differences between organisational conflict and organisational misbehaviour, and between informal and formal conflict. So here you could define all these concepts and draw distinctions. For example, misbehaviour is anything the organisation does that is not supposed to happen.
Conflict, on the other hand, is a disagreement between two parties that is likely to escalate. So think about the relationship between the two. It is likely that organisational misbehaviour will cause conflict with the workforce. One of the key differences between the two is that misbehaviour is likely to be the cause of the conflict. What others can you think of? Following from conflict, you then need to identify and explain what formal and informal conflict are, and again draw distinctions.
It is highly recommended that you illustrate with examples – such as an argument at work, disagreements and cultural issues as informal.
And for formal, you can discuss different leadership styles, encouraging debate and sharing different outlooks. You would then address Assessment Criterion 3.2, for which you need to analyse the causes of grievances. Here it is recommended that you start with a brief definition of what a grievance is.
In the context of employment, you could say that a grievance is a complaint an employee would have about something done within the organisation, usually by a manager or someone senior to the employee.
Causes of grievances vary from more serious ones such as discrimination, harassment and bullying, to workload, working conditions, pay and benefits. You don’t need to focus on the process that needs to be followed to resolve grievances. You will see that later on. Here, you need to focus on and analyse the causes of grievances.
Here, you will address Assessment Criteria 3.3 and 3.4 together. This section of Task 2 is about highlighting the importance of managing grievances and disciplinaries effectively to avoid any potential claim that may arise from mishandling these situations. It is important to evidence this to the managers in the presentation clearly, highlighting the consequences of not handling these situations effectively.
To that end, you will identify and explain a minimum of two skills those handling disciplinary and grievance procedures must have to ensure a successful process and outcome.
Some of these include good listening skills and the ability to ask questions relevant to the situation. You could also explore the ability to be neutral and emotionally removed from the situation to ensure the process and outcome bias free, and based on factual evidence only.
An alternative would be the ability to relate to people so the parties feel confident to open up, be truthful and forthcoming with information. You then need to explain the importance of handling this effectively so that we can avoid legal claims. You could explain that the effective resolution of disciplinary hearings and grievances will ensure that REBU employees have a forum to speak up if they need to share particular concern or grievance, so people can identify and resolve issues before they become a cause of major concern.
In turn, this will enhance engagement and a sense of belonging to the organisation. Clearly an effective resolution of grievances and disciplinaries will ensure REBU minimises the likelihood of unemployment tribunal, with the consequent impact on reputation, loss of management, time and financial impact.
In this section of Task 2 you will be addressing Assessment Criterion 2.2. We continue with the theme of conflict and here you will need to explain to the managers the key features of, and differences between official and unofficial action employees of REBU can take to protest against organisational wrongdoing and to attempt to resolve a conflict.
You need to select one official and one unofficial action an employee might take during conflict, your answer needs to be presented in a table. You could design one with three columns, the first one identifying the official or unofficial action you choose to discuss. So, for example, for formal, you could discuss industrial action options short of a strike and lockout. And for informal, you could discuss spontaneous and disruptive gatherings that lack a trade union authorisation. The second column would detail three of the key features of each of the sections and a discussion of three.
The third column will include an explanation of at least three differences between the two. You may want to underpin your answer with Acas best practice of further research on the topic to enhance your answer. For this section of Task 2, you are required to assess the emerging trends in conflicts and industrial sanctions and this will address Assessment Criterion 2.3.
Here you need to assess new ways of conflict and ways to protest. It would be useful to remind yourself of the context and that REBU works in the gig economy.
New ways of work and technology and the diminished power of trade unions would also shape these trends. So you may want to consider these. So in that context, identify and explain two new trends on industrial sanction and conflict resolution.
This will include, examples such as shifts from long strikes to shorter strategic planed strikes, or the increased use of injunctions by organisations and the internal use of policies such as grievances.
Remember, the command verb here is to assess, so you need to go further in your discussion and provide an overview of the key features of these trends, their value, strengths and weaknesses in the context of REBU.
So you could consider answering the following questions. How do these trends impact REBU? Can you identify any detriment and benefit for REBU of these emerging trends?
Here you will be addressing Assessment Criterion 2.4, which requires you to identify, explain and distinguish between various alternative ways organisations have to resolve conflict in the workplace. Conflict can be really damaging to the employment relationship to the extent that it can end it. When things get really bad between employee and employer, the situation is likely to lead to an employment tribunal.
However, there are alternative means to resolve issues, and it is far more beneficial for the parties to agree to work together towards an amicable resolution of the conflict and to repair their relationship. They can do this by choosing to arbitrate, conciliate or mediate instead of (or prior to) bringing a claim in a tribunal.
To address this section, you need to choose two of these alternatives, explain at least two of their key features, two differences and two similarities between them. You can distinguish them by considering that some are mandatory, such as early conciliation by Acas, some optional, such as arbitration and mediation. Some are legally binding, such as arbitration and others like mediation, are not.
But they all will aim to be amicable resolution of the employment relationship, to resolve conflict, to repair the employment relationship, and to avoid escalating the issue to unemployment tribunal, which is costly, time-consuming for both parties, and unlikely to repair the relationship in a way that may be able to continue working together.
To complete the last section of Task 2 and to meet the requirements of Assessment Criterion 3.1, you should explain legislation and best practice in the management of dismissal, outlining the process for addressing the capability and misconduct issues, so REBU can avoid claims of unfair dismissal.
So you would start by identifying and explaining the key provisions of the relevant legislation, which is the Employment Rights Act, 1996 as amended. You do need to ensure that you make reference to this particular legislation in your answer.
You then need to build a discussion around the key principles of the legislation. These principles include the right of every employee to be treated fairly. It follows that an employer can only dismiss an employee only in cases of capability or qualifications, conduct illegality or contraventions of a statutory duty or some other substantial reason or redundancy.
This is what the law calls the ‘five fair reasons for dismissal’. In addition, the fairness element is an important principle of the legislation, and regardless of which of these five reasons is cited for the dismissal, a fair process needs to be followed.
Once you have addressed the principals, you would then go on to explore the processes that REBU would follow in case of capability and misconduct. It is recommended that you start this section of your answer explaining first how REBU would deal with capability issues. You would describe the preliminary steps that REBU should follow when addressing capability. This includes identifying the issue: is it lack of employees ability, skills, knowledge or perhaps inadequate leadership poor management, defective work in systems or lack of training?
Once the reason for poor performance has been identified, REBU should put in place appropriate remedies to help the employee improve performance. If, for example, the employee has not got the right skills to do the job, REBU should implement interventions such as coaching, training and time to improve, so the employee has a chance to improve.
Ongoing reviews should take place to ensure that employees support it throughout. If REBU has acted reasonably and provided everything they could to support the employee, and the employee still hasn’t improved, REBU can potentially dismiss the employee on capability grounds.
Remember, that capability is one of the five fair reasons for dismissal, under the employment relations act, but to minimise the risk of an unfair dismissal claim, REBU should follow a fair dismissal process.
Next, you would address misconduct. Here, you could explain that misconduct is unacceptable or improper behaviour. The preliminary steps to addressing a misconduct issue starts by assessing whether the misconduct grounds a suspension.
If not the next step, is to investigate the misconduct, covering factual evidence, including any witness statements, CCTV footage, etc.
Because the process REBU needs to follow for a fair dismissal is the same for capability and misconduct issues, you could discuss this last. You will start the last part of the section by explaining that the employee needs to be invited to a disciplinary hearing, given the right to be accompanied at the hearing by a fellow employee or a trade union representative. And once the hearing has been conducted, the outcome needs to be communicated together with the right of appeal.
