BSBLDR502 Lead and manage effective workplace relationships

Learner Instructions 3
(Dispute resolution guidance session)

Submission details

Students Name

Student ID

Group

Assessor’s Name

Assessment Date/s

The assessment task is due on the date specified by your assessor. Any variations to
this arrangement must be approved in writing by your assessor.
Submit this document with any required evidence attached. See specifications below
for details.

Performance objective

You will demonstrate the skills and knowledge required to manage difficulties and
conflicts in order to achieve positive work outcomes.

Assessment description

Using the simulated business information provided, and in response to a scenario,

you will plan and conduct a role-play in which you provide a colleague with guidance
regarding a dispute between the colleague and a member of their team. You will then
develop an action plan in consultation with the colleague.

Procedure

1. Read the scenario and role-play information in Appendix 1.

2. Review and familiarise yourself with the JKL Industries simulated business
documentation, including strategic plans and operational plans. Note what the
organisation does, how it does it, what its goals and objectives are, and who its
stakeholders and customers are.
3. Plan to lead a role-played guidance session for a peer manager in response to
the scenario.
4. Complete the first activity in the action plan template provided in Appendix 2.

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5. Plan how you will:

a. Build trust with your colleague through assuming a calm, professional and
emotionally receptive attitude and demeanour.
b. Adjust your personal communication style appropriately to meet the
needs (both emotional and technical) of your colleague.
c. Discuss relevant grievance policies and procedures for resolving conflict
in accordance with organisational and legislative requirements.
d. Discuss strategies for identifying root causes of conflict and for resolving
the conflict.
e. Collaborate with your colleague to develop an action plan (completing the
one from Appendix 2 you have already begun to implement by leading
this session), including at least three actions your colleague to take to
resolve the issue with their employee.
6. Arrange a time and place with your assessor to participate in the role-play.
7. Perform your role-play in accordance with the specifications set out below.
8. Submit your completed action plan within the agreed timeframe.

Specifications

You must:
● participate in a guidance session role-play

● submit an action plan.

Your assessor will be looking for evidence of your ability to:

● provide leadership through your own behaviour, including:

○ professional conduct that promotes trust with internal and external

contacts
○ adjusting own interpersonal communication style to meet the
organisation’s cultural diversity and ethical environment
● develop and/or implement processes and systems to manage difficulties,
including:
○ identifying and resolving conflicts and other difficulties according to
organisational policies and procedures
○ planning how to address difficulties
○ providing guidance, counselling and support to assist co-workers in
resolving their work difficulties.
● explain and discuss procedures for conflict resolution

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● discuss relevant legislation

● interact with others through:

○ adapting your personal communication style to model behaviour and build

trust and positive working relationships
○ playing a lead role in situations requiring effective collaboration
● get the work done through:

○ taking responsibility for planning in collaboration with others

○ developing action plans
● demonstrate writing skills through preparing action plans that incorporate
appropriate vocabulary, grammatical structure and conventions.

Candidate: I declare that this work has been completed by

me honestly and with integrity and that I have been
assessed in a fair and flexible manner. I understand that the Signature: ___________________
Institute’s Student Assessment, Reassessment and
Repeating Units of Competency Guidelines apply to these
Date: ____/_____/_____
assessment tasks.

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Appendix 1: Scenario – JKL Industries

JKL Industries overview

JKL Industries is an Australian-owned company, selling forklifts, small trucks and
spare parts to industry. They also have a division that leases forklifts and small
trucks.
The company’s head office is in Sydney and has branches in Brisbane, Melbourne,
Perth, Adelaide and Canberra.

Change
After 12 years in business, focusing on forklifts and small trucks, JKL Industries has
negotiated the sales rights to a range of medium and large trucks from an overseas
supplier. This opportunity will provide JKL Industries with an advantage in range over
its competitors.
Sales results over the past five years have indicated strong growth in forklift and truck
sales, which have averaged 10% sales growth per annum. The rental market has
been in decline for the past three years due to the reduced costs of these vehicles
and some taxation benefits to industries who purchase these vehicles.
Taking the sales rights opportunity will, however, entail some significant changes,
including significant changes to the current organisational structure. The company will
reposition itself to focus solely on retail sales and service and exit the rentals market,
in which forces such as competition and consumer choice reduce potential
profitability.
In accordance with the organisation’s values, JKL Industries intends (to the extent
feasible) to recruit from within the company and up-skill or re-skill existing employees
presently working in rentals who wish to remain with the company.
Given the company’s previous history of employee grievances over pay and
conditions and current plans to restructure, JKL Industries has identified poor
communications and an organisational climate of conflict as a risk to business goals.
Moving forward, the organisation intends to build and maintain a positive
organisational culture, reduce risk and achieve organisational goals through:
● developing an effective policy framework for managing internal communications
and consultation, in accordance with organisational objectives, business ethics,
and compliance requirements
● communicating and building support for organisational initiatives and objectives

● managing information flow to:

○ provide managers and employees with at-hand information to perform

their work responsibilities
○ communicate ideas for improvement (top-down and bottom-up)

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○ facilitate feedback both to and from employees and management on

relevant work performance and outcomes of consultation.

Role-play information: HR Business Partner

You are an HR Business Partner working in the JKL Industries Brisbane branch. You
report directly to the HR Manager in the Sydney Head Office. As an employee of the
Brisbane branch, you also report to the Brisbane Branch Manager. You work to
provide information to employees, team leaders and managers at the branch,
facilitate service delivery through HR centres of excellence, such as compliance and
training and development, and partner with managers to assist them in strategising,
workforce planning and development, and in meeting the needs of their customers,
employees and the business as a whole.
A peer manager (from Rentals) has made an appointment to come to you about an
employee grievance.

Employee grievance
A rental employee of the Brisbane branch is concerned about plans to restructure
the business. The employee is extremely angry and feels that they:
● will definitely lose their job as a result of the restructure

● will not be given the opportunity to retrain.

They would like to formally complain that their manager has not provided rental
employees with opportunities to retrain.
In addition, the employee feels they must be underpaid because they know people
in the same job in the same industry who are making much more. They don’t
understand the basis of their pay or conditions.
Finally, the employee is currently organising other rental and sales employees for a
possible strike. They intend to pressure their union into supporting and publicising
the strike.

You know that the Rentals Manager is very concerned about the impact of the
grievance on team cohesion and, potentially, the goals and objectives of the
organisation. You also suspect that the manager will be hurt or angry themselves, as
they have indicated their sincere desire to improve employee relations within their
team through better communication and relationship-building.
The trouble is that while the manager may have the best intentions, they are relatively
inexperienced and may not be approaching the conflict with the most productive
mindset. And they may not have all the conflict resolution tools, tactics and strategies
that you are equipped with as a more experienced HR specialist.

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In addition, you are aware of the following facts:

● JKL Industries’ firm policy and intention is to retrain rental employees to retain
talent (retraining is in JKL’s interest).
● So far the employee has adhered to the grievance policy as intended by the
organisation. The grievance procedure sets out a process whereby disputes are
kept at the lowest level. Employees should take their grievance first to their
immediate supervisor, which the employee has done. This gives managers the
first opportunity to respond appropriately, which is only fair. The Rentals
Manager now has an opportunity to resolve the dispute early.
● The employee is paid to the terms of the relevant modern award
(MA000089 Vehicle Manufacturing, Repair, Services and Retail Award 2010),
but that all employees will soon be able to negotiate possibly much better pay
and conditions in upcoming enterprise bargaining.

In your meeting with the Rentals Manager to provide guidance, lead the meeting
through the following stages:
1. greeting the manager
2. listening to their side
3. responding to the manager appropriately
4. working with the manager to come up with viable solutions
5. documenting activities in an action plan.

You will also, as appropriate:

● listen to the manager: understand the facts as they see them and understand
their feelings
● adopt an appropriate leadership/communication style

● be reflective, regulate your emotions, and refrain from reacting

● explain the facts as you understand them, including providing an explanation of

the grievance policy, its benefit to the organisation, and the relevance of at least
one piece of legislation
● help the manager to understand reasons for the grievance

○ Note: Given the climate of fear and suspicion that has existed within JKL
Industries, such a grievance may not be very unlikely. It is also possible
that plain communications of facts and organisational intentions may have
failed because of the underlying emotional work context. As such, the
complaint should not necessarily be a cause of offense.

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● using your knowledge of dispute resolution, collaborate with the manager to

determine a series of at least three activities to resolve the conflict with the
employee and complete an action plan (use the template provided in Appendix
2)
● offer to mediate in the dispute, if required, or help to provide assistance if it
requires further escalation.

Given the company’s industrial relations history and restructure plans, and history of
conflict and mistrust, contributing to positive employee relationship-building through
assisting managers will constitute a key measure of your value to the organisation.

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Appendix 2: Action plan template

Action/activity Timeframe Person/s Description of Resources, if

responsible strategy/ required
tactic/rationale
for action

HR meeting HR Business
with manager Partner (you)
(rental)

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Group Role – play

SCRIPT
HR manager: Hello Shiho! How are you today?
Rental manager: I’m good, thank you. Yourself?
HR manager: Very good, thanks! First of all I would like to ask you some questions.
How are you going to conduct the meeting with your employee?
Rental manager: Well, I will ask him open questions.
HR manager: What do you mean by open questions?
Rental Manager: I will ask him for his opinion and some suggestions, if he has any.
HR manager: And how are you going to promote trust in your team?
Rental Manager: My behavior will be honest, fair consistent, loyal, reliable, sincere
and truthful.
HR manager: Ok, I understand. Demonstrate how you show body language when
you are going to have a meeting with him.
Rental manager: I’m going to look at him while he talks, keep eye contact, smile,
speak slow and clear, use a moderate and low tone of voice.
HR manager: Ok, thank you. As you know we have made an appointment to discuss
about some concerns that one of your employee has. Can you tell me more about
that?
Rental manager: He has concerns about the plan to restructure the business.
HR manager: Oh I’m sorry to hear that! As a consequence of that what do you think
how the employee feels?
Rental manager: He’s very upset because he is feeling that he will lose his job as a
result of the restructure.
HR manager: Apart of that does the employee has any other concerns?
Rental Manager: He also thinks he won’t be given the opportunity to retrain.
HR manger: Do you think that you have enough ability to handle the situation?
Rental manager: No, I have no idea how to handle it as I’m very new and I haven’t
been provided with the retraining. Actually, he would like to formally complaint about
it.
HR manager: So basically the employee is scared to lose his job and afraid that he
won’t be given the opportunity to retrain, and as I understood he also doesn’t
understand how the salary is made. To make you the situation a little bit clearer I’ll
explain you the grievance and antidiscrimination policies of our company, and code of
ethics.
Let’s first talk about the grievance policy and its procedure.

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JKL Industries supports the right of every employee to lodge a grievance with their
manager if they believe a decision, behavior or action affecting their employment is
unfair. An employee may raise a grievance about any performance improvement
action taken against them.
Management and employees of JKL Industries should follow the principle that
disputes should be addressed at the lowest possible level and should not be
escalated either within JKL or to outside bodies until all reasonable avenues for
resolution have been explored.
Relevant legislation may include, but is not limited to: Privacy Act 1998 and anti-
discrimination legislation. The grievance procedure sets out a process whereby
disputes are kept at the lowest level. Employees should their grievance first to their
immediate supervisor, which the employee has done.
The next policy that I would like to explain you is the Anti-discrimination policy.
The purpose of this policy is to underscore the organisation’s commitment to the fair
treatment of all personnel and customers. At JKL Industries, anyone engaged in
employment or the provision or receipt of training and/or services has the right to
operate in an environment that is free from discrimination.
Ok, now would like to read the code of ethics for me, please?
Rental manager: Yeah, sure. Employees and officers of JKL Industries are expected
to:
 respect and support the core values of the organisation:

o performance excellence

o value for investors, customers and employees

o personal and professional development

o diversity

o sustainability

 respect and treat others (colleagues, managers, reports, clients, customers

and organisational stakeholders) with fairness

 act in accordance with relevant legislation, standards and industry codes of

practice

 act honestly to protect the reputation of JKL Industries; avoid the fact or
appearance of conflict of interest

 protect the privacy of others in accordance with organisational privacy and

recordkeeping policies.

HR manager: Now that we have explained these policies and procedures do you feel
that you understand them?

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Rental manager: Yes, I definitely do.

HR manager: I would also like to explain you the Fair Work Act which is the
discrimination on the basis of race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, age, physical or
mental disability, marital status, family or career responsibilities. And the
antidiscrimination legislation which is the right of people to be treated equally.
Do you have any additional questions?
Rental manager: No, It’s all clear thank you.
HR manager: Finally, we can find a solution to the employees concerns. I have to say
that the employee it’s not going to lose his job because I’ll provide him with a training
so he can get use to the new workplace. The employee is paid to the terms of the
relevant modern award (MA000089 Vehicle Manufacturing, Repair, Services and
Retail Award 2010), he will be able to negotiate possibly much better pay and
conditions in upcoming enterprise bargaining.
That would be all for today. Now that we have had this meeting you can talk with your
employee and explain him what we have discussed.
Rental manager: Thank you so much. I will definitely do so. Bye, bye!
HR manager: Good bye!

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Appendix 2: Action Plan

Meeting date Time Attendees Brief Issue

description of identified by:
grievance or
area of
concern

20 Nov 2019 10.00-12.00 AM HR meeting Discuss about HR Manager

with manager the employee
(Rental) and HR concerns and
Business come up with
Partner solutions
(role played by
training
candidate)

Action/activity Timeframe Person/s Description of Resources,

responsible strategy/tactic/rationale if required
for action

HR meeting with 27 Nov HR 1. Discuss about the Copy of the

manager (rental) 2019 Business employee concerns and policies and
Partner come up with solutions. procedures.
2:00-3:00
pm 2. Explain policies and
procedures of the
company to rental
Manager.

Meeting with the 5 Dec Rental Tell to employee what Copy of

employee 2019 Manger was discussed with the policies and
HR Manager. procedures
2:00-
of JKL
3:00pm
Industries.

Follow up of the 12 Dec – Rental Ensure the conflict has Laptop

employee 19 Dec Manager been fully resolved
2019

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