Assessment
The policy of JKL Industries’ that conflict with the team’s behaviour in relation to not making effort to involve non-Christians members of the team in the Christmas celebration at workplace are anti-discrimination policy where the relevant legislation are Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 and Racial Discrimination Act 1975.
The JKL Industries policies and processes can be helpful to encourage cultural diversity, understanding and compliance to ethical values and employee relationship-building activities. This required the organisational members to gain an understanding of the company polices and employee obedience towards code of conduct, organisational ethics and values, and professional conduct.
A written code of conduct provided to each organisational member clarifies the expected workplace behaviour, professional conduct, respect towards each other and development of trustworthy relationship for collaboration and conflict resolution (Erwin, 2011).
JKL industries policies needs to include diversity training for organisational members to make them explain about the legal implications of workplace diversity which include discrimination (age, gender, religion, disability) and harassment. This will help the employee to work in collaboration to take advantage of each other knowhow and experiences and set aside differences to further promote cultural diversity and ethical value in the workplace.
To approach the team to resolve the issue in fair manner meeting will be arranged by Brisbane branch manager with the employee, team members and HR personnel. A written complaint will be recorded and organisation policy and relevant legislation will be considered for the resolving the issue and to correct the discrimination behaviour shown by some of the team members.
To prepare and approach for the meeting with team members to address the discrimination behavior issue, the potential problem that are anticipated from the team members are cultural differences, lack of understanding of each other culture, lack of cultural respect, difference in thinking and point of views and non-collaboration among Christians and non-Christians team members.
To confront the team members for their unacceptable behaviour, the each team members will be given a chance to present their opinion and I in the role of the branch manager will listen actively without making any judgment and assumption and without taking sides of the non-Christian members.
The reason behind this behaviour will be discussed and the team members will be firmly clarified that any non-compliance towards organisation policies, ethical values and professional conduct will not be taken lightly or no organisational members involved in violation will be given concession.
I will assure the team members that soon an action will be taken towards it. I will deal with honestly and hold true facts so that employee trust is not mislaid.
The standard communication style for the meeting will be assertive style so that an open communication is facilitated among the team members to understand the reason and factors that lead to discrimination behavior.
This communication style considers the others concerns and need as well as individual (self) needs and perspectives (Sims, 2017) so that all the employee rights are balanced that help in resolving the employee complaint.
In previous situation, I adopted a submissive style of communication to satisfy the employees to achieve work goal and with the purpose of avoiding workplace conflict in meeting the organisational needs.
The networking with internal and external stakeholders can help in building positive relationship that is effective to achieve organisational goals as well as professional goals.
The networking can help in expanding knowledge by getting feedbacks for the ideas and professional issues from various perspectives and through shared knowledge of pool of talented and experienced professionals. Thus, this knowledge can be helpful to achieve goals and avoid the common consequence faced by others.
It provides an opportunity to pool resources to gain advice and suggestions from field experts (Ahuja et al., 2012). As JKL has poor networking thus, it needs to focus on networking as it will open access to available resources to gain support to realize the organisational and professional goals.
I suggest practicing visibility on social and professional networking sites like LinkedIn to post and comment to develop visibility in the professional circle and to join professional groups on LinkedIn.
Another suggestion is to increase participation/ contribution in business forums to expand knowledge and get yourself introduced to professional field experts (Ford and Mouzas, 2013) and gain opportunity to build the networking database with managers and other talented professional.
I have joined a professional networking site of LinkedIn which has helped me in improving my professional knowledge towards latest industry developments and also helped the organisation in learning about business techniques to recruit employees through the professional network through referral.
It has also given insight and knowledge on the industry the best practices for the comparison with organisation practice and to the outcome of it was improvement in existing practices and procedures which has helped the organisation to stay abreast of market competition.
| Networking activity | Person | Schedule | Description/ Rationale for networking activity |
| Personalise relationship with supplier by visiting supplier office twice in a month and involve them in the strategy meetings (Mitrega et al., 2017) to share information about new developments and promotions, office parties and events.
Streamline customer communication by regular interaction through phone, face to face and emails
|
Sam | Six visits to key suppliers office in a period of three months
Weekly interaction with key clients and one mail on monthly basis to each customer |
To build a positive rapport with suppliers and to understand suppliers concerns and demands. To share information with supplier to keep them informed and clarify the quality and delivery expectations to resolve issues.
To develop and maintain strong and positive customer relations and to keep the customer informed about the new products and promotions.
|
| To join social and professional networking sites in Xing, Opportunity, and LinkedIn
To increase interaction with customers by email, face to face interactions for products information and demonstration |
Alex | To spend one hour each day for a period of three months | To gain knowledge and seek professional advice on better technique to handle customers and business issues (Ford and Mouzas, 2013) and develop customer relations.
To increase leads and gain referrals To improve communication and interpersonal skills
|
References
Ahuja, G., Soda, G. and Zaheer, A., 2012. The genesis and dynamics of organizational networks. Organization science, 23(2), pp.434-448.
Erwin, P.M., 2011. Corporate codes of conduct: The effects of code content and quality on ethical performance. Journal of Business Ethics, 99(4), pp.535-548.
Ford, D. and Mouzas, S., 2013. The theory and practice of business networking. Industrial Marketing Management, 42(3), pp.433-442.
Mitrega, M., Forkmann, S., Zaefarian, G. and Henneberg, S.C., 2017. Networking capability in supplier relationships and its impact on product innovation and firm performance. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 37(5), pp.577-606.
Sims, C.M., 2017. Do the big-five personality traits predict empathic listening and assertive communication?. International journal of list
