Leading and Managing Workplace Relationships: Assignment Analysis

This assignment presents a role-play scenario between a retail manager and an HR Business Partner, followed by a discussion between the HR Business Partner and a Retail Manager, addressing issues of employee dissatisfaction, training, and company performance. The role-play highlights concerns about employee compensation, job understanding, and potential disputes. The HR Business Partner proposes solutions including a communication program, leadership program, and performance-based salary increments. The Retail Manager acknowledges the issues and discusses the need for meetings with board members and staff to address the concerns and implement changes to improve both internal and external factors of the company. The assignment concludes with references to relevant academic sources supporting the discussed concepts.

Running head: LEAD AND MANAGE EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP
LEAD AND MANAGE EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Authors note:

1LEAD AND MANAGE EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP
Role-Play
Oliver (Manager for Retail) - Good Morning, I have known you for sometime therefore I
believe you can understand my problems and anger, the employees are not doing their job
properly and to my knowledge they are not even well trained.
Lucas (HR Business Partner) - You look very angry, first you need to calm down. I can
understand that this problem is very important to you and you are disturbed because of it.
Oliver (Manager for Retail) – Yes I will calm down, but first they should learn how to
behave and do their work properly. Further I am concerned about the business structure and
henceforth I believe that we should recruit people who are well aware of their job.
Lucas (HR Business Partner) – See right now you are so angry that you want a solution
right now, but these things do not work like this. I understand that the problem is big but in order
to get a proper solution, I have to talk to my seniors and several board members needs to be
addressed.
Oliver (Manager for Retail) – Fine, but the employees should be trained properly
otherwise it is impossible to work with them.
Lucas (HR Business Partner) – Of, course action will be taken, I will take this problem
with the board members and I will tell them about this entire problem that you are talking about
and try and make some changes in the stricture of the business. I am glad that you spoke up.
Oliver (Manager for Retail) – Thank You!

2LEAD AND MANAGE EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP
Lucas (HR Business Partner to Rentals manager) - Good morning Sir, I guess you already
know why am I here. There have been problems within the employees which I believe need
immediate attention of ours. They are claiming that the employees are not well paid and also not
well aware of their work. They are turning against each other so we have to put a new
organizational program and set some kind of rules and activity to make it stop.
James (Retail Manager) – So what exactly is your plan. How exactly do you think you
will proceed?
Lucas (HR Business Partner) – As you can see our company is trying to get overseas
suppliers, this will help the company to expand and can give a good competition to their
competitors. Over the last five years the growth rate of sales has been 10% per year. The rental
market has been turned down due to the reduced cost in these vehicles and also because of some
taxation. I believe we have to come up with a new strategic plan and in order to prevent further
dispute. There should be a communication program which will help people to tell their problems
and communicate with each other.
James (Retail Manager) – I agree, well we can proceed with this plan for now but hearing
the problems, it can build up to a huge disaster, ending up in strikes as well mass resignation.
Therefore we have to hold meetings both with the board members as well as with the staffs and
employees. What do you say?
Lucas (HR Business Partner) – Yes I completely agree with that, in order to improve both
the internal and external factors of the company, I believe we have to take up actions, even we
can start a leadership program so that there can be an improvement in the behavior of the people.

3LEAD AND MANAGE EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP
James (Retail Manager) –But why do you think all this disputes are happening, what is
the reason behind this chaos?
Lucas (HR Business Partner) – There can be a lot of issues here, first somehow they got
to know that the other companies are paying better for the work they are doing here. So there is a
need of increasing the salary otherwise we might just lose our employees. Secondly, it is possible
that there can be a problem regarding the understanding of the job, it might happen that there are
employees who are good at their work on the other hand there are se who are average or weak,
this might bring down the performance of the good employees as well, that causes the grievance
In that case I believe there should be program from where we can select the employees who are
good at their job and ask him to help or direct the ones who are falling back, in this way the
employees will get a help from each other and it will also give a sense of responsibility for each
one of them.
James (Retail Manager) – So what programs and necessary changes do you think we
should start immediately? About increasing the salary there can be a problem regarding that as I
have to speak with the board of members. The increment of salary depends on the production of
work, if they continue to create unnecessary dispute among themselves then I do not see that
there is any reason to increase their salary, so I am not supporting that cause.
Lucas (HR Business Partner) – Fine, but we have to understand that if employees start
resigning, especially the old employees, then it will put a bad reputation on our company, I
understand what you are saying, therefore we will held those meetings and in fact after taking all
those new actions, and creating a leader, we can tell them that if they prove to give a good sales
rate that we will observe in the next 2 months then there is a probability of good service and even

4LEAD AND MANAGE EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP
improvement in the behavior. The meetings should be held as quickly as possible and the
leadership program should start as soon as possible.
James (Retail Manager) – Okay, this idea is justifiable and can be considered. We can
start taking steps in order to improve both the internal and external environment of the company.
If this brings positivity in the company and keep the company in profit then of course this will be
taken into consideration.
Lucas (HR Business Partner) – Thank you, for accepting my proposal.

5LEAD AND MANAGE EFFECTIVE WORKPLACE RELATIONSHIP
References
Buller, P. F., & Finkle, T. A. (2013). The Hogan entrepreneurial leadership program: an
innovative model of entrepreneurship education. Journal of Entrepreneurship
Education, 16, 113.
Dash, M., Bakshi, S., & Chugh, A. (2017). The Relationship Between Work Experience and
Employee Compensation: A Case Study of the Indian IT Industry. Journal of Applied
Management and Investments, 6(1), 5-10.
Davis, R., & Franks, D. M. (2014). Costs of company-community conflict in the extractive
sector. Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative Report. Harvard Kennedy School,
Cambridge, USA.
DeMarr, B. J., & De Janasz, S. C. (2013). Negotiation and dispute resolution. Prentice Hall.
Johnson, C. E. (2017). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow.
Sage Publications.
Latha, K. L. (2013). A study on employee attrition and retention in manufacturing
industries. BVIMSR’s Journal of Management Research (BJMR), 5(1), 1-23.
Martin, A. W., Dixon, M., & Nau, M. (2017). Coalitions and the Bottom Line: Strikes, Allies,
and Company Stock Returns. Social Currents, 4(4), 322-341.
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.

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