Report: Positive Leadership Strategies for Woolworths' Problems

This report examines the application of positive leadership strategies to address issues within Woolworths, a major Australian retail company. The analysis focuses on a real-world problem: the underpayment of trolley collectors and its impact on employee morale and performance. The report explores how positive leadership can be implemented to improve employee engagement, ethical conduct, and overall workplace environment. It reviews various leadership theories, including transformational and behavioral theories, and their practical application in resolving the identified issues. The report suggests strategies such as financial rewards, positional changes, and fostering ethical working environments to motivate employees and improve their performance. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of proactive leadership in preventing future ethical breaches and maintaining a positive company reputation.

Running head: REAL PROBLEM SCENARIO
REAL PROBLEM SCENARIO
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The skills that are possessed by the positive leaders are a major part of the ways that
are implemented by the organization in order to solve the issues effectively. The managers or
leaders can play a major role in the process of solving different issues that have taken place in
the organization (Goswami et al. 2016). The company that is considered for the analysis is
Woolworths that operates in the retail industry of Australia. Woolworths is a retail based
organization in Australia which operates greater than 900 stores as a part of the retail chain of
supermarkets. The organization has an employee based of more than 115,000 members.
The major issue which was faced by the organization was related to underpayment of
trolley collectors who work in Woolworths under the contractors. The influence of
underpayment on the work process of the employees is a major part of the discussion.
Real issue faced by Woolworths
The underpayment based issues which have been faced by the trolley workers in
Woolworths can be considered to be a major breach of the contract which has been signed by
the company. The investigation which has been made by Fairfax Media has been able to
depict that Woolworths has agreed to pay the lacking wages to the workers. The company has
aimed at maintaining the records that are related to contractor workforce that is a part of the
operations. The laws that have been set by the organization can affect reputation and
goodwill of Woolworths in the industry (Smh.com.au 2019). The contract or deed had been
developed by Woolworths based on trolley collection relayed activities with the contractors
and sub-contractors as well. The contract based policy was implemented as the organization
was not willing to appoint in-house trolley operators.

2REAL PROBLEM SCENARIO
Strategies of positive leadership
The analysis conducted for this research work makes it evident that Woolworths is in
urgent need of applying positive leadership in their operations. For the purpose of abiding by
the third-party franchise schemes, basic changes needed to be introduced in the strategic
management of the employment of the trolley collectors in the company. This is required for
ensuring that no other similar cases of under payment or other similar issues arise in the
company.
In this context it requires that the business strategy of awards has to be changed to a
combination of a centralised governance along with positive leadership. For fighting
corruption in Woolworths, the company needs to immediately introduce changes in the model
of contracting. So far are the current deeps of the organisation, we need to go on with this
model in the retail business. They cannot take the ring of contracting into their own hands,
rather paying respect to the current contract, they have to keep on outsourcing the position of
appointing their trolley collectors to contractors (Trivisonno and Barling 2016). Unlike the
Other competitive companies who have their in-house facility of creating teams of trolley
collectors, they have to keep on using the same business model.
In order to bring in proficiency alongside using the same business model, the
motivation level of the word force needs to be boosted and also competitive strategies of
positive leadership also needs to be enacted. The concept issue is related to the HRM
department and that is why their management need to emphasize on the abilities of the
Workers serving the company. there are various motivating factors that can manipulate the
employees to become more engaged with the work force. The strategies can be financial
rewards for appreciating the expertise that they have exhibited or they can be also gifted with
positional changes so that none of the employee’s involvement in corruption against the
company. The under-payment issues can severely damage the moral of the employees and

3REAL PROBLEM SCENARIO
thus the company will be deprived of a positive and supportive work station. Hence, show
reflection of ethical as well as positive leadership, Woolworths can same much of their
valuable resources from being perished.
Following the Theory of leadership, it can be discussed that strategies of positive
leadership are the only alternative way of helping the company to sustain in an atmosphere of
competitiveness maintaining the ethics and honesty. Positive leadership can be a strategy for
the company through which they can enforce encouragement so that the workers understand
and also agree to abide by the primary needs of the company. Only by means of positive
leadership the company can enforce the facilitation of individual district has also collective
efforts for the accomplishment of shared objectives. Show the implementation of the positive
leadership strategy, the company Can Dance influence the individual workers to strive
towards their common goals. The primary concern is the way of management of the work
force, because of which the employees are actually suffering. Hence, strategies exchange
management are urgently required and the third-party managers need to develop the feeling
of ethical working.
As highlighted, for the drastic transformation of leadership as well as management in
the Woolworths stores, inevitable and impeccable management skills are needed. Standing in
this pretext, transformational leadership models can also help in guiding the management to
acquire more data regarding the unethical incidents taking place in the company and adopt
immediate decision to prevent them. In any other context the employees will lose their model
and will attend towards displaying a high attrition rate. This might engage the company that
already has an ongoing compliance deal with the third-party regulatory agency for
approaches of clean management as well as ethical workplace moderation. In this way, one of
them elementary policies of the company that is ensuring high level of employee motivation
through most ethical workplace policies as well as compensation would have been reflected

4REAL PROBLEM SCENARIO
in the attitude of the third-party managers of the store regulators also. This is because the
workers were associated with the stores of the company where heavily underpaid show the
third-party payroll agency that was in turn hired by the company.
The Theory of transformational leadership advocates at four basic components of
leadership should be present in any company including intellectual stimulation, idealized
influence, inspiration motivation individualized consideration as well as intellectual
stimulation. Ami already this will help in making the leadership of the organisation was
decided and capable of influencing the culture of the entire organisation including that
strategy as well as structure. The leaders can also manifest himself as catalysts for change and
hence manipulate the resources of the company to improve their knowledge cycles. Since the
structure of the company is based upon three dimensions namely collaborative learning and
trust development, this theory might help managers to Foster collaboration through usage of
idealized influence dimension as well as development of relationships within the company.
This process of Change management in the organisation will need to rigorous support
from the management or else employees will not be having definite information regarding
their position or their future steps. Through these steps of positive leadership and ethical
conduct by one or multiple group of managers can be abolished from the company (Goswami
et al., 2016). As the behavioural theory advocates, the higher management can also take an
active role in motivating the employees in order to learn from the current situation and
thereby prevent any incident related to ethical behaviour before their occurrence.
The model that is described here has closed connection with the contingency theory
also. Decision processes that leaders should work based on the need of the situation. If the
employee’s better resources to complete the task and does demand in sentence and other
compensation to stay focused, the leaders must consider their say. Through selection of the

5REAL PROBLEM SCENARIO
situationally favourable place, positive leaders can imprecise on few distinct factors including
position power, task structures as well as membership relationship of the leaders.
Membership relation as well as position power applicable towards any organisation who has
trust and confidence upon their work teams as well as the executive leaders are mutual. The
most trusted leader can help in the development of a positive workplace and does emphasize
more influence within the group (Hoch et al. 2018). The position of the leader’s power has an
acquired efficiency in directing the group and provide reward or punishment and thus it can
be stated that the leader who is more powerful will be more favourable to situation tackling.
Conclusion:
A perfect use of theories like positive leadership, can help in tackling of any and
difficult situation developed in the company and also prevent the damage to the reputation.
Initial period has been recorded against the name of some of the employees but management
should keep those employees aware regarding the result they might have to face for such
conduct and in turn empower them so that they might take the charge of not letting any such
issue occur in the future of the company. Living resources of the companies needed to be
used through appropriate leadership so that in future and they can image the strength of the
company and not the reason for their defamation. In spite of all these is the company restricts
itself from taking one drastic step towards compensating for the bad reputation that has been
acquired by their brand name, the way continues renewal of their policy of outsourcing the
jobs of trolley collection two contractors as well as sub-contractors.

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References
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humor and employees’ work engagement mediated by positive emotions: Moderating effect
of leaders’ transformational leadership style. Leadership & Organization Development
Journal, 37(8), pp.1083-1099.
Hoch, J.E., Bommer, W.H., Dulebohn, J.H. and Wu, D., 2018. Do ethical, authentic, and
servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-
analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), pp.501-529.
Leroy, H., Anseel, F., Gardner, W.L. and Sels, L., 2015. Authentic leadership, authentic
followership, basic need satisfaction, and work role performance: A cross-level
study. Journal of Management, 41(6), pp.1677-1697.
Smh.com.au 2019. Woolworths trolley collectors to receive back pay. [online] The Sydney
Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/woolworths-
trolley-collectors-to-receive-back-pay-20171010-gyxygw.html [Accessed 30 Jan. 2019].
Trivisonno, M. and Barling, J., 2016. 22. Organizational leadership and employee
commitment. Handbook of employee commitment, 305.