Workplace Communication And Grievance Policies And Procedures – The Lollipop Shop

About The Lollipop Shop

This paper will enumerate the effective lead workplace relationship from the perspective of the General Manager of The Lollipop Shop. Known for its premium quality, The Lollipop Shop provides its consumers with the very best of Australian candy, drinks, lollies and party goods. The company has both digital as well physical presence, with three outlets in Victoria and an e-commerce platform as well. The major unique selling proposition of the company is its vast offering of a wide range of products and the presence of the most detailed and granular knowledge in the product segment, complimented by exceptional customer support and service (Kang & Sung, 2017). The Lollipop Company was incorporated by John Sweetman in Melbourne. The company has multiplied tenfold, both in the physical and digital space, with gaining strategic competitive edge over its competitors by introducing various innovations and diversity in its product line like sugar-free, gluten free, vegan etc. forms of goods. The company is driven by the community principle of bringing people together via healthy, sweet offerings (Board, 2018). The company is driven by their mission to become one of Australia’s most prolific offerings, for everyone to enjoy their products, including those with distinct dietary requirements. The company is driven by quality and customer centric approach, with constant innovation and dynamics, along with principled reliability, in a sustainable, equitable, dynamic and inclusive workplace. The Company is spearheaded by its CEO at the top, with the General Manager as its immediate subordinate, along with the further division of the network into the Human Resource and Finance Manager and direct lines of communication and accountability to the CEO for the respective Store Managers, who effectively delegate their authority to the respective Sales Representatives, at the lower most level of management (Austin, 2018). This report will be from the General Manger’s perspective, who is required to supervise the day to day operation of the company, in order to achieve strategic goals, by creating appropriate strategies, policies, actions, frameworks and budgets for the same, effectively managing the employees and resolving any issues and flaws that are predominant at the core operating framework, like network issues, workplace culture, employee management, and identification of appropriate changes and implementing them accordingly (Betz, 2018).

To develop relevant workplace consultation and communication policy and procedures for effective management.

The Policy will entail the entire organisational framework of The Lollipop Shop and will be applicable to all the employees as well as the top-level management.

• Workplace: This defines the workspace that employees of The Lollipop Shop are assigned, to operate the day-to-day tasks of the organisation by its employees.
• Communication: This refers to the efficient and effective transmission of ideas, knowledge and information throughout the framework and length and breadth of the organisation, instilling appropriate lines and transparency.
• Consultation: Consultation can be defined as the possibility and the ability of the employees to seek advice and discuss varied topics with the employees as well as the respective managers thar are relevant and progressive to the organisational framework.
• Policy and Procedures: This can be defined as the cluster of ideas and regularities that the employees and the relevant members of an organisation are bound to follow based on the scope of the directives, and are an integral part of the organisational framework (Mayfield & Mayfield, 2017).

The members of The Lollipop Shop will be required to follow the following primary methods of communication, as directed by the General Manager. These are-

• Formal and Informal: In this case, the employees are directed to use formal tone while communicating with their respective team leaders, managers, associates and relevant members of the management, to maintain the organisational decorum. Additionally, informal tone can be used while delivering minor or minute details or daily updates to their respective colleagues (Doo & Choi, 2021).
• Oral and Written: Any information from the top management or the authoritative management to the employees or the subordinates, can be communicated both in the verbal and written form, whichever is applicable based on the situation. The same stands for the employees as well. In case of formal communication like queries, requests, leaves, and so on a proper written communication must be presented and in terms of daily communication, oral can be used, wherever applicable (Akarika, Iwok & Ikon, 2021).
• Direct Communication: The General Manager encourages direct communication in case of emergencies, urgencies or escalated situations. In such case, there can be relevant channels for directly approaching any top member of the organisation for the betterment of the organisation (Doo & Choi, 2021).

To ensure effective workplace communication and consultation, the following strategies will be adopted-

1. Systemic overview and monitoring.
2. Established channels of communication.
3. Equal dispersal of information.
4. Relevant modes of communication.
5. Use case scenarios.
6. Backups and risk proposals (Mayfield & Mayfield, 2017).

There will also be provision for effective employee feedback acknowledgement to improve the functioning and working of the organisation. The Managers, Team Leaders and relevant top-level executives will need to acknowledge every feedback that the employees suggest forward and have a healthy communication based on the necessities and future prospects of the organisation with the employees on the relevant feedback. The acknowledgement has to be in written format for future proofs (?liwi?ska, 2019).

Effective Workplace Communication

The miscellaneous provisions to the proposed policy are-

• Time Management.
• Timely Communication.
• Information filtration.
• Information Flow.
• Ideas and suggestions.
• Inter-personal and intra-personal communication.

To address the relevant grievances erupting within the organisation.

This policy covers every form of internal disputes and discontentment that may erupt with the organisational framework of The Lollipop Shop.

Grievances, in terms of the organisational framework refer to any form of discontentment, dissatisfaction, disapproval, and every form of negative impression and feedback that arises within the organisation and may severely affect the organisational operation (MacKillop, 2018).

In case of grievances, the managers are responsible to subdue and effectively resolve such situations. As a result, the General Manager must enumerate appropriate procedures and protocols for the managers to effectively handle such situation in the Lollipop Shop, and provide relevant and satisfactory resolution to the employees for the organisational betterment. There should be proper channels and procedures to handle such situations efficiently and swiftly (Kirk, 2018).

It is the responsibility of the employees to be mindful about any situation that might arise or erupt within the organisation. In such cases, the employees are advised to inform their respective Superiors on a priority basis and update on the relevant situations. The employees can try themselves to subdue such situations, but it is best advised to let the Managers and relevant party to act on such situations, including the Human Resource Managers (Settuba, 2018).

Any sort of discontentment requires professional and methodical handling. Some of the dispute handling methods as proposed by the General Manger are proposed below.

• Information Gathering.
• Understanding the problem.
• Analysing the Situation.
• Implementing necessary Interventions.
• Talking to the aggrieved parties.
• Finding commonalities.
• Ground for Settlement.
• Necessary Actions.
• Dispute Resolution (Kirk, 2018).

The additional policy parameters in dispute handling are listed below by the General Manger.

1. Situational Resolution.
2. Informing the higher authority.
3. Dos and don’ts of Dispute handling.
4. Sub-policies to handle such situations.
5. Grievance Handbook.
6. Deciding further course of action.

From: 

To: <CEO, managers and top-level executives of the organisation>

Bcc:

Subject: Workplace Communication and Grievance Policies and Procedures.

Greetings everyone,

We are pleased to announce the most recent updates and reforms to the 2022 Workplace Communication and Grievance Policy and Procedures, as on 8^th January, 2022, for betterment and development of the organisation and its people, keeping in mind the organisational objectives and goals. These policies will highlight the various communication guidelines and the grievance redressal proposals that will be adopted by The Lollipop Shop for the year of 2022.

Please find the respective policies enclosed below and reach out to the Human Resource Department for queries and feedbacks.

Regards,

The General Manager

The Lollipop Shop

The purpose of this policy will be to enumerate the Code of Conduct Policy for the employees of the Lollipop Shop by the General Manager.

This policy extends throughout the organisations and is applicable to each and every employee of the organisation.

The employees are required to follow the following responsibilities in direct relationship to the policy.

1. The employees must make provisions to meet their respective targets and perform their expected functions.
2. There should be absolute transparency in the work and the results produced.
3. The employees must take responsibility and accountability for their performance and functions.
4. The employees must maintain their personal decorum and ethical standards to instil an appropriate workplace environment.
5. The employees must have professional behaviour and communication in the workplace.
6. The employees are required to maintain the highest standards of integrity, honesty and relevance.
7. The employees must abide by the rules and regulations of the organisation.
8. The employees must follow appropriate norms and channels for efficiency and productivity (Corrington et al., 2020).

The policy creates provision for the following sub-policies-

• Attendance norms.
• Attire norms.
• Activities within the organisation.
• Expectations of the organisation.
• Feedbacks and updates by the employees.
• Employee goals and objectives.
• Employee development and upliftment.
• Behaviour and culture.

The purpose of this policy is to provide an appropriate diversity and inclusion policy for the employees.

This policy will extend throughout the workspace in the Lollipop Shop.

Diversity in workspace denotes the array of individuals from different caste, creed, colour sex, race, religion, ideologies, principles, personalities, sexual orientation and so on work together in harmony and peace to satisfy the ultimate organisational objective. Inclusion on the other hand, denotes the ability of the organisation to include and promote healthy workplace environment among its diverse workforce without biasness and judgements (Combs, Milosevic & Bilimoria, 2019).

Provision for Employee Feedback Acknowledgement

The Lollipop Shop encourages the incorporation of mutual professional harmony and acceptance of varied employees within the organisation to build an inclusive and diverse community of people within the organisation and propel the Company forward towards excellence, driven by a holistic and healthy workplace environment (Bourke & Espedido, 2019).

The expectations of the organisation in terms of diversity and inclusion are-

• Common understanding of team goals and organisational values.
• Having an inclusive mindset.
• Consulting the employees for important decisions.
• Effective and efficient implementation of workspace harmony.
• Diversity in recruitment.
• Awareness of interpersonal skills, cultural sensitivity and emotional intelligence.
• Incorporating trust.
• Eliminating culture of conflict (Combs, Milosevic & Bilimoria, 2019).

All the recommendations, changes and implementations will be constantly monitored and checked by the top management and necessary recommendations, provisions and changes will be directly facilitated by the General Manager in discussion with the CEO. Breach of any policy will lead to severe consequences for the employees (Jonsen et al., 2021).

The above policy also presents the provision for the following sub-policies-

• Laws and legislations.
• Protection of Human Rights.
• Protection of Workplace Rights.
• Social Norms.
• Efforts and responsibilities.

From: 

To: <CEO, managers and top-level executives of the organisation>

Bcc:

Subject: Code of Conduct and Diversity and Inclusion Policy

Greetings everyone,

We are pleased to announce the most recent updates and reforms to the 2022 Code of Conduct and Diversity and Inclusion Policy for the upliftment and betterment of the organisation and its people, keeping in mind the organisational objectives and goals. These policies will highlight the various code of conduct expectations and the diversity and inclusion proposals that will be adopted by The Lollipop Shop to create an ethical, feasible, diverse, inclusive, healthy and progressive work environment.

Please find the policies enclosed below and in case of any queries and feedbacks, reach out to the Human Resource Department.

Regards,

The General Manager

The Lollipop Shop

The table below lists the networking activity that the Sales Managers and the Sales Assistants have undertaken respectively, both externally and internally. The table elucidates the outcomes of the activities and the findings for the same (Salamai et al., 2019).

Team	Internal/External Activity	Description of Activity	Identified Outcome for the Team	Identified Outcome for the Organisation
Store Managers	External	Staff Grievance Handling Training Program.	Enables effective handling and management of store assistants, by improving managers skills and abilities, further improving their level of authority and effective team management and monitoring (Wang et al., 2017).	Skilled managers are essential to reduce staff turnover, and improve the performance of the representatives, by constant monitoring and mentoring. The organisation benefits in the long run in the form of revenue, sales, efficiency, credibility, status, brand value and overall Organisational gravity in the market viz. the popularity of The Lollipop Store in Australia (Wang et al., 2017).
Store Managers	Internal	Staff Efficiency and Management Training Program.	Enables the Managers to find the most appropriate methods to improve the efficiency and work capacity of its assistants, to increase the sales and achieve their respective targets (Peng, Wang & Xie, 2016).	This facilitates the organisation to build competent managers and allows the organisation to build future leaders within the organisation and contribute effectively to the organisation (Peng, Wang & Xie, 2016).
Sales Assistant	External	Customer Handling and Customer Experience Training Program.	Enables the assistants to better handle the customers, assist them in their purchases and allows them to improve their interaction and sales and negotiation skills (Wang et al., 2017).	This allows the business to prosper in terms of sales and revenue, by equipping the assistants with the latest skill sets and relevant knowledge base, to multiply the profits and the sale for the Company (Wang et al., 2017).
Sales Assistant	Internal	Targets Achieving and Improving Organisational Turnover Program.	Enables the assistants to better understand the organisational expectations, as well as provide relevant knowledge, skills and tips to enhance their skills and contribute effectively to the organisational objectives, by the fulfilment of their individual objective (Peng, Wang & Xie, 2016).	By effective and elaborate understanding of the intricacies of the respective expectations, the organisation can create and effectively groom future managers and capable leaders to lead the organisation and effectively move up the ladder (Peng, Wang & Xie, 2016).

The below table illustrates the professional network plan as proposed by the General Manager at The Lollipop Store.

Professional Networking Plan
Name and Student ID:		Date:
Professional area:
Networking activity	Description	Frequency	Potential benefits
Retail Leaders Forum	Networking event (external)	Annual	Attend sessions by Australia’s retail leaders. Network with other retailers.
1.      Sales Team	Sales Meet 2022	Event	This event provides excellent opportunity for the sales team to socialise and network with the sales department of other organisations and learn from them (Caskurlu et al., 2021).
Finance Team	Financial Summit 2022	Event	This event provides excellent opportunity for the finance team to learn and understand the ins and outs of the financial world from top leaders and experts and incorporate the same in their work (Constantinov & Mocanu, 2021).
Human Resource Department	HR Summit 2022	Event	This even provides excellent opportunity for the Human Resource Department to learn from the top industry experts the tips to recruit effectively (Orser, 2020).

The chart below enumerates the steps for Managers to identify and resolve workplace conflict.

Steps	Actions
1.      Identifying the Conflict	The most basic step is to identify the area of conflict.
2.      Understanding the Conflict.	The next step is to understand the elements and gather the relevant information about the conflict.
3.      Intervention	The third step is to intervene and address the conflict.
4.      Addressing the Conflict.	The penultimate step is to address the conflict and talk to the aggrieved parties.
5.      Resolution.	The final step is the successful resolution of the conflict.

Alice Smith, the newly appointed Store Manager for The Lollipop Shop is being challenged and questioned by a long-term employee of 10 years, Tom Jones. He is severely affecting the team performance and making the team uncomfortable and is being increasingly nosy.

• Alice should establish her authority in order to gain the competitive edge over Tom.
• Alice must develop strong authoritative and leadership skills in order to effectively handle the situation.
• Alice should encourage her team to work to the best of their capabilities and to ignore Tom.
• She should provide clear understanding that if Tom’s behaviour continues, he is eligible to be fired from the organisation.
• Alice must talk to Tom to understand the issues he is facing and get a clear line of idea about the situation.
• Alice must seek training for the development of required skills to handle such situations better in the future and grow in her Store Manager position.

The proposed action plan to handle the situation is listed below.

Action	Timeframe	Person Responsible	Action Details	Resources
Training	1 week	Alice Smith	Necessary training provision to handle difficult situations better.	Trainer
Counselling	1 day	Tom Jones	To understand his behaviour in respond to the current events.	HR Department and the Managers.
Monitoring	1 week	Alice Smith	To help her monitor the situation better and keep it under control.	HR and the General Manager

The above report for The Lollipop Shop additionally recommends the following ways to lead and manage an effective workplace relationship in the organisation, driven by networks, principles, strategies and values and the people, towards a better organisational framework, from the perspective of the General Manager. The following recommendations are meant to provide suggestions to the General Manager of The Lollipop Shop towards effective organisational framework and management (Stipic & Ruzic, 2021). These are –

• Defining a Healthy Relationship: The first and foremost prerequisite of an efficient and appropriate workspace relationship is to ensure that there are sufficient networks and frameworks for the employees to develop healthy relationships among the working colleagues. This is vital to establish working harmony, in order to eliminate conflict and multi-directional objectives. As the General Manager of the Lollipop Shop, it is highly instrumental to build an organisational framework based on mutual respect, inclusion and harmony, as well as the provision for trust and open communication. It becomes extremely important for the employees to be able to communicate among themselves as well as approach their respective operating managers, to create healthy flow of information and knowledge throughout the organisation, creating an open and transparent communication network. As the General Manager, it is vital to identify, curate and implement the most suitable network and framework for optimal value (Murphy et al., 2018).
• Positivity: Positivism plays a crucial role in building healthy workplace environments. As the General Manager of The Lollipop Shop, it is crucial for the Manager to regularly motivate and encourage its employees, to maximise their performance and efficiency, and incorporate the sense of purpose and ownership. In a positive and encouraging environment, the organisation can improve its efficiency by an additional 50%. The General Manager can additionally, introduce perks or rewards to motivate and reward hard work as well (Meng & Berger, 2018).
• Difficult Situations: As the General Manager, it is important to resolve internal conflicts and issues that may arise in the workplace. As a result, finding the best solutions to benefit and favour the organisation, and keeping the long-term organisational objectives in mind, necessary strategic decisions need to be taken in order to restore peace and harmony in the workplace. (Bozer & Jones, 2018).

Conclusion

The above paper concludes the report in regards to the organisational framework of The Lollipop Shop and the various business strategic components of the organisation. From the above report it can be established that the establishment of appropriate and relevant workplace frameworks and networks is highly crucial in order to take the company forward, in terms of growth, revenue, diversity and longevity. For the success and continued operation of any organisation, it is important to have harmony and symmetry in the workforce and their potential, to align itself with the organisational goals and objectives. The case is same for The Lollipop Shop as well. Without effective workforce and relevant frameworks and networks in place, there will be inefficiency and inadequacy in terms of operation of the organisation, with subsequent degradation in quality and customer experience. Hence, as the General Manager of the Company, it is important to effectively manage and handle information and ideas in the workplace, to find the most suitable ones and incorporate them within the operational framework for the organisational as well as the employee benefits. Also, the establishment of reliable trust and confidence networks is crucial to divert the singular workforce towards the collective organisational objective, by managing, developing and incorporating relevant networks and suitable relationships. The most crucial part of the General Manager’s profile is to have necessary checkpoints and tools to handle organisational issues like, conflict, challenges, inefficiency, disruption and so on. It becomes crucial to avert such situations, and in case any such situations surfaces, to effectively provide resolutions. The Lollipop Shop carry high potential to achieve their objective to be one of Australia’s most popular candies and lollies Shop, with offerings for everyone including people with special dietary needs, and diverse offerings like vegan, gluten free, and so on. The key determinant in the Lollipop Shop is the role of the General Manager in harnessing the overall potential and capacity of the employees, including the store managers as well as the sales representatives, to drive business and revenue to the organisation and factory level workers to maintain the quality, diversity and efficiency of the products. Hence, the paper successfully highlights the importance and gravity of effective workplace relationships by the General Manager.

Miscellaneous Provisions to the Proposed Policy

References

Akarika, D. C., Iwok, U. A., & Ikon, A. O. (2021). Organisational Communication Climate and Employees’ Job Commitment in Ibom Air. Global Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, 9(8), 23-32.

Austin, N. (2018). Strategic planning. In The clinical directorate (pp. 77-100). CRC Press.

Betz, F. (2018). Strategic Business Models: Idealism and Realism in Strategy. Emerald Group Publishing.

Board, Y. J. (2018). Strategic Plan 2018-2021. London: Youth Justice Board.

Bourke, J., & Espedido, A. (2019). Why inclusive leaders are good for organizations, and how to become one. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 1(1), 2-5.

Bozer, G., & Jones, R. J. (2018). Understanding the factors that determine workplace coaching effectiveness: A systematic literature review. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 27(3), 342-361.

Caskurlu, S., Yadav, A., Dunbar, K., & Santo, R. (2021). Professional development as a bridge between teacher competencies and computational thinking integration. In Computational Thinking in Education (pp. 136-150). Routledge.

Combs, G. M., Milosevic, I., & Bilimoria, D. (2019). Introduction to the special topic forum: Critical discourse: Envisioning the place and future of diversity and inclusion in organizations. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 26(3), 277-286.

Constantinov, C., & Mocanu, M. L. (2021). A comprehensive review of professional network impact on education and career. Challenges and Applications of Data Analytics in Social Perspectives, 1-26.

Corrington, A., Hebl, M., Stewart, D., Madera, J., Ng, L., & Williams, J. (2020). Diversity and inclusion of understudied populations: A call to practitioners and researchers. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 72(4), 303.

Doo, E. Y., & Choi, S. (2021). Effects of horizontal violence among nurses on patient safety: Mediation of organisational communication satisfaction and moderated mediation of organisational silence. Journal of Nursing Management, 29(3), 526-534.

Jonsen, K., Point, S., Kelan, E. K., & Grieble, A. (2021). Diversity and inclusion branding: a five-country comparison of corporate websites. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 32(3), 616-649.

Kaczmarek-?liwi?ska, M. (2019). Organisational communication in the age of artificial intelligence development. opportunities and threats. Social Communication. Online Journal, (2 (20)), 62-68.

Kang, M., & Sung, M. (2017). How symmetrical employee communication leads to employee engagement and positive employee communication behaviours: The mediation of employee-organization relationships. Journal of Communication Management.

Kirk, E. (2018). The (re) organisation of conflict at work: Mobilisation, counter-mobilisation and the displacement of grievance expressions. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 39(4), 639-660.

MacKillop, E. (2018). Leadership in organisational change: A post-structuralist research agenda. Organization, 25(2), 205-222.

Mayfield, J., & Mayfield, M. (2017). Motivating language theory: Effective leader talk in the workplace. Springer.

Meng, J., & Berger, B. K. (2018). Maximizing the potential of millennial communication professionals in the workplace: A talent management approach in the field of strategic communication. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 12(5), 507-525.

Murphy, K., Torres, E., Ingram, W., & Hutchinson, J. (2018). A review of high performance work practices (HPWPs) literature and recommendations for future research in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.

Orser, L. (2020). How to recruit and retain volunteers for your professional organization: Communication, respect, and appreciation are key. American Nurse Journal, 15(10), 44-47.

Peng, S., Wang, G., & Xie, D. (2016). Social influence analysis in social networking big data: Opportunities and challenges. IEEE network, 31(1), 11-17.

Salamai, A., Hussain, O. K., Saberi, M., Chang, E., & Hussain, F. K. (2019). Highlighting the importance of considering the impacts of both external and internal risk factors on operational parameters to improve Supply Chain Risk Management. IEEE Access, 7, 49297-49315.

Settuba, R. (2018). Assessment of the impact of grievance management on employees performance in public sector organisations in Uganda: A case of Posta Uganda.

Stipic, V. V., & Ruzic, V. (2021). STRATEGIC PLANNING AS A PROFITABILITY FACTOR IN SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES. Economic and Social Development: Book of Proceedings, 11-20.

Wang, M., Cui, Y., Wang, X., Xiao, S., & Jiang, J. (2017). Machine learning for networking: Workflow, advances and opportunities. Ieee Network, 32(2), 92-99.