Employment Relations: Assessing a workplace

This task requires you to analyse the employment issues raised in Naturally Baking Limited’s workplace and identify effective solutions. This prepares you for the assessment. The information you need is in the introduction, three video scenarios, mobile phone, office filing cabinet, and web quest in the workplace analysis section of the course, and the address book in the ‘Who’s in the Mix?’ section.

You will work within your forum groups to research all of these resources, answer the task questions, and then collate and present your comprehensive findings.

You need to organise your forum group. You can nominate yourself for positions or suggest other group members. Your forum group needs to:

• split into two groups – the ‘employer group’ and the ‘employee group’
• choose a facilitator to direct discussions in the two sub-groups
• decide how the members of your group will work together to research the task questions and deliver feedback
• choose a reporter to collate and write up the findings of both groups

In researching the information, you need to address these questions:

1. There are a variety of different employment relationships at Naturally Baking. Give examples of the range of these relationships. For example, Dave’s job is an example of a permanent position.
2. Several people in the scenarios raise potential or current employment issues. Summarise these issues from your group’s perspective as employer or employee. For example, the employers may think that the business expansion means staff will be required to work overtime.
3. Identify the legislation regarding employment rights and responsibilities that relates to the identified issues. Explain the intent and relevance of this legislation. For example, the Human Rights Act protects the right of people to be treated fairly and without prejudice. It makes it illegal to discriminate against anyone on the basis of their gender. Men applying for the part-time administration position need to be treated the same as the women.
4. Decide how best to resolve the issues. What might you bargain for in an employment agreement to address the issues? For example, employers may want to add an overtime clause, and employees may want the clause to include extra payment for overtime.

Present the integrated findings of the two sub-groups. Follow the instructions of your tutor for the format and layout of the task.