BUS201 Skills For Workplace Success In Phillips Financial Services Homework 3 Answer

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Question :

Assessment 3 Information 

Subject Code:BUS201
Subject Name:Skills for Workplace Success
Assessment Title:PART A – Group In-Class Activity PART B – Individual Report
Assessment Type:In-Class Activity and Individual Report
Word Count:1200Words(+/-10%)
 
 
 
Weighting:
PART A – In-Class Group Activity- 10% PART B – Individual Report (Submitted via Turnitin) – 20%
Total:30% weighting
(3 weeks in-class group assessment. From weeks 10-12, 5 marks
for week 10 and 2.5 marks each for weeks 11 and 12 per team member). The participation mark entails active participation to receive marks not just attendance for the allocated days
Total Marks:30

Your Task

There are two core components to this activity: to develop a draft report framework (plan) as a group in- class activity and then using that framework (plan) create an individual report.

 Assessment Description

Nick Phillips has requested that your Human Resources Consulting Firm (3-4 people) to submit a proposal to assist his company.

 Case Study 

A medium-size financial services consulting firm, Phillips Financial Services, has been experiencing some workplace culture issues. The founder / CEO, Nick Phillips, has just doubled his staff to 50 over the past six months despite the company only starting 18 months ago. The company is growing perhaps too rapidly and staff are stressed, morale is low, and there bullying is evident (older vs younger; male vs female; etc.). He has a very multicultural staff representing a variety of cultures and religions. Although most of the staff are Australian born, other countries represented are India, the UK, Brazil, USA, New Zealand, China and South Africa. The staff comprises of 65% men and 35% women. The age range is between 23 and 68 years of age; the Founder/CEO is 42. Other key things to know about the company:

· This is Nick’s first company. There is no Board of Directors; Nick is the sole owner/shareholder and he makes all the decisions.

· The services they offer are (1) Accounting & Tax, (2) Business Advisory, and (3) Self-Management Super Funds.

· Nick aspires his company to be similar to EFS Strategic, PWC, Deloitte, and KPMG in the next few years but knows he needs to create the right culture to see his vision come to fruition.

· He has two other key people on his team: Marketing Manager, Chief Financial Officer. Beyond that there has not been any formalized organizational structure.

Nick personally promotes diversity, yet he is finding some of his staff are not as open-minded. He has five disabled staff members and many cultural mixes within his organizational teams.

 Assessment Instructions

(i) Report Format Layout Guidelines

 · Introduction

A brief analysis of the company

A brief analysis of the industry and some of the challenges it may have (e.g. competition, deadlines e.g., tax, finding staff, etc.) that can affect its overall performance

What the proposal will address

· Organisational Structure

What kind of structure do you propose Nick should think about as his company grows?

· Workplace Culture

What you perceive as the current culture of the company

The importance of the leader’s ‘leadership style’ and its influence on workplace culture

Strategies to implement to create and sustain a positive and ethical workplace culture

 · Workplace Bullying Prevention Program

The causes of workplace bullying

Strategies to implement a workplace bullying

Show More

Answer :

1. Introduction

1.1 Brief analysis of the company 

Phillips Financial Services, a consultancy firm, is owned by Nick Phillips, the CEO and Founder of the company (Assignmenttutoronline, 2018). The company, which is one of the SMEs, provides services of business advisory, accounting and tax, and self-management super funds. The rapid growth of the company is considerably apprehensive. It expanded its business region among the countries such as the USA, Brazil, China, India, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa (Assignmenttutoronline, 2018). The company is devoid of a board of directors, and Nick Phillips handles the entire decision-making process single-handedly. Staff recruitment speed can judge growth. Within six months, the company doubled the staff number, now 50 (Assignmenttutoronline, 2018). Diversity is in the basic structure of the company. Apart from Phillips, there are two formalized members within the organization. They are Chief Financial Officer and Marketing Manager. 

1.2. Challenges within the Financial industry

The high competition within the market makes it difficult to develop and expand the marketplace's financial services business. Yet, the competitive advantage can give considerable gain as high competition brings more effort, which leads to success. The financial industry faces the most common challenge of tax. Tax and accounting issues often lead to huge losses to companies. For international and national transactions, different tax rates apply to the financial industries. Managing the tax is difficult for most financial organizations. The challenges within Phillips Financial services mainly concern its staff. Phillip is the only owner, and the company does not have any hierarchical structure for work management. It has become challenging for Phillip to manage all the staff from diverse cultures and religions single-handedly. 

Moreover, the organization has low morale, where the issue of bullying is most evident. The company has 65% of mail staff and 35% of women staff (Assignmenttutoronline, 2018). Due to the diversity in work culture, gender discrimination, disrespectful attitude, and misunderstanding issues often take place. One more challenge is to maintain the rapid growth of the company. The company recruits staff in enough number, but the work pressure made them stressed as chaos in the workplace is always inherent. This makes the situation challenging, and it can work adversely upon the company's growth structure. Maintaining diversity in workplace culture is essential for a company's success (Cletus et al. 2018).

1.3. Proposal

Solving workplace culture issues within an organization is crucial. Phillips Financial Services promotes diversity but handling the staff is difficult as they represent diverse cultures and religions. The less open-minded staff are creating issues of bullying and gender discrimination. Lack of Morale is the issue (Assignmenttutoronline, 2018). Also, the company has five disabled staff. Managing the cultural mixes within the organization by fostering an appropriate organizational structure is the aim of this proposal. 

2. Organizational Structure 

The company is growing rapidly, but as per the company's growth, the culture with the company is not growing. As Nick Philips is the only Leader within the organization, it has become most difficult to manage diversity. Proper organizational structure gives a direction to the workforce, which develops an organization brimming with innovation and growth (Dedahanov, Rhee & Yoon 2017). The two members, the Marketing Manager and Chief Financial Officer, can help the owner develop an effective workforce structure. The company needs to implement an organizational structure to promote diversity in workforce management. It will help the company to manage the existing challenges with the organizational culture. For that, the hierarchical organizational structure can be effective. This structure shows a chain of command from the owner to the staff. It divides the workforce with a hierarchical structure from the sole manager and the executives to the employees. The workflow in the subordinate structure helps to manage the workplace culture and diversity. The hierarchical structure helps in managing organizational behaviour (Smarzhevskiy & Solovev 2020). The company's owner can be on the top of the hierarchical structure. The Chief Financial Officer can work under him, and the Marketing Manager can be under Financial Officer. The employees can be at the bottom of the structure, managed through the hierarchical chain.The Hierarchical structure of Workforce

Figure 1: The Hierarchical structure of Workforce

Source: (Created by the Author)

3. Workplace Culture

3.1. The current culture of the company

The current workplace culture within Phillips Financial Services is very negative, and the maintenance of an optimistic atmosphere within the company is very poor. Unproductive financial performance creates a huge consequence for everybody associated with the company. In a progressively competitive international marketplace, companies not accomplishing their skills are at great risk of gradually losing their existence from the industry (Salin 2021). Therefore, in the Phillips Financial service company, the negative and discouraging atmosphere leads the company towards unproductive outcomes. The company employees have also disengaged workers as they have developed a dearth of faith (Balducci, Conway & van Heugten 2021). Once this performance of the employees tends to fall, the urge to be associated with the company also falls, taking place in Phillis company as the employees are facing harassments and criticisms. A pessimistic atmosphere in the workplace of Phillips Financial Services company is leading to the adverse mental health of employees. For a fact, the harassment and criticisms that the employees face at work have a harmful outcome on their emotional and physical welfare.

3.2. Importance of the leaders' leadership style' and its influence on workplace

While determining the goals for Phillips Financial Services organization, the founder / CEO, Nick Phillips, failed to ensure that the company's employees know and understand what is anticipated by the company from them. Therefore, the leaders and their leadership style that they adopt need to be very strategic to help them overcome the company's glitches because of low employee morale (Balducci, Conway & van Heugten 2021). Hence, for the founder / CEO, Nick Phillips, the leadership style that he could have used for influencing the efficiency since it impacts the morale of the employee. At the time of disruptive times, when Phillips Financial Services company was experiencing a transformation in decision-making administration or any transformation is calculated method to show the response towards the demands of the market, Nick’s leadership style could have helped in ensuring that his employees practice the required alterations to sustain and expand the procedures. Using an appropriate leadership style, Nick would have been able to cater to the requirements of his employees also the present condition. Active leaders interact vividly and regularly to ensure that the workers know the planned strategy and can also initiate and take necessary action. Efficient leadership style impacts worker’s capability to understand the message.

3.3. Strategies to implement to create and sustain a positive and ethical workplace culture

Remain a role model also be noticeableNick Phillips, the CEO of the company, should understand that his workers look up to the approaches and attitudes of the highest administration to ensure that no injustice harassments would be occurring within the office culture. 

Communicate ethical outlooks: Ethical uncertainties can be condensed by generating and distributing an administrative code of ethics. It must state the company’s exceptional values and the ethical guidelines that workforces are predicted to adhere to, as this could have helped Nick upkeep positivity within the workplace.

Create strong ethos and standards for the company: It is very significant to create a group of strong organizational fundamental values that will be communicated efficiently also discussing with the workforces to make them feel an essential part of it (Agarwal 2018)

Adopt teamwork and communication: Nick should have understood that management and leadership style highly inspires collaboration. Open and authentic communication is crucial for generating an optimistic feeling within the workplace.

4. Workplace Bullying Prevention Program 

4.1. The causes of workplace bullying

Bullying in an office environment is repetitive an unreasoning behaviour practised towards any employee or team of employees that threaten their health and safety. A repetitive approach denotes the determined nature of bullying's planned behaviour and can include a variety of other behaviours with time, such as sexual harassments (GOV 2021). Bullying and harassment are approaches that force an individual to feel daunted or insulted. Harassment is completely illegal under the Equality Act of 2010 (GOV 2017). Therefore, the employees of Phillips Financial Services Company must take the necessary steps towards the company as harassment is not granted.

4.2. Strategies to implement a workplace bullying program

  1. Companies must operationalize the Program and commence their respective prevention policies according to the Strategies. 
  2. Integrate the ACTPS morals into activity scheduling and response series for all employees. Agreeing on a procedure for group associates to offer reaction (Accesscanberra 2019).
  3. Including a group for structuring the meetings at preparation days or group conferences.
  4. Guaranteeing sustenance for an ethnically all-encompassing workplace. The Government’s style towards mistreatment, legal requirements, and the supremacies of office environment need to handle harassment and the moralities that underpin the furthermost operative anti-bullying policies in companies (Cmd 2010).