Task 1: Discuss the employers’ obligations and liabilities in respect to Alex’s ability to perform her job. You should make reference to health and safety legislation.
Task 2: As the School Business Manager (SBM – responsible for premises management, plays a role in recruitment and manages the non-teaching staff) for the school you have to deal with the immediate issue of Alex and also how best to avoid future issues.
Identify and evaluate HRM best practice strategies for managing alcohol and stress in the school. You should make reference to both formal and informal ways that employers might use to deal with this issue?
The employees of an organization are considered as the most important asset of any organization. Human resource management is that domain of management studies which considers the strategies and policies that are utilized and implemented by an organization to for the popper management of the prime resource of the organization, that is , for the management of their employees. The various operational tasks performed by the Human Resource management official of an organization include the operational activities of recruiting employees, making them go through various developmental procedures, provide various training facilities to them, provide motivation to the employees so that they are able to perform their tasks with efficiency, and to take disciplinary actions against employees if they are found to be not adhering to the laws and regulations implemented by the organization.
In this paper, a particular case study has been discussed in order to shed some light on the duties of the human resource management officials towards the employees of an organization. The case study emphasizes on the current situation of Alexanda Johnson, who is a cook at a reputed primary school. Alex, as she is known to her friends, had always been a responsible and ideal employee of the school. However, very recently the school authorities have noticed that she had been coming to the workplace in a drunken condition. Since the authorities are not able to prove that she had been consuming alcohol at the workplace, they are unable to take any legal action against her. Te situation is such that they are unwilling to sack Alexanda, as not only she has been an important asset to the school but also because the constitution of this particular school has no as such rules and regulations against such activities. Such being the situation, the obligations of the school authorities with respect to the cook’s inability to perform her duties have been discussed in this paper, besides providing certain recommendations on how to avoid such conditions in the future.
Alexanda Johnson had been recruited as a cook in a reputed primary school. She had been working at the school for almost a year and had always been described as an employee with great potential by the school authorities. However, the very same school authorities have noticed that off late she had been coming to the school after her scheduled office hours and had smelling of alcohol. However, there was no single evidence on her that could indicate that she had been drinking on drinking while on the job (Krausert, 2013).
Now, the policies and strategies incorporated by the human resource management of the organization do not include any specific rules or regulations that can be put to use in such conditions. On the other hand, two other cooks who had been appointed by the school had been on long leaves due to varied illnesses. Such being the condition, the management of the school is unable to let go of Alexanda: not only because she had once been a very efficient employee at the school, but also because the management realises the fact that working at the kitchen for long hours must have been immensely stressful to her, let alone doing all the work all by herself that actually should have been done by three people. Once a highly valued team member, and now she is facing a stressful working environment. The school does play a crucial role here. The authorities of the school are morally obligated to both their employees and the students, and by no means they can let Alexanda’s irresponsible attitude toward work affect the health of these pupils. On the other hand, they are also not in position to terminate Alex from her job (Pilbeam and Corbridge, 2010).
The Health and Safety at work act 1974, states that the employer has the following responsibilities towards the employee (Hse, 2015):
1. It is the duty or responsibility of each and every employer to make sure, needless to say that within reasonable boundaries, that the health, the safety and the welfare of the employees are maintained within the premises of the workplaces.
2. Without any biasness to the general duties of an employee, the employer should ,make sure that –
a. The plant and/ or the system using which the employees function at the workplace should be maintained properly and additional safety precautions should be provided to the employees such that the entire working procedure is safe and does not pose any risk or hazards to the health of the people
b. Making arrangements for the safe functioning of the operations and amenities used by the employees of the organization for the purpose of using or handling various substances, storing them and transporting them from one place to another.
c. Providing such training, information and / or developmental facilities to the employees such that the employees themselves become aware of their own safety and health at the work place.
d. Maintaining the environment at which the employees operate in such a way that the environment itself does not pose any risk or hazard to health and/ or safety of the workers. The access to the workplace and the entry and the exit to the workplace should also be maintained properly.
e. Proper facilities and/ or arrangements should be maintained at the workplace or the working environment in order to make sure that conditions under which the employees are made to work do not pose any hazard, threat or risk to the health and safety of the workers.
3. It is the duty of the employer to provide a written statement regarding the safety and health regulation policies that have been implemented at the workplace.
According o the rules and regulations provide by the Health and Safety at work act 1974, the management of the primary school responsible for providing their employees with such a working condition that would ensure that workers are able to perform their duties in a healthy condition. As mentioned in the case study, the kitchen at the primary school requires three cooks, two of whom had been absent from work for long periods of time due to long term illnesses. It was the responsibility of the authorities of the school to look in to the matter and probe further to evaluate the effect of the working condition of the kitchen on the health of the people who work there, as soon as two third of the employee working under those conditions reported of their sickness. As far as the case study indicates, the school authorities were unable to perform their duties.
On the other hand, Alexanda Johnson was subjected to a very stressful working condition as she had to perform the duties of three employees all by herself: which can be a possible reason behind her habit of excessive consumption of alcohol(Inauen, 2014).
The Health and Safety at work act 1974, besides stating the responsibilities of the employer towards the employee, also mentions the penalties applicable in case of non- compliance to the act: the penalties include closing down the work site, financial penalties or fines that might be up to £20,000, along with imprisonment for a period of six months, which might be extended up to two years in certain cases (Rowley and Jackson, 2010). In case Alexanda Johnson decides to file a petition against the management and the authority of the school, and it becomes evident in the court of law that the organization had not been able to comply with all the rules and regulations mentioned in the Health and Safety at work act 1974, the school authority is eligible for the penalties stated in the law(Robertson, 2015).
As Alex is the primary cook who is handling the kitchen of the school all by herself at this point of time, it is essential to deal with her current conditions immediately. The first step that the management can take is to have a detailed discussion about the situation with Alex: such a session might be of great help towards the management of the school to understand the situation from Alex’s end. While she had been portraying a very irresponsible attitude at this point of time, yet she had been an ideal employee of the school for a long period of time, and thus the management should be doing this much to help her (S. Schuler, 2013). It is very likely that Alexanda’s excessive alcohol consumption is actually a result of the stress that she experiences at the workplace: she had been managing the job assigned to three of them, all by herself. In case the meeting indicates that the stressful work condition accountable for her behaviour, the management should immediately appoint cooks, even if temporarily, to assist her at the kitchen In case, the school authorities are unable to find efficient people to manage such important positions, Alex should at least be provided with co workers who would be able to share some of her responsibilities and work under her guidance (Meijerink, Bondarouk and Lepak, 2015).
However, in case it is revealed by the meeting that Alexanda Johnson has been experiencing certain problems in her personal life, the school authority would have very less help to offer, other than providing emotional and moral support to her. They could arrange certain counselling sessions for her with trained professionals so as to provide some professional help. The school can also make special arrangements so as to provide any medical help to her in order to treat her addition towards alcohol (Quick, 2013).
Alcoholic traits are mostly present in those people who are unable to cope up with physical and/ or mental stresses. The profession that Alex is attached to is indeed quite stressful, however the organization should incorporate such human resource management policies and strategies that would helpful in managing such incidents (Chojnacka and Witkowski, 2012).
The authorities of the school can incorporate the policies provided in the following section:
1. Arrange for educational sessions from time to time that would help the employees to gain information about the various mechanisms that can be used to deal with stress in workplace and their personal lives (Pak and Chung, 2013).
2. The organization should provide for counselling sessions with trained professionals and medical help for those people who suffer from various mental health and health conditions due to the stressful work conditions (Mejía and McCarthy, 2010).
3. The school should also look towards the employees are able to maintain a balance between their work life and their personal life (Kaspereen, 2012).
4. The employees should be provided proper training to perform their work responsibilities with efficiency (Thompson, 2011).
5. The school should also incorporate such human resource management policies that would facilitate them to reward their employees from time to time for their responsible attitude towards work: a strategy that could be used to motivate the employees (Homberg and Heine, 2014).
Conclusion:
In this paper, the case study of Alexanda Johnson has been considered and various aspects of the human resource management system have been discussed in the context of this study. The various obligation and duties that an employee has towards his or her employees have been discussed, besides providing various recommendations, using which the school being considered will be able to manage the such conditions in future. The activity of managing the human resources of any organization is no doubt very challenging, besides being a dynamic activity. Such operation activities need to concentrate on the incorporation and implementation of specific policies that would be helpful in the management of the workforce of the organization in an efficient way (Catano et al. 2010). Thus it can be safely said, that the HRM aims to operate in a way such that the workplace environment remains suitable for employees coming from various layers of the society to work together, besides maintaining the rules and regulations implemented by the organizations (Connell and Teo, 2010).
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