Workplace Conflicts

Module 7: Discussion Forum

As
we have discussed throughout this module and course, conflicts are inevitable
in the workplace. How you, as an HR professional, handle these conflicts can
greatly impact the outcome at the individual, team, and organizational levels.
Consider this following scenario.
A
Unit Secretary at a hospital, who has limited patient contact, refuses to enter
a patient floor. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, this Unit Secretary asserts that
she should be issued proper personal protective equipment (PPE)–specifically a
N-95 respirator–to prevent contracting COVID-19.
The
Health and Safety Representative for the hospital has completed a risk
assessment and determined that only nurses and medical providers need N-95
respirators. Unfortunately, the N-95 respirator supply is running low. This
information about PPE supplies was shared with the Unit Secretary.
The
Unit Secretary offers to complete her work in another area, which is free from
patients. She is adamant that she will not enter the patient floor without an
N-95 respirator because her safety cannot be guaranteed.
After
much discussion, the Unit Secretary’s supervisor has contacted you. The
supervisor requests your assistance with writing up the employee due to her
refusing to complete her work. The supervisor is noticeably angry and proceeds
to complain about how the Unit Secretary is a “privileged Millennial” who does
not want to work.
Review the Workers’ Right to Refuse Dangerous Work (Links to an external site.) information.
For
this discussion, answer the following:
1.
What is the root cause
of this conflict?
2.
What are the legal
implications of this conflict?
3.
What are the ethical
implications of this conflict?
4.
What are the diversity
implications of this conflict?
5. How would you proceed with resolving this
conflict? Why?
Reference:
United States Department of Labor. (n.d.). Workers’ right to refuse dangerous work. https://www.osha.gov/right-to-refuse.html (Links to an external site.)
Submission Requirements:
Your initial posting is due by midnight Mountain Standard Time
(MST) on Thursday and two peer responses to your classmates are required before
midnight on Sunday. Within your initial post, support your responses with
information from at least one peer-reviewed/scholarly source (not older than
3-5 years) from the CSU Global Library (Links to an external site.) or the
internet, and provide the full citation at the end of your post. Please use
APA-style in-text citations and references to support your posts, according to
the CSU Global Writing Center (Links to an external
site.). Your total word count must be at least 300 words
excluding the original questions. Late discussion responses will not receive
credit.

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