Management Assignment: Fair Work Act At Academy Brand

Question

Task:
Select an organization or industry with which you are familiar. Undertake research on the topic, aiming for a balanced range of research from academic journal articles and popular media. When using popular media as a source in an academic assessment task give consideration to the integrity and rigour of the source.

Write a management assignment in which you explore the feasibility of introducing a Four-say working week and six hours shifts in the chosen industry/organization.

Answer

Introduction
The concept of four - day work explored in the management assignment allows a better work-life balance and improved satisfaction level of employees as well as makes a positive impact on mental health. For a healthy work environment, four-day work with shifts of 6 hours duty improves employee engagement. Academy Brand, an Australian clothing organization, introduced a four-day work with six hours shift duty as an experimentation and found that it had a massive impact on the productivity level of the organization. The study, therefore, explores and covers the aspects, challenges and the impact of proposed changes on the management of Academy Brand, by incorporating fair work act, workplace relation philosophies, employee union and conflicts using the experimental changes and proposing the possible recommendations.

Impact of proposed changes in managing employee relations
As cited by Wickwire et al., (2017, p.1157), four-day work with six hours of duty is more effective and more productive as its employees feel happy with the working rules. In Academy Brand, management and employee relations are influenced by effective norms of the business environment. It has been evidenced that the level and quality of productivity has been increased by around 5% by undertaking the superfluous technique. Moreover, a good relationship between employees and management has been built by undertaking the rules within the organization. In the workplace, the stress of employees has decreased with four-day working rules.

A four-day work in a week with six hours of duty leads to happier and more committed employees (Wenger et al., 2017, p.580). It is being observed that employees of Academy Brand are less likely to feel stress and to take sick leave due to the four-day working process. It encourages organizations to become ready for taking up new challenges.

In addressing the negative aspect of four days working with six hours duty, customer satisfaction level has been disrupted in Academy Brand. Due to less working days duty with only six hours of duty, the clothing organization failed to meet the needs of its huge customer base. Hence, it is reported that customers of organizations get dissatisfied with the services. As opined by (Reyes, 2020), four-day work in a week with six hours shift does not match every workplace. There are lots of employees working in the organization who wanted to do more work for earning money. Due to low working hours, some employees failed to explore their level of productivity.

Aspects of Covid-19 triggered disruption
The pandemic covid-19 has a significant impact in determining four days and six hours duty in Academy Brand. Due to the pandemic, most employees felt isolated from each other where the level of productivity of the organization has been disrupted (Reyes, 2020). During the pandemic situation, the level of productivity of the organization has been disrupted. During the pandemic situation, economy scale and earning ways of revenue of organization are disrupted as employees fail to connect with the organization. However, the four-day working along with six hours shift helps to maintain the productivity level of the organization by meeting the needs of target customers in the Australian market.

Fair Work Act
Fair work act 2009
It is a primary piece of legislation of the Austrian government for the workplace. In Academy Brand, employees and employers are outlined by the legislation of fair work act 2009. The purpose of the regulation is to develop a balanced framework for the productivity of the organization (Härmä et al., 2017, p.229). It provides terms and conditions of employment of the organization. It helps the employees of Academy Brand to understand rights and responsibilities to work within the organization.

Workplace relation philosophies
The most common workplace relation philosophies used by Academy Brand are open communication, show recognition, constant feedback and investment in employees (Messenger, 2018.). All those significant factors are useful for organizations to manage workplace rules of four days in a week with six hours shifts in a positive manner.

Impacts on Labour market
As stated by Szeman (2017, p.325) the concept of a four-day work-based week has already become a valid topic in the present day, as the new technology has already introduced many ways to enlarge the productivity rate. However, the actual truth is that new thought has been delivered from people's heads. Based on a report, with many advantages, the employees get an additional free day from work and workers were outstandingly motivated to assemble productivity needs. The motivation encouraged employees to develop improved work-based new habits and also manage to ravage less of actual work time and improve the worker's mood towards work. Workers planned new initiatives and innovations to the job in a much helpful and proficient manner, from mechanized manual procedure to mainly decreasing or reducing non-work-related internet-based usage. With less pressure and a better work-life associated balance, cheerful employees reportedly employ improvement with their accurate work, as well as along with augmented enthusiasm and resourcefulness. In the Academy brand, the work-sharing management can fill up the open work hours with fresh employees, occupy multiple workforces to fill pattern accurate one-person based slots (Lugovskey and Mikhaylov, 2019, p.65).

Earning and standard of living
As stated by Gupta (2018, p.5), earning status and cost management of labour are two separate but balancing concepts. They change in their actual personality based on organisation and most important objectives. Academy Brand refer to earnings as an important part from the employee's accurate viewpoint and stand for a calculation of their basic purchasing influence and an estimation of their measure of living, while the labour cost represents an approximation of worker's expenses toward the service of the actual labour force. The markers balance each other as they reveal the two key facets of the active employment associated income process, one aiming to determine the profits of the workforce, the other performance the labour costs acquired by workers to utilize them. The four days at work concept considered as a disadvantage for the employers is also a costly threat that labour fails to fulfil their work needs. It was mainly evident in Sweden's mostly two-year associated trial that condensed almost 40-hour workweek to almost 30 hours although progressing the five-day arrangement. Based on a study that recorded higher employee contentment, it eventually became too expensive to be upheld (Ashton, 2019, p.85).

Employee union and conflict
Initially, the conflict management may arise after the four days’ work week concept and when the company declines to distinguish a combination as a delegate of its workers; in Australia, disputes are typically determined by a worker election managed by the government organization. More frequent are convention also disputes and actual grievances management. Convention also disputes suggest itself when a combination contract also covers many groups of workers is all about to conclude and parties oppose the provisions of a fresh one. Usually, wages, health-related insurance, other financial issues are at the centre of conflicts, but occasionally other issues highlighted such as work hours, seniority, overtime and sick leaves and others (Perkins, 2019, p.212)

Conclusion
This study is mainly focused on the new concept of four days’ work week with six hours shifts. This study includes the impacts of proposed changes on the management of employee relations and highlights the positive and negative impacts. This study has also focused on the aspects of retraining to covid-19 triggered disruption, Fair work Act, philosophies of workplace relations, labour market, warning and living standard and employee conflict based on the topic. Based on the recommendation, provision part of labour-related code, and new work rules are also implemented according to the new concepts, companies also no longer managed to ask for government authorization to the shift to mainly four- or the five-day working week if the employees support the conformity.

References
Ashton, J.R., 2019. The public health case for the four-day working week. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 112(2), pp.81–82. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0141076819826782.

Gupta, N.K., 2018. Comparison of Acute Toxicities in Head and Neck cancer treated with 5 days vs 6 days a week Radiotherapy. Journal of Medical Science And clinical Research, 6(12). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.18535/jmscr/v6i12.128.

Härmä, M., Koskinen, A., Ropponen, A., Puttonen, S., Karhula, K., Vahtera, J. and Kivimäki, M., 2017. The validity of self-reported exposure to shift work. Occupational and environmental medicine, 74(3), pp.228-230.

Lugovskoy, R.A. & Mikhaylov, E.V., 2019. Socio-Economic Analysis of the Proposal to Switch to a Four-Day Working Week in Russia. Economics and Management, (9), pp.60–66. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.35854/1998-1627-2019-9-60-66.

Messenger, J., 2018. Working time and the future of work. Future of Work Research Series. Geneva: ILO.

Perkins, P., 2019. A more radical four-day working week. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 112(6), pp.212–212. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0141076819839379.

Reyes, L.M., 2020. Multicase Exploration of Teachers’ Perceptions of Experience of Working in a 4-Day Work Week School System Compared to a 5-Day Work Week School System (Doctoral dissertation, Keiser University).

Szeman, I., 2017. It Is A Week And Four Days. The poem, 5(2-3), pp.323–326. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/20519842.2017.1290962.

Wenger, N., Méan, M., Castioni, J., Marques-Vidal, P., Waeber, G. and Garnier, A., 2017. Allocation of internal medicine resident time in a Swiss hospital: a time and motion study of day and evening shifts. Annals of internal medicine, 166(8), pp.579-586.

Wickwire, E.M., Geiger-Brown, J., Scharf, S.M. and Drake, C.L., 2017. Shift work and shift work sleep disorder: clinical and organizational perspectives. Chest, 151(5), pp.1156-1172.