Human Resource Management - Essay Example

Curran (1990) reported on the Occupational Safety and Health Act. This was the first time that OSHA developed a policy that would "assure as far as possible safe and healthful working conditions for every woman and man in the nation" (p. 1010). The reason this act was created was because of a Supreme Court decision that workers had a right to refuse to follow a direct order from their employer if this order would put them into "imminent danger of lose of life or serious physical injury and not to suffer discriminatory action due to such refusal" (p. 1010). Today, these laws assist people in the workplace especially where there are dangerous chemicals or other dangerous materials.

This was one example of protecting employees and to initiate something like this, the people involved would have to go through Human Resources to file their complaints. Another example of the need for safety is that of conflict in the workplace. There are always employees who do not get along well with each other and there needs to be a policy for conflict resolution. Weitzman and Weitzman (2006) take into consideration that "younger and middle-aged adults" have many "interpersonal challenges at work" (p. 45). They created a training to help in these situations.

There are many different ways that employees can have conflict in the workplace and most have difficulty understanding what to do when they have these conflicts. What needs to happen in these researchers view is that they would need to understand and use interpersonal communication. They suggest that in order to do well with conflict, people must learn how to actively listen to others, change their perspectives in the situation in working with others. The researchers also suggest that when employees learn about conflict and they understand how the workplace works, they are able to better