The Research Plan of the Company Telstra Sample for Students

Question: Discuss about Research Plan. Answer: Background of the company: Telstra is considered as one of the best telecommunication companies in Australia. The company provides information and communication services to the people at large extent. If the data has been considered, the company serves the customers with 9.6 million fixed line services and 9.3 million mobile services (Telstra., 2017). Amongst them 3.3 million services are 3G services. The company not only provides basic services to the Australian businesses and homes but also provides service of local distance and international calf from and to Australia. The internet services of the company are provided with the brand name of BigPond. The company is not only in the business of telecom but also caters the customers with the services of television cable and subscription of FOXTEL. Telstra has some of the competitive advantages over other companies in Australia. The biggest advantage of the company is its wealth and size. This suggest that its s very tough for the competitors to compete with Telstra by covering the Australia with such a large wireless communication coverage. The corporate responsibilities of the company are to provide the good jobs and the wages to the employees so that they can retain in the organization. In spite of being such a good company, there are several cases where it has been found that the staff members of the company especially the sakes staff has been bullied by their seniors due to work targets. Many former Telstra employees have provided the information regarding the cases of bullying of staff at the workplace. Research background: This research is conducted in order to determine various aspects of staff bullying at the workplace. This topic is selected for research because there are many issues related to the topic. Some of the companies do not consider staff bullying as an issue at all and some take action on such issues (O'Leary, 2013). Therefore, it is required to research about the actual situation regarding the topic. Telstra is selected as the company to carry out this research because many cases have been heard about this company by its ex-employees. This research provides a scope of exploring the ideas related to the topic with the help of studying companys structure. Review of literature: Workplace bullying is the topic that has been discussed by many researchers. This is because it is the topic that does not provide a quantitative structural data of the event but it can only be asses by observing the workplace (Silverman, 2013). Workplace bullying is of different types. Individual bullying is one of the types of workplace bullying that can be defied as the mistreatment or the misconduct with the employees repeatedly with the practices such as humiliation, sabotage of performance etc. by the workplace bullying and trauma institute. Bullying is very much different from aggression. This is because aggression can be shown by single act of the person but bullying is the repeated act against the target (Marshall Rossman, 2014). This is an on-going process to create the feeling of frustration among the target. It does not use any physical tool to harm the person but it affect the mind of the target badly that creates the feeling of frustration and irritation. There are man y examples of bullying such as Invalid criticism of the person Blame with invalid proofs Treated the target different from other employees Social isolation of the target Monitoring the target every time Humiliation Insulting in fro of others Making jokes of the persons performance of physical appearance All the above stated activities can be done out of the workplace but when these activities take place at the workplace then it is termed as workplace bullying (Creswell, 2013). Mobbing is one of the types of bullying those results in group bullying. In this type of bullying, a person spread any of the rumors about the target person and involve them to participate in the bullying activity to bully that target and this results in resignation of the that person from the workplace as it creates mental pressure on the target and affect the performance as well (Baxter Jack, 2008). people bully others Bullying behavior of the people has great range. In corporate world, there are many reasons that generate bullying. Some of the causes such as competitive environment of the workplace, social inferiority or superiority, power of hierarchy etc. (Maxwell, 2012). it is human nature that if the competition exist at the place then people either try to get ahead of someone or either try to pull the performer back. This habit and nature of people allow them to bully others. Sometimes bullying happens from both the sides and these results in dirty politics at the workplace. Bullying does not mean instigating others or being tough but it is about the difference in the behavior of abusive misconduct and disrespect towards someone. Three types of bully personalities have been identified. The first one is conqueror (Noor, 2008). This person bullies others on the ground of the power. These people try to control others and try to bully the person they want to rule on. Another type of personality i s performer who tries to bully others on the ground of performance level. These people have low self-esteem and they are not sure of their performance and thus, try to pull back others performance. The last one is the manipulators. Manipulators are the people who are selfish in nature. They try to take credit for others work also. Bully cannot be termed as clash of personalities; it is the act that is on the basis of illogical reasons in order to win over the competition most of the times (Hoel, Sheehan, Cooper Einarsen, 2011). According to the researchers, bullying is the act that usually conducted by the people who are coward in nature and have insecurity of losing something. Damage to the target person: Bullying someone results in serious issue of mental and emotional issues for the target person. The damage or the problems include harm to self-esteem of the person. This creates anxiety, depression, headache, insomnia, decrease in performance level etc. The act of bullying at the workplace not only affects the target person but also affect the company in negative way (Beale Hoel, 2011). The management of the company needs to waste their time resolving the issues reacted to bullying at the workplace. It may also affect the image of the company has sites like glass-door allow the ex-employees or the current employees to write the reviews about the company and bad reviews for the company affect its future position. Management mistakes: Management often does not take the issues of bullying seriously (Namie Namie, 2009).This is because it seems childish to them to resolve the small issues of the employees. Management sometimes blame the target party in case of bullying and ask them to ignore the other person majorly in the case of the person who I bullying the target is at the higher authority position (Saunders, Huynh Goodman-Delahunty, 2007). There are no such policies and laws against bullying at the workplace and thus this topic remained untouched by law. Research problem: Research problem can be defined as the issues that are present in the research topic.it are very important to define the problem because it acts as the base for allover research. The research problem that needs to be discussed this research plan is about the issues of bullying at the workplace (Bartlett Bartlett, 2011). It has been identified that many employees at famous companies such as Telstra are facing the issues of staff bullying by others. In Telstra the sales team is facing this issue by their seniors. Research objective or questions: The research objectives are different from research problems. Research objectives can be defined as the aim of the research (Needham, 2017). The research objectives or questions that are framed at the initial stage of the research needs to be answered after the research gets over. Following questions need to be answered regarding this research: Are Telstra employees facing staff bullying? What type of bullying they are facing? Results of bullying at the workplace? Does management interfere in bullying issue? Research design: Research design can be defined as the outline of how the research or the investigation needs to be done. It helps the researcher to map out the activities that needs to be conducted in series. It involves the type of research and the methods that are used to support this research. In this research type is exploratory in nature (Glassdoor. 2017). Exploratory research is done in order to solve the problem that is not clearly researched till now. Exploratory research allows the researcher to explore different facts about the research by different studies. In this research, the researcher will explore the readings done by him and tries to find out the intensity of issues presence in the organization. The organization that has been selected for conducting the research is Telstra (Einarsen, Hoel, Zapf Cooper, 2010). Type of research: There are majorly two types of research, qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative research is done in order to analyze the data and statistics related to the research problem. The quantity research is done when the numbers are involved and the result of these types of research is accurate and evidenced. On the other hand qualitative research is about the intensity of the presence of the problem (Caponecchia Wyatt, 2011). Numbers and data are not studied in these types of research because the quality cannot be measured. Quality can only be observed and assumed by the events occurred related to the issues. In this research, the qualitative analysis is done because the researcher needs to analyze the facts about the presence of staff bullying at the workplace. The company that has been selected to conduct the research is Telstra because many cases about this companys staff bullying has been heard in the news. Types of data: In this research, two types of data have been analyzed: Primary data: The primary data can be defined as the data that has been extracted freshly from the sources. It is the original data and has not been used anywhere else. Primary data is considered as the most relevant data. In this research plan, the primary data is extracted from the sources such as employees of Telstra, management of Telstra Glas, Matthiesen, Nielsen Einarsen, 2007). Secondary data: Secondary data is the data extracted from the sources such as reports, articles etc. The secondary data that has been used by the researcher is from the reviews of employees about the company and the termination reason of the people from the records of the company. Data collection methods: Data collection methods can be defined as the techniques that are used to collect the data. The technique or the method is purely dependent on the sources and the type of data that needs to be collected. The data collection methods that have been used in the research are: In depth interviews: Interviews is the method that has been used to collect the data from the primary sources. Employees of the company as well as the people from the management have been interviewed in order to extract the information about the actual situation of the company related to staff bullying. The questions that should be asked in the interview with the employees should be such that it makes the employee confortable. The interview should be conducted at center away from the company. This is because if the employees have to face the interviews at the same location where they works then they may not provide the genuine and true information and ay get influenced by their seniors or colleagues. To interviews need to be conducted in order to extract the information and also to reduce this issue at the workplace. The first interview should be in terms of fetching the case related information from the employee and second interview should be conducted in order to ask them the solut ion of these issues according to them. This helps to know about the employees views regarding the issue (ABC News., 2017). Interview guide (appendix) Analysis of records: The records of the company need to be analyzed in order to find out the reason behind the termination of the employment of the ex-employees. This also helps in determining the intensity of presence of the issue. Analysis of glass-door reviews: It is also a secondary data source that determines the views of the people regarding staff bullying at the company. Sampling: Sample is the quantity of people selected out of the whole population of the target. Sampling can be done by different methods such as random sampling, probability sampling, systematic sampling etc. In this research plan, the method that will be used for selection of sample would be systematic sampling in which employees from every department and every level is selected from the company to fill the questionnaire (Field, 2010). To select the employees, the list of all the employees needs to be made according to the department. After that, 2 members of every department need to be selected. First member should be the team lead of the department and other one is from the executive level. The executive level employees selected by checking the records of the person. The one will be selected is the one who is regular to the office not performing up to the mark. From the management, the manager of every department is being interviewed. Sample size: The sample size for the above research is 50 employees from the company. Justification of methods used: In the above research plan, qualitative research method is used to conduct the research because the intensity of presence of the workplace issue cannot be measured and needs to be observed by the experiences. Interviews has been used as the medium for acquiring primary data is because it is the most reliable source and the employees can speak up without hesitation in the interview. Face to face interview allows the interviewee to share their views regarding the subject and the question asked in the interview are open ended that allow the interviewers to generate questions from the answers of the interviewee. Data analysis: As discussed earlier that data is being analyzed by interviewing the employees as well as the management people. Other records of the company has also been analyzed such as the employee turnover reports to determine the reasons behind the exiting of the employees. Data can be validated by making records of the interviews. These records need to be analyzed. The answers of the individual employees have been matched and the conclusion has been made out of it. Unstructured data analysis is used to analyze the data. It is also require matching the answers of the employees with that of the management so as to determine the actual intensity of involvement of management in issue resolution at the workplace. Ethical implication: Guarding privacy of respondents: The answers that have been given by the employees need to be kept private for the sake of employees. The data recorded should not be shared with anybody from the organization. No personal questions: At the time interviewing the employees, it is required by the interviewers that no personal questions should be asked from the employees that make them feel uncomfortable. It is not an ethical practice to conduct. No misrepresentation: The data that has been collected should be presented ethically. That means, there should be no modification in the actual data and should be represented as it is. Conclusion: The research plan is made in order to determine the issue of staff bullying at the workplace. Although, Telstra is considered as one of the best telecommunication companies in Australia but there are many cases of staff bullying that have been spread about the company by its ex-employees. The research needs to be conducted on this topic that requires analyzing some of the primary data from the employees and some of the secondary data from the records and online sources. The research is exploratory in nature as it explores various aspects of the problem. References: ABC News. (2017).Telstra bullying employees, former staffer says. Retrieved 12 April 2017, from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-06-18/telstra-bullying-employees-former-staffer-says/71366 Bartlett, J. E., Bartlett, M. E. (2011). Workplace bullying: An integrative literature review.Advances in Developing Human Resources,13(1), 69-84. Baxter, P., Jack, S. (2008). Qualitative case study methodology: Study design and implementation for novice researchers.The qualitative report,13(4), 544-559. Beale, D., Hoel, H. (2011). Workplace bullying and the employment relationship: exploring questions of prevention, control and context.Work, employment and society,25(1), 5-18. Caponecchia, C., Wyatt, A. (2011).Preventing workplace bullying. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, London. Creswell, J. W. (2013).Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Einarsen, S., Hoel, H., Zapf, D., Cooper, C. L. (Eds.). (2010).Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research, and practice. Crc Press. Field, E. M. (2010). What is workplace bullying?.Bully Blocking at Work: A Self-Help Guide for Employees and Managers, 5. Glas, L., Matthiesen, S. B., Nielsen, M. B., Einarsen, S. (2007). Do targets of workplace bullying portray a general victim personality profile?.Scandinavian journal of psychology,48(4), 313-319. Glassdoor. (2017). Telstra - Bullying at Telstra is supported.. 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(2013).The essential guide to doing your research project. Sage. Salin, D., Hoel, H. (2011). Organisational causes of workplace bullying.Bullying and harassment in the workplace: Developments in theory, research, and practice,2, 227-243. Saunders, P., Huynh, A., Goodman-Delahunty, J. (2007). Defining workplace bullying behaviour professional lay definitions of workplace bullying.International journal of law and psychiatry,30(4), 340-354. Silverman, D. (2013).Doing qualitative research: A practical handbook. SAGE Publications Limited. Telstra. (2017). Telstra - About us, investors, media, community environment and our company Retrieved 12 April 2017, from https://www.telstra.com.au/aboutus