Reflective Report on Workplace Issues Using Gibbs Model

Introduction

The purpose of this report is to reflect on two organizational issues, examining their causes and potential solutions in retrospect. This exercise is designed to uncover the underlying reasons behind each issue and to explore how they relate to both personal and managerial effectiveness, so that a career development plan can be constructed on the basis of these reflections.

This is a for-action reflective report that first outlines personal effectiveness and then managerial effectiveness, using the Gibbs (1988) model of reflection as its analytical foundation. The model moves through the stages of description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action planning, and is applied consistently to each of the two issues examined.

The first issue concerns employees who are unable to write effective reports for their supervisors. Key information is frequently missing from these reports, and the format does not enable straightforward decision-making. This creates a duplication of effort, as supervisors must return to the source of the issue themselves and factor in missing or inadequately represented information.

The First Issue: Report Writing

The second issue concerns employees who are unable to adapt to newly installed software systems and who have expressed frustration with the demands the new technology places on them.

Personal reflections on the first issue — employees not knowing how to report in the required format — begin with the context. A supervisor was overheard shouting at a subordinate, claiming she did not know how to write a report and that her inadequate work was consuming his limited time and energy. This exchange took place during office hours and was publicly overheard by others in the department.

Personal Effectiveness — Report Writing

The shouting was not an isolated incident. The supervisor had long been complaining about report-writing problems, and the issue had previously caused losses in the organization. The focus of this reflection, however, is on the report-writing process itself, and it will be evaluated against the intended outcome: an improved, fit-for-purpose report.

At the time the incident was occurring, my thoughts shifted back and forth between the two parties — the supervisor and then the subordinate — as I tried to determine where responsibility lay. I wondered whether it was the supervisor's fault for failing to encourage the subordinate to pursue relevant training, or the subordinate's fault for carrying too heavy a workload to either complete her work properly or to seek out training herself.

I later considered whether the HR department was also at fault for not screening adequately for the required skills at the point of hire, and for failing to arrange training even after a gap had been identified. My emotional response ranged from perturbed to unsettled, and finally to a degree of calm when I resolved to speak to the HR manager and request that a report-writing course be arranged for those who needed it. I was troubled that such an exchange had been witnessed across the entire department and that the subordinate had been publicly humiliated, with a clear impact on her morale.

By the end of the incident, matters had not been resolved amicably. The subordinate, having taken serious offence at the public nature of the criticism, announced she would resign with immediate effect and would only serve out the remainder of her contractual notice period. The supervisor responded that he did not object to her resignation. The actual work — the report itself — was left unresolved and discarded.

Several factors contributed to this outcome. The subordinate lacked the skills and training necessary to produce the required standard of report, which had led to the supervisor's mounting frustration. The recurrence of the problem — unresolved from the first time it arose — compounded tensions. Additionally, no one intervened during the confrontation, as the organization's culture imposed punitive consequences on any employee found at the scene of a conflict, regardless of whether they had caused it. This discouraged any third-party mediation.

The incident escalated because both parties had reached the limit of their patience: the subordinate had not improved, and the supervisor had not addressed the root cause. Had the issue been dealt with the first time the skills gap came to light, the supervisor should have nominated the subordinate for relevant training. Instead, he assigned her more reports, assuming that practice alone would correct the problem — without recognizing that she did not know what she was doing wrong in the first place.

Had I been in the supervisor's position, I would have asked her to walk me through her reasoning for specific choices in the report, listened to her perspective, enquired about her background in report writing, and then promptly nominated her for a training course. If a formal course had not been immediately available, I would have recommended suitable reading and provided a model report for her to study and emulate.

The negative outcome could have been avoided had the issue been addressed constructively the first time. Even if it had recurred, the confrontation itself could still have been prevented if the supervisor had anticipated the problem and managed his response. There was also a window of opportunity during the exchange — a moment when the subordinate was listening rather than retaliating — at which point the supervisor could have lowered his tone, remained assertive but calm, and clearly explained what was required. That opportunity was wasted.

In terms of future action, report-writing training should be made available to all employees who have not practised this skill formally. To increase the likelihood of a positive outcome — a consistently well-prepared report — I would work with HR to ensure that all new entrants without prior report-writing experience receive appropriate preparation. To minimize the likelihood of a recurrence of the negative behaviour, I would also ensure that public humiliation of any employee is treated as a disciplinary offence.

Managerial effectiveness concerns whether management successfully addressed the issues when they arose. In this case, managers could have intervened far more constructively and taken a proactive role in the skills development of their people. My own reaction, when considering managerial effectiveness, was one of frustration at the passivity of the management team and their failure to prevent the problem or address it once it had emerged. Compounding this was the absence of any standardized report-writing structure or clearly communicated expectations — report writing had never been formalized across the organization.

The ultimate consequence was that both the supervisor and the subordinate began avoiding one another rather than collaborating, the subordinate's resignation was accepted rather than challenged, and no substantive training initiative was launched. The issue was therefore not satisfactorily resolved (Picket, 1998).

An alternative course of action would have been for managers to intervene at the moment of conflict, assure both parties that training would be provided, alleviate insecurities among the wider workforce, and work toward an amicable resolution. A further option would have been to bring both parties into a mediated conversation — a form of arbitration — to align their individual objectives with the organization's goals. If a similar event occurs in the future, the appropriate response would be to separate the parties while tensions remain high, engage both in a structured dialogue once emotions have cooled, and re-establish organizational objectives as the shared point of reference.