Employee relations policies and approaches

Employee relations policies describe what type of relationships between management and employees are needed and how the pay-work bargain should be managed based on the philosophy of the organization (Armstrong, 2010). Creating and maintaining a positive, productive, corporative and trusting climate of employee relations should be the main objective of employee relation policies (Armstrong, 2010).

The areas that can be covered according to Armstrong (2010) are,

• The employment relationship: the level to which terms and conditions of employment should be administered by using collective agreements or using individual contracts of employment. This can also be described as collectivism vs individualism.
• Trade union recognition: recognition or derecognition of trade unions, which are the preferred trade union or unions to the organization to deal with, and the decision on whether it's desirable to recognize one union for collective bargaining and/or employee representation.
• Collective bargaining: this describes the scope of areas to be covered under collective bargaining if unions are recognized with negotiating rights.
• Managing workplace conflict: explains how disputes are resolved and grievances should be settled.
• Participation and involvement: how much the organization is prepared to give the employee a voice on matters that concern them.
• Partnership: how much a partnership method is believed to be desirable.
• Synchronization of terms and conditions of employment for staff and other manual workers.
• Working arrangements: the level of right which management used to determine the working arrangements without reference to employees or trade unions if they are recognized.

The Unitary view:

Characteristically management holds the unitary view, they also see its purposes as that of directing and controlling the workforce to achieve economic and growth objectives. The main idea is that management finds it as a rule-making authority and they have a habit of seeing the enterprise as a unitary system with one source of authority. “Management’s right to manage” is sometimes how this expressed in arguments and this is basically falling under autocratic and authoritarian views (Armstrong, 2010).

Gennard and Judge (2002), describes that the unitary method understands organizations as harmonious and integrated in such a way that all employees share the organizational goals and work as a member of one team. A focus on mutual partnerships at work characterizes the unitary viewpoint. It rejects the assumption that there is a fundamental antagonism between employers and employees; conflict is largely caused by external agitators, trade unions, whose interference disrupts the harmonious state or otherwise existing relationships (Williams and Adam-Smith, 2010). As indicated by the lack of open conflict behavior, the unitarists are likely to see peace as proof of good employee relations. They are also likely to see the lack of alternative sources of employee loyalty inside the organization as proof of good control/prerogative management relationships, lack of alternative sources of employee loyalty within the company and efficient labor use as indicated by increased productivity and reduced unit costs (Leat, 2007).

The Pluralist View:

As described by Fox (1966), Industrial organization is considered as a plural society that is comprising many distinct but interconnected interests and objectives that must be maintained in some sort of a balance. In this view, management has to accept the presence of rival sources of leadership and attachment, in place of corporate unity, reflected in a single focus of authority and loyalty. This view certainly respects the workforce as being characterized by ‘an opposition that does not seek to govern’ (Armstrong, 2010).

Recognizing that different groups exist within an organization and that conflict can, and does, exist between employer and employees is the pluralist approach described by Gennard and Judge (2002).

From a pluralist viewpoint, the solution was not to resist the intervention of the unions as a way of reaffirming managerial authority, as the owners of unitary views, would argue; instead, better-negotiated ties between employers and unions should be promoted, given the advantages of establishing robust and efficient containment or institutionalization procedures, conflict through shared organizational control. Thus, until the 1980s, the pluralist perspective exerted a significant influence on both public policy and management attitudes towards employment relations, though not at the expense of the fundamental unitary convictions of the latter (Williams and Adam-Smith, 2010). As evidence of good employee relationships, the pluralist is likely to focus on the presence of active processes for conflict resolution. These mechanisms should be common, demonstrating the recognition and the willingness of management to resolve conflicts by shared decision making and compromise. It is also possible that employees with this perspective would point to the presence and recognition of successful trade unions as additional criteria to be fulfilled if workplace relationships are to be deemed good (Leat, 2007).

Below are the four approaches to employee relations according to Armstrong (2014),

1. Adversarial: In this approach, the organization makes the decision about what it really wants to do expect the employees to fit in. Employees can only exercise power by refusing to cooperate with those organization decisions.
2. Traditional: this is rationally a good everyday working relationship but still management makes the proposes. Workforce reacts through its selected elected representatives if there are any. If there are no elected representatives, they just accept the situation or walk.
3. Partnership: Employees get involved by the organization in both the drawing up and execution of policy phases in this method. However, the organization retains the right to manage.
4. Power Sharing: In this method, employees are involved in both everyday and strategic level decision-making processes.

The below chart describes how the organization's component parts are put together in terms of resources, processes people and their skills to form a strategic structure that will definitely provide the overall strategic direction.

Figure 2: Strategic employee relations management: an overview

(Gennard and Judge, 2005)

In Figure 2 above, they illustrate how employee relations strategies are developed – the business strategy drives the HRM strategy which drives employee relations strategies in turn, and the practices and policies that affect employment relationships are extracted from this process. Having reached this level of operational strategy, it is crucial that the various functions pay attention to how they organize themselves, not only to accomplish their goals but also to ensure synergy with the rest of the business (Gennard and Judge, 2005).

References

Armstrong, M. (2010). Armstrong's essential human resource management practice. 1st ed. London: Kogan Page, pp.297,298,299,309.

Armstrong, M. (2014). Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. 13th ed. London: Kogan Page, p.406.

Gennard, J. and Judge, G. (2002). Employee relations. 3rd ed. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, p.208.

Gennard, J. and Judge, G. (2005). Employee relations. 4th ed. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, p.48.

Leat, M. (2007). Exploring employee relations. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, p.23.

Williams, S. and Adam-Smith, D. (2010). Contemporary employment relations. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.12-14.