Lecture 4 - Employment And Industrial Relations Flashcards
What are the possible impacts when Employee and Management Relations turn bad?
- Strikes and disputes
- Loss of pay for employees
- Loss of profits for employers
- Workers looking for new jobs
- High levels of absenteeism and staff turnover
- Decreased productivity
- Communication breaks down
- Unsettled workplace
- Unfair treatment
- Business reputation may plummet if employees come out about bad treatment
- Less output
- No job satisfaction
Employment and industrial relations
- Employee relations is the term used to describe the relationship between employers and employees.
- This includes the individual as well as collective workplace relationships.
- Industrial relations may be defined as the relations and interactions in the industry particularly between the labour and management, for the betterment of not only the management and the workers but also of the industry and the economy as a whole.
- Good industrial relations helps managers to establish trust-based relationships with employees leading to better productivity.
Conditions That Lead to Good Industrial Relations
- Employee engagement
- Employee satisfaction
- Employee productivity
- Employee Communication
- Employee retention
- Employee empowerment
- Employee engagement
- According to research about employee engagement, 90% of leaders understand how important employee engagement is. However, only 50% of them know how to address this issue.
- To achieve employee engagement employee communication needs to improve.
- Consistent feedback and recognition is important. Encourage discussion and sharing of thoughts
- Employee satisfaction
-is often related to employee satisfaction. Less engaged employees are less satisfied. Poor employee relations can be one of the main causes for that.
- A study done with companies in the US found that employees said that communications by their employer impact job satisfaction
- 45% of them said that their employer does not do a good job communicating with employees
- Employee productivity
- Employee satisfaction and engagement boost employee productivity with an average 3-year revenue growth that is 2.3 times greater than companies with less engaged teams.
- If employees know exactly what their goals are and have given them constant feedback on their work, they will work harder towards achieving their goals
- Employee Communication
- Set clear goals and expectations.
- Ask clarifying questions.
- Schedule regular one-on-one meetings.
- Praise in public, criticise in private.
- Assume positive intent.
- Repeat important messages.
- Raise your words, not your voice
- Hold townhall’s and cross-functional check-ins
- Employee retention
- High employee turnover is one of the biggest problems companies face today. The cost of an employee leaving is significant. Therefore, many employees try to avoid that expense
- Employee retention can be improved in many ways. Employee relationship management is one of them.
- Employees who feel like they don’t know what is going on in the company feel frustrated and isolated. As a result, they feel insecure and often consider new job opportunities.
- Employee empowerment
- In order to empower employees, companies need to have good employee relations and communications strategies.
- For employees to feel empowered, they need to understand clearly what the company’s mission and vision .
- Trust is crucial for successful employee empowerment.
- Managers who trust their employees and communicate the company’s strategy and goals regularly, often have no problems giving more power to their employee
Conditions That Lead to Bad Industrial Relations
Economic Causes
- Poor wages and poor working conditions are the main reasons for unhealthy relations among management and labour.
Organisational Causes
- Faulty communication system, dilution of supervision and command, non-recognition of trade unions, unfair practices.
Social Causes
- Uninteresting nature of work is the main social cause. Factory system and specialisation have made worker a subordinate to the machine. Worker has lost sense of pride and satisfaction in the job Dissatisfaction with job and personal life culminates into Industrial conflicts.
Psychological Causes
- Lack of job security, poor organisational culture, non- recognition of merit and performance, authoritative culture.
Political Causes
- In the absence of strong and responsible trade unions, collective bargaining becomes ineffective. The union’s status is reduced to a mere strike committee.
Poor Organisational
- Human Resource Management.
What is HR and HRM
In simplest terms, the HR (Human Resources) department is a group who is responsible for managing the employee life cycle (i.e., recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and firing employees) and administering employee benefits.
The basic duties of HR
Recruit candidates
Process payroll
Conduct disciplinary actions
Maintain employee records
Organise training and CPD
Recruit candidates
understand the organisation’s needs and make sure those needs are met when recruiting for new positions. It’s not as simple as just throwing an ad up on Indeed:
Hire the right employees -
Human resources is in charge of arranging interviews, coordinating hiring efforts, and onboarding new employees. They’re also in charge of making sure all paperwork involved with hiring someone is filled out and making sure that everything from the first day to each subsequent day is navigated successfully.
Process payroll
Payroll is its own beast. Every payday must have taxes calculated and hours collected. Expenses need to be reimbursed and raises and bonuses need to be added in as well.
Conduct disciplinary actions
This responsibility may be why HR tends to get a bad rap. When navigated inappropriately, disciplinary actions can lead to the loss of a valuable employee and can even result in litigation or a poor reputation.
Maintain employee records
Maintaining HR records is mandated by law. These records help employers identify skill gaps to help with the hiring process and to analyse demographic data and comply with regulations. They also contain personal details and emergency contacts for each employee.
Organise training and CPD
To make sure current staff maintain their productivity and competitive edge HR organist training for staff on new technologies and new business processes. This prevents the need and the cost to find replacement staff.
They also organise and coordinate Continuous Professional Development (CPD) This saves the company the expense and risk of finding new senior staff and helps with the morale of current employees as they see career opportunities within the organisation.
As mentioned, the HR cycle is an excellent description of the HR duty and responsibility process.
The employee life cycle model (ELC) isan organisational method used to visualise how an employee engages with the company they are a part of.
There are six / seven stages involved in this model:
Attraction, Recruitment, Onboarding, Development, Retention, and Separation
It describes the roles HR play within the working life-span of the employee from pulling together job descriptions through recruitment, deployment, management, development and exit.
If all managed well, the HRM process is being undertaken correctly and there is a higher likelihood that the company’s strategic aims are met.
Attraction
No matter how great company is and it products and services companies who do not attract and retain great employees will fail over time, every time. This is why attracting the right people is critical to any company’s growth strategy.
Recruitment
The main recruitment stage is the active phase of searching for great talent to join the company. Then interview, reference check and appoint the right candidate
Onboarding
The onboarding process means much more than training a new hireabout the company and the information & tools needed to start working. It’s the opportunity for the employee to immerse in the company’s culture and it’s crucial to ensure retention. It is estimated that about 50 percent of all hires failwithin 18 months on the job.
Development
Employees want instant approval these days. They want to know that they are doing a great job, are willing to improve, and also want to prove that they can “be the best” at their role. Career development strategies are good when keeping top talent engaged. Employees should have a clear and supported CDP plan.
Retention
The 5th stage is the retention stage and it is a vital step in the employee lifecycle model. According to the research high staff turnover can cost a company 33% of an employee’s total compensation.
There should be open communication between employees and employers. The first and most important thing is to retain talented employees is fairly simple: listen carefully to understand what is going on and how to help – have good working relations.
Offboarding
The life cycle does come to an end, at some point or another. Employees leave due to retirement, leaving for school, new
employment, orsabbatical leave. It’s important that the offboarding process is just as strategic and smooth as the onboarding process
Seperation
All of this brings us to the final and often the most neglected phase in a way never- ending stage of the employee life cycle: the happy leavers, they may come back some day or promote your company in their future roles.
So it’s important an employees leave happy.
What is HRM
The basic purpose and aim of a business strategy is to make the business or organisation more successful year in and year out.
The strategic importance of the human factor is often overshadowed by a focus on sales, marketing, production, operations. But it’s the people who work for the company that are crucial for meeting the strategic objectives.
It’s people who will dictate where the company will be in a year, five years, ten years, and beyond. People are the greatest asset of an organisation and a business needs to take care of its people to help the business grow and prosper.
Therefore a good HRM system in place is vital to that strategic success.
HRM is an essential part of long term strategic planning. Without the right people, with the right skills in the right place at the right time who know what they are the their colleagues are aiming to do the strategic aims and objectives of a business will more than likely fail.
An efficiently functional HRM aids the workforce of an organisation to contribute efficiently and effectively towards the overall achievement of an organisation’s goals.
HRM & Strategy
For HRM to contribute effectively to the strategic aims of a business the CRM needs to focus on:
Planning:The planning function of HRM ensures the best fit between employees and jobs while avoiding manpower shortages or surpluses for the organisation.
Organising:Organising is the function of HRM that involves developing an organisational structure to ensure the accomplishment of the organisational goals.
Directing:This includes activating employees at different levels and making them contribute maximum towards organisational goal. Tapping maximum potentialities of an employee via constant motivation and command is a prime focus for this function of HRM.
Controlling:Post planning, organising and directing, performance of an employee is to be evaluated, verified and compared with organisational goals. If performance is found to be deviating from the plan, control measures are to be taken.
- HRM bridges the gap between the employees and the management of an organisation.
- An effective HRM allows organisations to tackle human resource issues strategically.
- HRM play a critical role in managing employees, to help their organisation to attain a competitive advantage in their market.
