Employee Relations

What is employee relations in an organization?

Employee Relations is a set of organizational functions and practices that deals with issues related to people as staffing, compensation and benefits, performance management, organization development, health and safety, communication, and administration.

According to Michael (2005) defined that Employee Relations is to manage relationship between employer and employees with ultimate objectivity of achieving optimum level of productivity in terms of goods and services, employee motivation taking preventive measures to resolve problems that affect adversely the working environment.

Competition forced Employee Relations to perform a strategic role as a business partner instead of adopting ER practices only to take disciplinary actions and advocating employees. Employee Relation handlers, basically human resource department (HRD) exercise their expertise to provide guidelines to the line managers how to improve performance and behavior of the employees. HRD provides assistance to the Business Managers in resolving employee grievances, disputes and legal matters. This is one of the basic responsibility of Human Resource Department to provide information to internal customers about rules, regulations, policies, goals and targets of the organizations to communicate vision and mission of the Management.

Employee relations is one of the key aspect of human resource management in an organization. Below topics will be covered in this article with regards to employee relation.

• Unitarism and Pluralism
• Employee & Employee expectations
• Trade Unionism & Collective bargaining
• Employee engagement
• Employee Voice
• Upward Problem-Solving

What is Unitarism?
Unitarism is a perspective that emphasizes the shared interest of all employees of the organization. In other words, it believes that management and workforce are all working for the welfare of the company. Unitarism perceives the entire organization as one big family where everyone shares common goals and purposes. Conflicting objectives are seen as abnormal in this perspective. Moreover, this stance has a paternalistic approach and expects the loyalty of the employees.

What is Pluralism?
Pluralism is the belief that the way to achieve good industrial relations is to acknowledge that various groups of employees have different requirements, and make different demands. Thus, management has to reach compromises. This belief also acknowledges conflicts and consider them as desirable. Pluralism does not believe in the power exercised by the management. It recommends the power to be nicely dispersed rather than concentrated in the hands of a few individuals. Pluralism also gives ample opportunity for employees to voice out their opinions. Moreover, pluralism is not paternalistic in its approach; hence, it does not expect the loyalty of the employees.

Employer expectations VS Employee expectations

         The employees and the employer held strong expectations of each other and it was expectation of meeting these expectations that energized the two parties to continue in the relationship.

                    

Trade Unions & Collective Bargaining
              A “trade union” is defined as being “any association or combination of workmen or employers, whether temporary or permanent, formed with the objective of (a) the regulation of relations between workmen and employers, or between workmen and workmen or between employers and employers; or (b) the imposing of restrictive conditions on the conduct of any trade or business; or (c) the representation of either workmen or employers in trade disputes; or (d) the promotion or organization or financing of strikes or lock-outs. A trade union is required to register under this statute to qualify for the privileges and immunities available under the Act and can do so with an initial membership of seven workers. While employees may exercise the freedom of association by joining any organization, in order to interact with employers on issues related to employment such an association must be registered as a trade union.

             A collective agreement is described in the Industrial Dispute (ID) Act as being an agreement between employer and workmen or trade union relating to the terms and conditions of employment of any workmen, or to the privileges, rights and duties of the employer, workmen or trade union, or the manner of settlement of any dispute.8 Significantly, Collective bargaining can take place without the presence of a trade union, which means that other forms of employee participation mechanisms could also use this provision to bargain with the employer.
         The parties may submit a collective agreement to the Commissioner of Labor who shall cause the agreement to be published in the Government Gazette, provided that the Commissioner is satisfied that the terms of such agreement are no less favorable than those applicable to other workers in the same industry in that district. A collective agreement when published becomes enforceable and is binding on the parties unless it is repudiated as provided in the ID Act.

Employee engagement
             While there remains some disagreement among scholars and practitioners about how best to define and measure work engagement (see Bakker et al., 2011), engagement is most often defined within the academic domain as  a positive, fulfilling, work‐related state of mind that is characterized by vigour, dedication, and absorption” (Schaufeli et al., 2002, p. 74). More broadly, Kahn (1990, 2010) described engagement as the harnessing of people’s selves to their work, such that they fully invest their physical, cognitive, and emotional resources in their work roles. In essence, work engagement is manifested as energy, involvement and a focused striving towards the achievement of organizational goals (Macey and Schneider, 2008; Schaufeli et al., 2002).

Employee Voice
               The management of nonunion business must recognize the importance, even the necessity, of maximizing “Employee Voice”. By doing so, management can give more than lip service to its oft-voiced claim that “people are our most important asset”. Employee voice contains two elements. First is the expression by employees to management of their complaints in a work-related context, especially when such complaints are serious enough to warrant the filling of formal grievances. The second, which id of more recent origin, involves the participation of employees in the decision making process of business organizations - often referred to as “participative management”.

Upward Problem-Solving
                According to Marchington and Wilkinson (2005) participation can be differentiated into direct communication, upward problem-solving, or representative participation. The first two of these are essentially direct and individually-focused, often operating through face-to-face interactions between supervisors/first line managers and their staff. Some take the form of informal 2 oral or verbal participation, whilst others are more formalized in the form of written information or suggestions. The third form centers on the role that employee or trade union representatives play in discussions between managers and the workforce, via mechanisms such as joint consultation, worker directors or collective bargaining. Importantly, these arrangements raise major issues to do with the distribution of power and influence within organizations, and the legislative framework of the country in which the employing organization is located. These forms of participation also raise questions about how the financial benefits are allocated, who makes decisions about their distribution, and how the financial and economic context impact on those decisions. 

How employee relation will impact on employee attrition in hospitality industry
           The hospitality industry represents one of the most dynamic and thriving industries all over the world. Some countries have retained a large tourism industry that supports activities that have shaped the country’s economy. As explained at the beginning of this article, employee relations are a set of organizational functions and practices that deals with issues related to people as staffing, compensation and benefits, performance management, organization development, health and safety, communication, and administration. Employee Relations Practices Impact positively on Performance of Employees working in Hospitality Industry. ER department enriches organization from Job Identification to Exit Interviews. ER practices impart a significant role to enhance performance of organizations indirectly. Performance of employee depends upon job satisfaction, compensation and benefits structure, reward plans, promotions, motivation, environment, training and succession planning. When an organization has a strategic employee relations management, employees will be motivated and turnover will be reduced. Eventually experienced employees retain in the organization.

References

Albrecht, S L., Bakker, A B., Gruman, J A., Macey, W H. & Saks, A M. (2015) Employee engagement, human resource management practices and competitive advantage. DRO Deakin University Research Repository, p. 5 [Online]. Available at https://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30071114/albrecht-employeeengagement-post-2015.pdf . Accessed on 24^th May 2021.

Aron. (2011) Difference between unitarism and pluralism. Differences Between.Com [Online]. Available at https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-unitarism-and-vs-pluralism/ . Accessed on 24^th May 2021.

Chaudhry, M. S. (2013) Impact of employee relation on employee performance. Impact of Employee Relation on Employee Performance in Hospitality Industry of Pakistan, pp. 60-72 [Online]. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297177178_Impact_of_Employee_Relation_on_Employee_Performance_in_Hospitality_Industry_of_Pakistan . Accessed on 24^th May 2021.

Douglas, M M. & Lewin, D. (1992) California management review. The Hass School of Business University of California [Online]. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270024125_Employee_Voice_A_Human_Resource_Management_Perspective . Accessed on 24^th May 2021.

Ranaraja, S. (2013) Emerging trends in employee participation in Sri Lanka. International Labor Organization 2013 [Online]. Available at https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_dialogue/---dialogue/documents/publication/wcms_206005.pdf . Accessed on 24^th May 2021.