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Human Resource Management
Session 9
LO3: Employment Relations and Legislations
Employee Relations
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Session Objectives
By the End of the session, you will be able to :
Understand what employee relations mean.
Understand the strategies for building employee
relations
Understand the purposes of employment law
EMPLOYEE RELATIONS DEFINED
Employee relations consist of all those areas of human
resource management that involve relationships with
employees – directly or through collective agreements
when trade unions are recognized.
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| EMPLOYEE RELATIONS STRATEGY |
Employee relations
Industrial relations Employee voice Communications
Recognition
Procedures
Consultation
Participation
Formal
Informal
THE DIMENSIONS OF THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP
| The employment relationship |
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| Parties: • managers • employees • employee representatives |
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| Substance: Individual: • job • reward • career • communications Collective: • trade unions • consultative committees |
Operation: • level • process • style |
| Structure: • formal rules/ procedures • informal • understandings and expectation |
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THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT DEFINED
The psychological contract expresses the
combination of beliefs held by an individual and
their employer about what they expect of one
another. These expectations are reciprocal but they
are unwritten.
OPERATIONAL MODEL OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL
CONTRACT
| Organizational culture HRM policy and practice Experience Expectations Alternatives |
Fairness Trust The delivery of the deal |
Organizational citizenship Organizational commitment Motivation Satisfaction and well-being |
| Causes | Content | Consequence s |
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THE ELEMENTS OF EMPLOYEE RELATIONS
The management of the employment relationship
generally through the organization’s formal and informal
employment practices.
The informal as well as the formal processes that take
place in the shape of continuous interactions between
line managers and individuals and their representatives.
The development, negotiation and application of formal
systems and rules for collective bargaining and handling
disputes.
The creation of an employee relations climate that is
acceptable to all parties and includes the development of
mutual trust, openness and the maintenance of
harmonious relationships.
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EMPLOYEE RELATIONS: RECONCILIATION OF
INTERESTS
| Employees |
| Highest wages and conditions |
| Survival of the enterprise |
| Employers |
| Profit/surplus High-quality service |
| Survival of the enterprise |
| Reconciliation of different interests |
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| Processes | |
| Agreements | Reflect relative bargaining powers |
Different
interests
Common
interest
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EMPLOYEE RELATIONS POLICIES
Trade union recognition – whether unions should be recognized or de-recognized.
Collective bargaining – the areas to be covered and the extent to which it should
be centralized.
Employee relations procedures – the nature and scope of procedures for
redundancy, grievance handling and discipline.
Employee voice – the extent to which the organization is prepared to give
employees a voice on matters that concern them.
Partnership – the extent to which a partnership approach is believed to be
desirable.
The employment relationship – the extent to which terms and conditions of
employment should be governed by collective agreements or based on individual
contacts of employment (ie collectivism versus individualism).
Harmonization of terms – the extent to which the terms and conditions of
employment for staff and manual workers should be harmonized.
Working arrangements – the degree to which management has the prerogative to
determine working arrangements.
COLLECTIVE AGREEMENTS
Procedural agreements set out the respective duties and
responsibilities of managers and unions, the steps through
which they make joint decisions and the procedure to be
followed if they fail to agree. The purpose is to regulate the
behaviour of the parties to the agreements although they are
not legally enforceable.
Substantive agreements set out agreed terms and conditions
of employment.
Partnership agreements involve both parties (management
and trade unions) agreeing to work together to their mutual
advantage and to achieve a climate of more cooperative and
therefore less adversarial industrial relations.
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MANAGING WITH TRADE UNIONS
The general trends are that managements in general (there are
exceptions):
| | learn to live with unions (just as unions learn to live with management) because both parties recognize that neither would benefit from a climate of hostility or confrontation; are content to cooperate with unions but they give industrial |
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| relations | a lower priority; |
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feel it is easier to continue to work with a union because it provides useful, well-established channel for the handling of grievance, discipline and safety issues. |
MANAGING WITHOUT TRADE UNIONS
The third Workshop Industrial Relations survey established that the characteristics of
union-free employee relations were:
| | Employee relations were generally seen by managers as better in the non-union sector than in the union sector. Strikes were almost unheard of. Labour turnover was high but absenteeism was no worse. Pay levels were generally set unilaterally by management. The dispersion of pay was higher, it was more market-related and there was more performance-related pay. There was also a greater incidence of low pay. In general, no alternative forms of employee representation existed as a substitute |
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| for trade union representation. | |
| | Employee relations were generally conducted with a much higher degree of |
| informality | than in the unionized sector. |
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Managers generally felt unconstrained in the way in which they organized work. There was more flexibility in the use of labour. Employees were more likely to be dismissed in non-union firms and the incidence of compulsory redundancy was higher. |
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Strategies to Improve
Employee Relations
| | Involve your team members: They should feel important and indispensable for the organization. Encourage individuals to share their work with each other |
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| | Assign them targets and ask all your team members to contribute equally and achieve the target within the desired time frame. One should try his level best that all the employees must have their lunch together at the same time. Encourage effective communication among the team members. Written modes of communication must be promoted among the employees for better transparency. Morning meeting is another effective way to improve the relation among the employees. Organize birthday, Christmas parties, New Year parties etc. |
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Purposes of Employment Law
Industrial relations – certification of unions, labourmanagement relations, collective bargaining and
unfair labour practices
Workplace health and safety
Employment standards, including general holidays,
annual vacations, working hours, unjust dismissals,
minimum wage, layoff procedures and severance pay
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THE PURPOSE OF EMPLOYMENT
LAW
To deter employers from treating their employees
unfairly or from exploiting them unjustly
To help make work more attractive to people
To promote flexibility in the labour market
| Legislative Framework of Human Resource Management |
| Legislative Framework Guiding the Recruitment and selection: Sex Discrimination Act (1975) Race Relation Act (1976) Equal Pay Act (1970) Disability Discrimination Act (1995) Employment Act 2002 |
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| Legal Environment of Human Resource Management |
| Other Legislation Such as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination Act of 1967, prohibits employment decisions based on biases against qualified individuals with disabilities and the elderly. In general, the purpose of EEO legislation is to ensure that unemployment decisions are based on job-related criteria only. |
DISCRIMINATION LAW
There are four headings under which an
employer’s actions can be challenged in court:
1.direct discrimination
2.indirect discrimination
3.victimization
4.harassment
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DISMISSAL LAW
Former employees who have completed more than two
years service (one year if employed prior to April 2012)
are entitled to seek compensation or re-instatement
when they have been unfairly dismissed.
DISMISSAL LAW
To be lawful it is essential that any dismissal is managed in
accordance with a fair procedure. In a case of poor work
performance this means that an employee must be invited to a
formal meeting, given a formal warning in writing, allowed an
opportunity to appeal, given a reasonable opportunity to improve
and, only then, dismissed following a further formal meeting with
aright to appeal.
Only when an employee is guilty of gross misconduct such as
stealing, fighting or serious insubordination, is an employer
entitled to dismiss summarily without notice. Here too though, a
fair procedure must always be followed, employees being given
every opportunity to defend themselves and to appeal the
dismissal. A further requirement is that employees facing
hearings at which they may be dismissed must always be
allowed to be accompanied by a work colleague and
represented by a trade union official.
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HEALTH AND SAFETY LAW
There are two distinct parts to health and safety law:
1.the criminal law, which is enforced by health and safety
inspectors
2.personal injury law, under which workers who suffer an
injury at work or fall ill as a result of their work can sue
their employer for damages
HEALTH AND SAFETY LAW
Health and safety inspectors carry out routine inspections of
employers’ premises without warning, following which
they can issue improvement notices requiring that
changes are made to operations or prohibition notices
that prevent the employer from using a piece of
equipment or operating a system until recommended
changes have been made.
In either case a failure to make the required changes can
result in a criminal prosecution. Such prosecutions are
also brought when an employer’s negligence or
recklessness leads either to a death or a serious injury.
In the most serious cases, charges of corporate
manslaughter can be brought against an organisation.
Most personal injury claims also involve demonstrating that
an employer or a fellow employee has acted negligently.
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HOURS AND WAGES
Two main legal provisions:
The Working Time Regulations 1998
National Minimum Wage regulations
The Data Protection Act
| | The Data Protection Act controls how your personal information is used by organisations, businesses or the government. |
| | Everyone responsible for using data has to follow strict rules called ‘data protection principles’. Rules: |
used fairly and lawfully
used for limited, specifically stated purposes
used in a way that is adequate, relevant and not excessive
accurate
kept for no longer than is absolutely necessary
handled according to people’s data protection rights
kept safe and secure
| | not transferred outside the European Economic Area without adequate protection |
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The Data Protection Act
There is stronger legal protection for more sensitive
information, such as:
ethnic background
political opinions
religious beliefs
health
sexual health
criminal records
Redundancy
| | According to the Employment Rights Act 1996, an employee is dismissed by reason of redundancy if the dismissal is wholly or mainly attributable to the fact that: the employer ceases to carry on the business in which the employee was employed; the employer ceases to carry on that business in the place where the employee was employed; the needs of the business for employees to carry out work of a particular kind cease or diminish; or the needs of the business for employees to carry out work of a |
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particular kind in the place where the employee was employed
cease or diminish.
This is the definition that is relevant for the purposes of
determining whether or not a dismissal is fair and whether or
not the employee is entitled to a redundancy payment.