Managing People in organisations
Lecture 11: Employee Relations
Employee Relations
• “Employee Relations involves the body of
work concerned with maintaining employer-
employee relationships that contribute to
satisfactory productivity, motivation, and
morale.
• What is Employee Relations ?
.
Purpose of employee relations
• The purpose of employee relations is to
provide for effective and consistent
procedures for rule-making, consistently in
dealing with employee relations issues,
fairness, processes that can affect and
improve employee behaviour or mechanisms
to resolve differences/disputes.
Importance of Employee Relations
• Because there are several issues on which an individual cannot take
decisions alone.
• Work becomes easy if it is shared among all.
• The organization becomes a happy place to work if the employees work
together as a family.
• An individual feels motivated in the company of others whom he can
trust and fall back on whenever needed.
• Healthy employee relations also discourage conflicts and fights among
individuals
• A healthy employee relation reduces the problem of absenteeism at the
work place..
• It is wise to share a warm relation with your fellow workers, because you
never know when you need them.
Elements of employee relations
1. The formal and informal employment policies and practices of the organisation
2. The development, negotiation and application of formal system, rules and
procedures for collective bargaining, handling disputes and regulating
employment.
3. The bargaining structures, recognition and collective agreements and practices
that have evolved to enable the formal system to operate.
4. Policies and practices for employee voice and communications.
5. The informal as well as the formal processes that take place in the shape of
continuous interactions between managers and team leaders or supervisors on
one hand and employee representatives and individuals on the other.
6. The philosophies and policies of the major players in the industrial relations
scene: i.e the government of the day, management and the trade unions.
7. A number of parties, each with different roles.
8. The legal framework
Employee relations act (Mauritius)
• Ministry of Civil Service and Administrative
Reforms
• Circular Letter No. 27 of 2009
• E/439/27/80/01
Employee relations policies
Approaches to employee relations:
• Adversarial
• Traditional
• Partnership
• Power sharing
Policy areas
Areas covered by employee relations policies
• Trade union recognition .
• Collective bargaining.
• Employee relations procedures.
• Participation and involvement.
• Partnership.
• Harmonization of terms and conditions of
employment of staff and manual workers.
• Working arrangements.
Employee relations climate
The climate can be good, bad or indifferent according to perceptions about the
extent to which:
• Management and employees trust one another;
• Management treats employees fairly and with consideration;
• Management is open about its actions and intentions – employee relations
policies and procedures are transparent;
• Harmonious relationships are generally maintained on a day-to-day basis,
which results in willing cooperation rather than grudging submission;
• Conflict, when it does rise, is resolved without resort to industrial action and
resolution is achieved by integrative processes that result in a ‘win-win’
solution;
• Employees are generally committed to the interests of the organisation and,
equally, management treats them as stakeholders whose interests should be
protected as far as possible.
Collective bargaining
• Collective bargaining is the establishment by
negotiation and discussion of agreement on
matters of mutual concern to employers and
unions covering the employment relationship
and terms and conditions of employment.
Collective bargaining outcomes
• Substantive collective agreements
• Procedural collective agreements
• Single-union deals
• New-style agreements
• Partnership agreements
• Employee relations procedures
• Dispute resolution
HRM approach to employee relations
• A drive for commitment
• An emphasis on mutuality
• Organisation of complementary forms of communication such as
team briefings, alongside collective bargaining
• A shift from collective bargaining to individual contracts
• The use of employee involvement techniques such as
improvement groups
• Continuous pressure on quality – total quality management
• Increased flexibility in working environment
• Emphasis on teamwork
• Harmonisation of of terms and conditions for all employees
Summary
