1.

Your personal details

Full Name: Tran Tung Linh (Jade)

Email: ttunglinh152@gmail.com

Phone: (+84) 798 422 408

Current position: Human Resources Manager of HEINE

KEN VIETNAM since February 2016

"Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do. Don't wish it were easier;
wish you were better."

-- Jim Rohn--

2. Your philosophy and understandings of employment relations for an organization of

your choice

When working as an Human Resources (HR) manager, one of the most important things is that
the HR manager’s philosophy must align with company’s philosophy since the philosophy can
have a direct impact on building an effective HR system of an organization (Monks et. al 2013).
Therefore, it is indispensable HR manager should profoundly understand and adapt company’s
philosophy. Specifically, employment relations (ER) are a crucial element in HEINEKEN
VIETNAM because it contributes directly to building, maintaining, and enhancing positive
relationships between employees and employers (Abbott 2006). Moreover, maintaining good
employment relations in workplace will also improve working conditions of employees, rewards
system, better organizational culture, and collective labor rights’ establishment.

In HEINEKEN VIETNAM, Equality and Diversity in Workplace are the two most essential
values in contributing the successful of managing human since those categories have a
significant impact on employment relations in the company.

Since 1923, the women’s liberation movement has revolted to ask for the equality between men
and women and eradicate gender-based discrimination in fields such as behavioral patterns, laws,
and institutions (Özbilgin 2009). Thereby, women’s role in workplace has changed significantly,
however, there still has unequal career opportunities as well as payment in workplace though
women blatantly have the same educational levels as men do ( Rees & Smith 2014, p.333).
Nevertheless, equality opportunity has been put at the forefront of establish employment policy
in many companies, including HEINEKEN. They believe diverse perspectives could make the
best brews as well as enhance the customer experience, contribute new ideas to the development
of HEINEKEN (HEINEKEN Vietnam 2019). ER could play as a transformative role
mainstreaming equality concerns in accelerating the transformation in organizational culture and
trade unions (Moore & Tailby 2015). If this practice works well in HEINEKEN, not only it could
better the engagement with employees, create trust and understandings but also attract talented
by building a good workplace environment.

3. Your goals and objectives for effective employment relations in the chosen organization

I always want to build and maintain a workplace that could help employees feel comfortable,
convenient and professional when working, thus, my goal is to adopt the conducive workplace
environment in HEINEKEN Vietnam. Workplace environment is proved to be a factor impacting
on the engagement with employees, their job satisfaction, performance, and loyalty (Ajala 2012).
Therefore, implementing a conducive workplace environment is vitally important. This could
help employees reduce stress and boost the productivity. Moreover, it will make sure that
employees could be safe when working in HEINEKEN’s manufacturer since the company
always put the safety and wellbeing of their employees as a top priority. Thus, we establish
Heineken Life Saving Rules (LSRs) to ensure our valued employees’ safety. This includes
requiring an A-B-C smartphone application (Antecedent - Behaviour - Consequence) which will
track safety observations permitting a more appropriate response and enhancement when needed
(HEINEKEN Vietnam 2019). There are many more OHC policies to assure the safety and
wellbeing of employees such as safety training programs, high-qualified protective clothes, strict
working procedures, etc. From my perspective, I will try to discuss more with our employees,
listen to their voices and consider feasible strategy to help improve the workplace satisfaction
and task performance.
4. Legal obligations, the Fair Work Act, policies, standards, and relevant award/s for the
chosen organization

In Vietnam, the 2019 Labour Code validating on 1 January 2021 is utilized to regulate the
employment relations (Rödl & Partner n.d.). Basically, Vietnamese employees could work up to
48 hours/week or 8 hours/day. Moreover, annually, employees have 12 days paid leave and 11
public holidays. Additionally, to ensure employees’ interests, the maximum overtime no more
than 12 hours/day or 40 overtime hours/month. Averagely, employees should receive the salary
which is at least equal or higher than the basic minimum wage is 1,490,000 VND per month
(Rödl & Partner n.d.).

By morality of reference obligations in employment agreements, legal rules regulating collective

bargaining frequently are being utilized in the workplace (Rödl & Partner n.d.). Owing to being a
member of employers’ associations, employers are bound to follow collective bargaining
agreements. However, an employer can conclude a collective bargaining agreement with a
related TU even if they are not a union’s member (Rödl & Partner n.d.).

HEINEKEN Vietnam consecutively receives “Best Place to work in Asia” award from HR Asia
Magazine thanks to their profoundly understanding of employees’ needs. Moreover, HEINEKEN
honorably has the highest index of employee engagement with 93% worldwide (HEINEKEN
Vietnam 2019). Obviously, HEINEKEN has done an excellent job in improving the engagement
of employer-employee relationship.

5. Organizing and Unions

Vietnamese Trade Union established in 1929 accomplishes their mission is to care employees’
life who are current members of TU (VGCL 2016). Additionally, they are also in charge of
preparing, evaluating, augmenting, and executing polices for their employee-members to protect
employees’ rights as well as maintain the fairness in workplace environment (VGCL 2016). The
structure of TU is transparent, well-organized, and built based on the democratic centralism’s
principles (Figure 1); hence, employees could understand and seek help/advice when needed
(VGCL 2016).
Figure 1. Trade Union Structure Schema
Similar to other countries, participation in TU is optional and employees have full discretion to
decide whether or not to join TU. Meanwhile, companies completely have the right to decide
whether to attach grassroot TU or not. However, according to Mr. Vu (HR Manager of Kepple
Land), the company cannot keep 70% of TU contribution in budget allocation if they don’t have
grassroot TUs (Figure 2).
Figure 2. TU Fund & Budget Allocation
6. Individual Contracts and Collective Bargaining

If a company has equal or more than 10 employees, they need to establish an individual contract
including all essential terms and conditions of workplaces and that contract can be validated after
the registration with DOLISA and their approval (Rödl & Partner n.d.).

Collective bargaining agreement was written in 1994 based on the first Labour Code of 1994 by
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (Pham 2019). This designates TU to be a representative for
Vietnamese’s employees in negotiating collective bargaining with the employer at the national
levels.

According to Mr. Vu, Collective bargaining agreement is more beneficial to employees’ rights
since they are established based on the amendment of individual contracts and employees’
concern.
8. Unfair dismissal – approaches and ways to mitigate

Unfair dismissal occurs when an employee is sacked in a severe, unfair, or unreasonable conduct
(FWO n.d.). when employees evidently acknowledge that they are dismissed unfairly, they can
appeal against the company’s decision at first to reconsider the situation. If that employee is not
satisfied with the company’s decision, they can hand in a complaint to Chief Inspector of
Department of Labor - Invalids and Social Affairs or go directly to the district-level People's
Court where the company headquarter is located for disputes over labor discipline in the form of
dismissal. The suggestions above are provided based on Decree 24/2018/ND-CP.

Unfair dismissal is a risk that any company should avoid since it directly affects on company’s
reputation and image publicly as well as employees’ life. Therefore, when giving any firing
decision, HR department must check all the relevant information as well as convincing proofs
and employment laws in case they need to provide evidence when they are complained.
9. Managing conflict in the chosen organization

Disputes at work are inevitable in the workplace due to disagreements over opinions, ways of
thinking, lifestyle, language or culture (Rahim 1985). From my perspective, HSE Management
Standards Approach is a feasible strategy that HEINEKEN should take into consideration when
managing conflict in workplace. This approach suggests that the workers should participate in
examining issues. No one could understand themselves than they could. When identifying the
problems, they need to discuss face-to-face on the topics so that the examiners could easily
access and evaluate the situation (Palferman 2011). Moreover, when working together, staff
might feel annoyed/repressed because of the way partners work or talk, but they choose not to
directly share with their partners or even criticize excessively, making partners feel offended,
thereby leading to conflicts and they are challenging to resolve. Therefore, the HSE approach is
an effective way to resolve conflicts when it requires both parties to sit together and work out the
problem and solution.
10. Future of ER and casualization

The shift to casual employment in Australia has progressed to the point where more than 20% of
Australian workers is categorized as casual employees (Becker, Mccutcheon & Hegney 2010).
Casual employees are not eligible for having benefits as fulltime employees such as annual/sick
leave (McGann, White, & Moss 2016). The rationale for casualization is that it allows companies
to regulate and match working time activities, as well as boost expenditure savings because
employees are paid only when they attend to work.

What key elements of international and comparative ER that you found will be beneficial for your
chosen organization if they decide to go global.

Personally, studying organizations and phenomena crossing in different countries is a key

element to take away if HEINEKEN want to go global. In fact, each nation has their own tastes,
perceptions, and cultures and those could decide whether the organization fail or succeed in an
international market. Studying culture of a market the company want to expand to is vitally
important. There are many famous businesses have failed due to cultural shock and cultural
perception such as McDonald in Vietnam, Home Depot in China, Groupon in China, etc. Hence,
before expanding internationally, it is a must to do a deep research on that country.

References

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