Chapter 7: Employer-Employee Relationship

7.1 What is Employee Relations?

• Human beings need smooth relationship, they are nonliving objects.Thus,
maintaining good relationship is important to the orgn and emoloyees.
• An employee relation is the interactions between the employer
(represented by management) and the work-force (represented by trade
unions).
• This is the mgt should support employees to be satisfied with job and
employees have to be committed to the success of the orgn.
• In general emmployee relation is related to:
 Maintaining good relationship with trade unions
 Sharing information with employees & participate in decision making
affecting them.
 Creating and transmiting valuable information to employees.
bargain with management about pay, working hours, conditions of
employment and to make a joint decisions with management on
matters affecting their members' well being. Objectives

• The objectives include:

 Create trust, respect, and Cooperation among employees & Mgt.
 Provide a suitable work environment
 Help Mgt to solve employee problems mutally
 It is also important to employees
 Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining
 Trade Unions
• is an organization of workers, maintain interest of members.
• Trade unions make collective voice to make known their wishes to the Mgt.
• They bargain with management about pay, working hours, conditions of
employment and to make a joint decisions with management on matters
affecting their members' well being.
Employer-Employee..Con'd

• In general trade unions have the ff objectives.

 Improve economic status and thereby improve living standard of members
 To create individual security against fluctuations such as market, technologies,
and Mgt decisions.
 To protect members agaist arbitrary & capricious policies.
 Collective Bargaining
• It is is basic to labour- management relations
• It is contractual agreement where trade union and Mgt negotiate to establish pay
and conditions of employment. This reduces conflict and help employees and Mgt
to make attention towards achieving orgnal objectives.
• To have effective collective bargaining:
 Employees must prpare to act collectively, identify common interest
 Mgt should reconize trade unions, free to organize, and should be state or
employer interference.
Employer-Employee..Con'd

• Collective bargaining is a means to reach negotiable agreements, and has two outcomes.
1. Substantive agreements: these are agreements on pay, working hours, holidays, overtime regulations,
flexibility arrangements, and allowance.
2. Procedural agreements: agreed on equal opportunities, recruitment, redundancy, & discipline.
• Bargaining is carried out via negotiation, distributive and integrative approaches are available.
 Distributive bargaining: parties negotiate to take limited resource at the expense of the other.
 Integrative bargaining: seeks mutual gains,
 Stage of Negotiation
 A. Preparation:
 Set objectives
 The basic minimum requirement that must be achieved, -
 The desirable requirements that the negotiator would like to achieve,
 The optimum requirement or best level of achievement;
B. Negotiation
 Exchange information; - Listen to the other party's position; - Signal likely compromise points - Propose
ways forward.
C. Closing
 Summarize positions; - Propose a final offer, which meets the needs of both parties; - Reach agreement.
Employer-Employee..Con'd

• If there are disputes can be solved using conciliation, mediation or arbitration.

 Employee Relations Practices
• Communication: It involves the sharing of ideas, plans and targets, it is crucial to
communicate all the necessary information that affect employee's interests.
• Managers have various roles:
 Interpersonal roles: act as a figurehead and leader, & interacting with subordinates, customers,
suppliers, and peers
 Informational roles: seek information from peers, subordinates about anything that may
affect their job and responsibilities.
 Decisional roles: implement new projects, handle disturbances, and allocate resources to their
unit's members and departments.
 Counseling Service
• is a discussion of a problem with an employee, Family troubles, stress, financial and other
personal problems are likely to affect employee's performance.
 Discipline;
• rules and regulations must be communicated to all employees
• Two ways to handle disciplinary cases:
A. Preventive discipline: encourage self-discipline
B. Corrective discipline: follows a rule infraction
five steps discipline employees:
1. Informal talk or counseling
2. Oral reprimand or warning
3. Written reprimand or warning
4. Suspension or disciplinary layoff (1-30 days)
5. Discharge: It is drastic & separates the employee from the job.
 Employee Participation
• Management approach should be participative and aim:
 Generate commitment of all employees to the success of the organization -
 Enable the organization better to meet the needs of its customers -
 Help the organization to improve performance and productivity -
 Improve the satisfaction employees get from their work -
 Provide all employees with the opportunity to influence and be decisions,
7.2 Employee Safety and Health

 Physical Injury Prevention Checklist

 Train employees regularly
 use of personal protective equipment and clothing provided
 Make sure worksites are clean and orderly, walking surfaces properly repaired
 Conduct regular inspections of your workplace
 Have an easily accessible first aid kit etc.
 Psychological Injury Prevention Checklist
 Express genuine empathy and concern for the health of your employees.
 Hold regularly scheduled meetings with each employee
 Understand your employees' behaviors well enough to notice changes.
 Communicate to your staff when new policies affect the employees
 Ask for ideas from your staff and make sure they know their input will be received
openly
 Encourage employees to talk about workplace problems
7.3 Grievance and Grievance Handling

• Dissatisfaction: anything that disturbs an employee

• Complaint: a spoken or written dissatisfaction brought to the attention of the
supervisor
• Grievance: a complaint which has been formally presented to a management
representative or union
• A grievance is a formal dispute between an employee and management on the
conditions of employment
• Features of grievance:
 Discontent or dissatisfaction with any aspect of the organization.
 The dissatisfaction must arise out of employment and not due to personal or family
problems
 The discontent can arise out of real or imaginary reasons
 The discontent may be voiced or unvoiced. But it must find expression in some form
 A grievance is traceable to perceived non-fulfillment of one’s expectations from the
organization.
Cont'd...

 Forms of Grievances
• Factual: legitimate needs of employees remain unfulfilled
• Imaginary: dissatisfaction is not because of any valid reason
• Disguised: dissatisfaction for reasons that are unknown to him/her
 Causes of Grievances
 Economic: wage fixation, overtime, bonus, wage revision
 Work environment: poor physical conditions of work place, tight production
norms
 Supervision: bias, favoritism, nepotism, caste affiliations, regional feelings,
 Work group: unable to adjust with his/her colleagues, suffers from feelings
of neglect, victimization
 Miscellaneous: promotions, safety methods, transfer, disciplinary rules,
granting leave, medical facilities, etc
 The Discovery of Grievances

• Gossip and grapevine offer vital clues about employee grievances. Various ways to discover:
• Observation
• Grievance procedure
• Gripe box
• Open-door policy
• Exit interview
• Opinion survey
 Grievance Handling Procedure
• objectives
 To enable the employee to air his/her grievance.
 To clarify the nature of the grievance.
 To investigate the reasons for dissatisfaction.
 To obtain, where possible, a speedy resolution to the problem.
 To take appropriate actions and ensure that promises are kept.
 Benefits of grievance handling procedure

• It encourages employees to raise concerns without fear of reprisal.

• It provides a fair and speedy means of dealing with complaints.
• It prevents minor disagreements developing into more serious disputes.
• It saves employers time and money as solutions are found for workplace problems.
• It helps to build an organizational climate based on openness and trust.
 Processing of Grievance: Four stages
 The level at which grievance occurs: resolve it at the level at which it occurs is
the best.
 Intermediate stage: if not solved at supervisor’s level, referred to the head of the
concerned department
 Organization level: refered to top Mgt
 Third party mediation: solve either via conciliation, arbitration or adjudication