Atypical Employment: Employee Relations

 


Introduction

The issue about flexible workforce and its impact on labor markets is considered as a highly debated subject in many developed and modern countries. Thus, the rise for the flexibility of the labor markets had led to a growing proportion of workers in different atypical employment relationships which include temporary jobs. With accordance to this, Hong Kong stands out from the Asian regions as a place that experienced a fast and intense shift from one of the most rigid employment protection systems to a highly flexible labor market with an extraordinary high proportion of temporary employees.  The labor market of Hong Kong is highly segmented as typical permanent employees, atypical posts with variable work loads, and unemployed adult and youth.  The number of atypical posts has been steadily increased in the past decade.  This article has the particular focus on precarious employment relationships and individuals’ perception of job security.  We find some indications that the type of employment relationship and the perception of job security seem to matter in the studied transition processes.


 


In the globalize worldwide economy nowadays, employee relation becomes once again a newly developed topic of study.  Employers who offer flexible work practices for atypical workers are more likely to attract and retain skilled and valuable staff; this is because employees today place greater emphasis on finding a balance between work and life commitments.  It makes good business sense to introduce flexible work practices. There are benefits for both employer and employee, including greater job satisfaction and increased productivity and efficiency.


 


Giving this background, interest in the employment relationship and work for human resources professionals has been reinvigorated by:



  •  management philosophies of engagement, commitment, high involvement and empowerment;

  •  evidence of continuing failings in this area and line management styles in practice;

  •  the growth of alternative communications vehicles and forums.


 


The work that human resources professionals carry out today in connection with employees and employment relationship includes:



  •  managing the employment contract, e.g. its legal basis, pay and conditions, discipline, absence, health and safety;

  •  ensuring compliance with employment law, e.g. redundancies, unfair dismissal, minimum wage, working time, discrimination;

  •  direct communication through various means, e.g. team briefings and employee surveys;

  •  promoting retention, involvement and engagement through by different methods, e.g. ‘partnership,’ team-working and work-life balance policies;

  •  the collective processes of negotiation and consultation.


 


The underlying theme of this essay is that managing the employment relationship remains central to good human resources practice even more and more atypical employment appears in the labor market.  The employee relations skills and competencies are critical to the process of achieving performance benefits.  The focus now needs to be on gaining and retaining employee commitment and engagement.  We start by introducing the current regular employment and atypical employment models in the below session.


Regular Employee, Atypical Worker and Their Forms

Regular Employment


Employee


The Black Law’s Dictionary (1979) defined employee as “a person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct the employee in the material details of how the work is to be performed” (p. 471). In simple term, an employee is defined as a person who works under a contract of employment. 


Hong Kong common law has evolved through case law which elaborates certain factors to be considered in the employment relationship to determine whether employee status exists.  They include:


the degree of control exercised by the employer;


the integration of the person into the business, including the issue of who bears the risk and, if appropriate, provides tools;


the extent to which the person is obliged to work;


whether the work is on a continuing basis;


whether the employer deducts income tax and National Insurance contributions.


The finding of employee status and the existence of a contract of employment depend on balancing these factors.  None is sufficient in itself, but some are essential (e.g. control and payment of wages).


The importance of employee status lies in its access to statutory employment rights.  Many (including those relating to unfair dismissal) are restricted to employees.


Worker


The Hong Kong common law also recognizes a further category: a worker.  This term embraces those who work under a contract of employment.  It also covers a person who works under any contract, whether express or implied and (if it is express) whether oral of in writing, whereby the individual undertakes to do or perform personally any work or services for another party to the contract whose status is not by virtue of the contract that of a client or customer of any profession or business undertaking carried on by the individual.


Self-employed


Generally, self-employed people are exempt from statutory employment protection.  However, they are covered by, for example, discrimination law and health safety legislation.  The genuinely self-employed (i.e. an independent contractor or those in business on their own account) would, for example, not be integrated into the employer’s business; and would not necessarily provide a service personally and would have no continuing mutuality of obligation.  In determining such issues, much would depend on the facts of the particular case.  Some individuals can have an ambiguous employment status.


Atypical Employment


Atypical or non-standard workers are those who are not full-time permanent employees.  They may have different forms of employment status – on part-time, on temporary, on a fixed-term contract and as a job sharer, as a casual worker, as an agency worker.  Whether they enjoy employment protection is dependent on a number of factors:


• Establishment of employee status


• Entitlements as a ‘worker’ under statute law


• Accruing continuity of employment and so entitlement to service related benefits in the employment contract and to service related statutory rights


Coverage by specific anti-discrimination law


Forms of Atypical Employment


Flextime


Flexible working hours allow employees to work an agreed number of hours spread over a set period of time.  Some awards and enterprise agreements allow employees, as part of their flexible work agreements to accrue hours, take time-off in lieu for overtime worked or accumulate rostered days off.


Flexible working hours assist employees to manage their work and personal commitments without losing hours in the workplace as a whole.


Examples of flexible working hours arrangements include:


• flexi-time and banking time


• staggering starting and finishing times


• rostered days off or a nine-day fortnight


• compressed work weeks, allowing employees to work longer hours per day and fewer days per week.


Staggered Hours


Staggered Hours work means the employees arrive and depart work at different times in shifts.  Shifts may be staggered anywhere from 15 minutes to two hours.


Job Sharing


Job-sharing is a form of employment that a specific task can be broken down into several sub-tasks so that to share a job designed for one person with someone else.


Compressed Working Hours


Compressed working hours is a form of working pattern that employees work more hours than typical but work fewer days per week or pay period.


Self-Rostering


Self-rostering allows teams of employees to propose the patters they want to work, within agreed parameters, while meeting the needs of the service.  In most organizations staff rosters are drawn up by managers, often in consultation with staff.  The philosophy underpinning self rostering involves agreeing the staffing levels and skill mix required at any time in the day, then giving staff the ability to schedule their working day collectively to meet those requirements.


Annual Hours


An “annual hours” contract is a system whereby the period of time within which full time employees must work is defined over a whole year.


For example, an average 40-hour week becomes 1,880 annual hours, assuming five weeks of holiday entitlement (37 weeks x 40 hours per week).  This is the total hours an employee must work each year under the contract.


Once the annual hours of work have been agreed these hours are usually distributed in a schedule.


Some of the hours may be held in reserve to be used when the employer and employee agree, or they may all be used within the schedule.  It will also be necessary allow for public holidays and overtime.


Annual hours can be applied to all employees, including day workers and white collar employees, but in practice the system is often restricted to shift workers.


Working At or From Home


Working at or from home provides a worker the flexibility of not necessarily going to office for work.  He/She can work at home through access the company’s email and telephone line. 


Teleworking


Telework or home based work (also known as telecommuting) can be defined as work taking place away from the traditional office facilitated by the use of information communication technology.  It is about rethinking the way we work, providing potential benefit to both employers and employees. It can involve staff working away from the workplace on a full-time, part-time or temporary basis.  Many organizations allow staff to telework for part of their working week, depending on the nature of the work. Telework can take different forms, such as:



  • Full-time teleworkers who work at a remote location and do not have a traditional office to go to;

  • Day extenders who take work home after working in the office during standard work hours;

  • Occasional teleworkers who work at home or while their travel on an ad hoc basis; and

  • Self-employed or owner operators based in their homes.


There is evidence that it is gaining increasing acceptance in the world.


Fixed Term


Fixed-term employee is defined as a person with a contract of employment which is due to end when a specified date is reached, a specified event does or does not happen or a specified task has been completed.


Examples of these include:


       Employees doing so-called ‘seasonal’ or ‘casual’ work who have contracts for a short period or task that end when the period expires or the task is completed. (Examples include: employees at children’s summer camps; agricultural workers; and shop assistants working specifically for Christmas or another busy period.)


       Employees on fixed-term contracts concluded specifically to cover for maternity, parental or paternity leave or sick leave


       Employees hired to cover for peaks in demand and whose contracts expire when demand returns to normal levels.


       Employees whose contracts will expire when a specific task is complete (i.e. setting up a new data base, painting a house or running a training course.)


 


Temporary and Casual Work


Temporary and casual working means that the worker is not a long term contractual basis worker of a company and they will just work for a period of time which is not fixed.


The Growth of Employment Flexibility


Throughout advanced industrial economies:


- Increased hours variability –part-time; on-call


- Increased reward variability –pay at risk; PRP


- Increased job content flexibility and demand: team-working; role flexibility; end of OCB; fuller utilization/less uncommitted time


- Increased contract flexibility –growth of temporary and fixed-term contracts


- Static job satisfaction and reducing work-related well-being


Employment Relationship

There are several business impacts of good employee relations.  Employee attitudes and commitment are strongly associated with business performance.  Managers generally found better employee contributions and productivity gains on better employee relations.


The informal climate of involvement and confabbing appears to be more strongly associated with employee satisfaction and commitment than any other means of negotiation and consultation.


Mechanisms in use for employee involvement include two-way communications, project teams and joint meeting, but there is growing interest in electronic media, attitude surveys and partnership schemes.


The major constraints on employee involvement are lack of skills and enthusiasm by managers and employees.


The psychological contract model, validated by successive employee attitude surveys, suggests that human resources practices strongly affect the way people feel about their work.  Employees’ trust in the organization, their sense of being fairly treated and the extent to which they believe their employer has delivered on the implicit deal between them, affects their attitudes towards job satisfaction, commitment, work–life balance and the state of employee relations.


Face-to-face interviews were conducted with a small sample of human resources managers in finance, manufacturing, and local government. The result is a snapshot of current attitudes and practice.  Although no claim can be made that the findings are necessarily representative of the whole Hong Kong workplaces generally, some common themes emerge.


The questions were straightforwardly designed to explore the following issues:


• Why do employers need employee relations?


• What do employee relations people need to know?


• How is an employee relation changing?


• How does an employee relation impact on performance?


• Is employee relations in practice, more reactive or proactive?


There appears to be a consensus that employee relations continues to be a critical area to manage.  Some respondents claimed that they need a structure in order to be able to communicate effectively with their employees.  Though not a universal belief, research and other evidence suggests that many larger employers in both the public and private sectors accept this and are concerned to maintain or, if necessary, establish an effective structure to communicate with employees.  Within the public sector, some respondents displayed a strong commitment to working in partnership with formal and informal contacts and with committee structures.


The general view was that organizations needed to be capable of dealing with employees on both an individual and a representative basis. In terms of what actually needs to be managed, the emphasis was not so much on pay but on issues such as recruitment, retention, and pensions. Many respondents also underlined the need to be able to anticipate as well as respond to employment law. And finally, there was strong endorsement from several respondents of the belief that employee relations is about seeing the ‘big picture’ and helping the organization to take appropriate action. The most detailed and persuasive responses reflected a view that effective employee relations practitioners were strong at storytelling and making sense of situations: ensuring that organizations told a consistent and credible story. This could be seen as one interpretation of ‘strategic HR’.


 


What do people with employee relations responsibilities need to know?


Given the wide scope of the term, it’s unsurprising that answers about the skill set required of employee relations practitioners ranged quite widely too. The skills included:


• understanding collective labor law


• knowing how representative structures work


• awareness of general employment law


• facilitation and communication skills


• negotiation skills


• understanding how to develop trust and respect


• personal qualities: objectivity, robustness, confidence to tell senior people what they think


• awareness of employee attitudes/feelings


• business knowledge.


Many of these relate to personal competencies and behaviors. Some respondents commented specifically on negotiation skills. In manufacturing, for example, not only senior managers but also line managers need training in how to conduct relationships with trade union stewards. Many managers who have no responsibility for conducting pay negotiations may still have to negotiate with unions on a range of issues. On the other hand, employee relation is now seen to be more about building relationships and developing trust. In this respect, the relationship with trade unions doesn’t necessarily differ in kind from relationships with management colleagues and/or with employees generally, and negotiation skills are equally relevant to a wide range of relationships.


The underlying issue of employment relationship is debated for certain period of time since the atypical workers and other flexible forms of employment have been derived.  As favor factors to atypical workers, different flexibilities toward them would improve their work life balance.


Has atypical workers undermined the employee relationship?


Psychological Contract


The Psychological contract is defined as:


“The perceptions of both parties to the employment relationship, organization and individual, of the reciprocal promises and obligations implied in that relationship”


The state of the psychological contract is concerned with whether the promises and obligations have been met, whether they are fair and their implications for trust.


The Psychological Contract and the Breakdown of the ‘Deal’


–A career in return for loyalty


–A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay


–The challenge to professional autonomy


–Loss of job security (and safety net) The Real Cases of Employment Relationship

After briefly described the definitions and characteristics of standard employee, atypical workers and the general employment relationship, we are going to discuss the influence of employee relationship due to the expansion of atypical workers in Hong Kong.  Lessons from research into employee voice and the psychological contract have been absorbed by employers and reflected in their employee relations policies and aspirations based on the real examples of some companies in Hong Kong.


Regular employment


Management of Employee Relationship


Principally, there are two instruments available for regulating the employment relationship.  One – the contract of employment between the individual employee and his or her employer – was based on in law; the other was based on the voluntary action of employers and trade unions, i.e. collective agreements negotiated between trade unions and specific employers.  The model developed and used for interpreting the findings has been that of the psychological contract, which places at the centre of the relationship employee trust, a sense of fairness and belief that their employer has delivered on the implicit ‘deal’ between them. These three factors – trust, fairness and delivery – are strongly associated with behavioral and performance outcomes such as employee commitment and intention to leave.


The employment relationship should be viewed as an imbalanced power relationship favoring the employer.  The contract of employment is the instrument for regulating this relationship and is said to provide protection for individual employees.  Kahn-Freund (1983) has referred to it as a command in the guise of an agreement.


The achievement of business goals and financial returns is increasingly dependent on delivery by front-line employees. This emerges from the operation of a mix of HR/high-performance work practices in the context of a supportive management. It can’t be imposed from the top but depends on developing employee security, trust and buy-in to the goals and values of the organization.


 


Flexibility


The flexibility of the employment relation can be reflected by the concept of Employee Participation and Involvement (EPI) which is introduced from Hyman and Mason (1995:21).


Hyman and Mason classify participation as:


The state initiatives which promote the collective tights of employees to be represented in organizational decision-making, or to the consequence of the efforts of employees themselves to establish collective representation in corporate decisions, possibly in the face of employer resistance.


The meaning of Involvement relates to management-initiated policies and practice where empowerment is constrained to operational tasks, rather than organizational decision-making, targeting the individual.


Under the regular employment contract, it is not easy for the employer to request the employees to perform overtime work or assign job task which may not be his/her original expected scope of work due to the employment legislation and the intervention of trade union.  The operation and financial performance may highly depend on the willingness of the employees to take up extra contributions to the organization/company or employer may need to allocate additional flexible resources in order to deliver their commitment to the customer.


But the employee participation and engagement of the regular employees is found to be higher than atypical workers because it is more likely that regular employees will have higher sense of belonging, loyalty to the company than the atypical workers.  The reason behind of this phenomenon is that most of the atypical workers do not work within the employer office premises or they do not enjoy any benefits which regular employees would have.  Thus it is common for the regular workers to participate in the group discussion of the company strategy and giving opinions to senior management about their innovative ideas.


Pay


The pay of regular employees will be released at fixed time, normally in monthly basis.  In most of the companies, their regular employees can enjoy the year end performance bonus based on the net profit of the companies.  There is Occupational Retirement Schemes Ordinance (ORSO) scheme for the permanent employees, which is to establish a registration system for voluntarily established occupational retirement schemes, to ensure that such schemes are properly regulated, and to provide greater certainty that retirement scheme benefits promised to employees will be paid when they fall due.


Discrimination


For employees working in usual office premises, regular staffs enjoy the fair treatment normally.  In most of the US companies, there is an open door policy, which means the employees can directly talk with their senior managers without the intervention from his/her direct supervisor or manager.  This policy guarantees every employee can voice out their own opinions towards the work and company direction.  Legislation of sexual harassment protects the staff from being discriminated in the workplace.  The law prohibits discrimination on the basis of:


·             Sex – because a person is male or female


·             Marital status – whether a person is single, married, married but separated, divorced or widowed and


·             Pregnancy


There are more other forms of discriminations such as age, nationality and disability that are being protected by the laws in Hong Kong.


How the employee relationship will be affected by the discrimination factor is that with the employees will have higher incentive to stay at a workplace without or lesser discrimination feeling.  The employer will be respected and trusted also if they can create a harmonious environment which allow all kind of staff to work together independent of the gender, marital status, color and age etc.


Atypical Employment


Management of Employee Relationship


The growth of the non-standard or atypical forms of employment, which include part-time, casual work and others, represents one of the most dramatic changes in the structure of employment in the global labor force. Management employment strategies have been identified as a major causal factor in the expansion of non-standard employment. Employers are continuously using the said typical forms of employment in order to lower their direct labor costs. However, there are different arguments which focus on the different negative impact of this type of employment in employee relationship which include hidden costs and its impact towards work relations and motivation of employees (Allan 2000).


The atypical workers are distinguished from the regular employees by the formal employment contract and the status.  Atypical employees are not formally beneficial by the employment ordinance since they get the reward by providing flexible forms of service to employers.


 


Atypical workers are easily managed by their employers because they are flexible resources that no overhead of idle of resource thus operation optimization can be achieved through the capability of coping with the flexible business model nowadays.


Flexibility


Broadly speaking, employment flexibility has been earned to a degree on the expense of employee commitment.  Nevertheless, in spite of all the massive changes in the workplace, some perceptions in the labor force are still vibrant.  The need to feel a relative level of stability is still quite strong in spite off all the discussions and examples of restructuring and redundancies (Guest & Conway, 2004).  An interpretation of this is that commitment towards employers is not yet extinct but because the workplace is in the process of the major changes, the turbulence that has been created as an effect altered the balance of the old type of employment relationship based on commitment in exchange for security.  Furthermore, the approach that employment flexibility can elicit commitment in the context of involving employees more in the decision making and by offering them more challenging work designs that could augment their skills, is debatable.  In theory, such a principles it operational but as literature suggests, internal and external inefficiencies often lead to overcapitalization of the human capital in organizations hence adversely affecting levels of commitment.


Atypical employment relationships imply less job security for employees. Less discussed is the extreme challenge that flexible labor places I the HR function. Most of HR researchers as well as practitioners are believing that increasing labor flexibility not only decreases labor costs, but also reduces HR manager’s and the companies responsibilities and roles, because of the fact that temporary agencies appear to reduce the time that has to be invested in the process of recruitment and rewards. Thus, it is important to understand the fact that the commitment of the entire organization focuses on the analysis of HRM (Torka 2004). Therefore, the whole rationale for introducing HRM policies is to help increase the levels of commitment so that other positive outcomes can ensue (Guest 1998).


Pay


Money is the major inducement of people to have incentive to work hard for a company.  So that’s no doubt that for any kind of worker, no matter regular employees or flexible atypical workers, they would see the money return of the job as top priority criteria for work.  Thus the wages of atypical worker would depend on the supply and demand of the market.  Management will benchmark the market rate of the workers and decide their strategy to allocate the workforce.


Discrimination


As discussed at the earlier session of discrimination factor to the regular employee, the same point of view would give similar impact to the relationship between the employer and the atypical workers.  The major difference between the discrimination for atypical workers and that of regular workers is that external parties may not consider atypical workers as employees of the assigned working company so sometimes they are treated differently with the genuine staff of that company.  However, under the law of Hong Kong these treatments are not considered as discrimination for if age, nationality or marital status are not being pinpointed from the employers.


Employee Commitment and Employee Relationship


Human resource is considered as the most important resource of any company or organization because the employees or staffs are the one that are processing materials and information in order to create products or services to be sold to the customers. Thus, it is important to consider the aspect of commitment of the employees towards productivity and performance of the employees. According to Meyer (2001) commitment is considered as a binding force or a psychological state of attitude which can encourage direction to behavior. In addition, commitment as a whole does not only pertains on the work-related, this is because there are different studies and literatures which indicated that employees can have different work-related commitments which include commitment to work, the job, the career, the occupation, their colleagues, supervisors, teams and the entire department (Hartley 1993).


Different studies about HRM focus on the idea that atypical employment relationships have a negative impact towards employee commitment which includes study of Atkinson/Meager (1986), Baruch (1998) and Rousseau (1995). This is somewhat typical or common because of the fact that employee commitment is about what comes around goes around attitude. Therefore, it is explainable that flexible workers will have reluctancy to build any commitment because the company is not willing to meet an important part of employment deal, particularly the aspect of job security. This is aside from the fact that some of researchers (Goudswaard and Andries 2002) found out that most of atypical employees have poorer working conditions compare with the typical workers. In support to this, the study of Jacobsen (2000) found out that atypical workers are less committed compare with the typical employees.


 


In that case, it can be said that the application or implementation of atypical employment can create different negative impact in entire process and aspects of human resource in the company, particularly the area which pertains on the employee relations of the company.


Employee relations at Dell


Dell is a US company that has grown rapidly since its formation 20 years ago and currently ranks number three on Fortune’s Global Most Admired Companies list. It seeks to deliver value to customers through its direct business model, by focusing on the customer experience and taking out cost from the production process.


The company is data-driven. Managers report on the achievement of targets on a daily basis. Its employee relations climate is strongly influenced by its aspiration to be a ‘great company and a great place to work’ through the adoption of a ‘winning culture’.


The focus is on the team and on individual contributions to the team. People/line managers are expected to interact with individuals, and their performance in this area is closely monitored. Both people managers and individual contributors are measured on the way in which they deal with people as well as on their technical proficiency. There’s a consistent emphasis on how people do their job, not just what they do, including, for example, support for colleagues and behaving ethically.


The company makes a conscious effort to recruit people who will have a good ‘fit’ with its values – people who are open, direct and who focus on getting the job done rather than engaging in office politics. The company runs a leadership programme each year, which in 2005 is focusing on personal development planning.


Employee engagement is driven by the relationship between individuals and their manager. The expectations of people managers are clearly defined:


• Set a performance plan


• Work in each team on individual development plans


• Undertake mid-year review


• Undertake end-year review


• Undertake monthly review with each individual (30 minutes to 1 hour)


• Give feedback to improve performance


Dell measures people managers’ compliance with their performance management targets, tracking what has been done at each stage. In addition, senior managers are expected to take regular opportunities to engage with more junior staff, for example, at ‘brown bag’ lunches with different groups, or while visiting operations in other countries, to help embed a common culture.


Other methods of encouraging dialogue include quarterly results meetings across the business at which senior managers take questions. ‘Tell Dell’ surveys every six months cover core areas suggested by statements such as ‘Management is doing a good job positioning the company to win in the marketplace,’ ‘My manager is effective at managing people,’ ’I receive ongoing feedback that helps me to improve my performance,’ ‘My manager sets a good example of ethical business behavior,’ ‘I would recommend Dell as a great place to work’ etc. The surveys provide a broad measure of employee engagement.


The data is analyzed to identify trends. Managers are then tasked with sharing their results with their teams and developing team action plans to address issues and drive improvements.


As a result, the company enables to monitor the behavior and the performance of their employees regardless of their status in the company as typical or atypical employees. Therefore, it encourages fairness and equality inside the organization which are considered as important motivational factors for the employees. This enables the employees, particularly the atypical employees to feel that the company is exerting effort in order to ensure that the working environment is comfortable for all the employees.


Employee relations at HP


The Hewlett-Packard HK SAR Limited (adhere note as HP) has around 500 employees of staff in Hong Kong.  Actually, adding the number of staff of atypical workers, which including outsourcing contract staff, part-time workers, flex-time workers etc., she has over 1000 staffs in Hong Kong.


The regular employees would have the permanent employment contract to protect their salary, fringe benefits such as medical insurance, annual leaves entitlement and even company share options purchasing right.  While the atypical workers will be outsourced to secondment agencies or in other forms of employment, they have comparatively less benefits and sense of belonging towards HP.


The regular permanent staff will not only get the sense of security of his/her job but also enjoy the long term retirement fund (ORSO).  But since 1997, the Hong Kong government had introduced the Mutual Pension Fund (MPF), almost all of the employees who were employed since 1997 would join the MPF scheme rather than the ORSO scheme.


 


The employees of HP involve in many activities within organization and the company.  The HR of HP has initiated the HPeople program which is aimed at encouraging the employees to union together inside and outside the office.  The HPeople will organize different kinds of interest course and provide a mean for the staff to get acquainted with other colleagues who may not know before.  Besides, the HP HR director would regularly provide development programmes to three different levels of staff in order to maintain the talent resources in organization.  The three levels of staff are managers, independent contributors and the new joined university graduates.


In addition, Hewlett Packard is implementing pay-for-performance plan. This focus on embracing an organizational culture which embrace pay for performance by emphasizing goals setting, ranking and ranking of performance and performance dialogue between the supervisors and the subordinates. In addition, the company also focuses on three basic requirements of the control process which are:



  • Establishing performance standards – Standards are used to set expected performance levels for machines, tasks, individuals, groups of individuals and the organization as a whole.

  • Monitoring performance and comparing it with those standards – The primary purpose of monitoring performance is to provide information on what is actually happening in the organization.

  • Taking necessary corrective actions – Corrective action can be taken after the actual performance has been assessed and compared with performance standards (Sims 2002).


 


 


Employee relations at South-West Trains


The company has a well-established collective bargaining agreement with ASLEF, the RMT, TSSA and AMICUS, which operates through the South-West Trains Company Council. This agreement gives the unions negotiating rights on a range of issues, including pay and terms and conditions of employment. They are also consulted on issues relating to performance and attendance, changes in working practices, and redundancy. The Company Council is supported by a number of smaller groups.


South-West Trains needs to ensure that it can involve and engage all staff, not just its union members. A number of employees are not represented by a union and have a limited formal voice in the company. In addition, the firm’s ‘Tell Us’ employee survey shows that a percentage of staff don’t feel they’re consulted about major decisions. These factors, combined with the approach of the new Employee Information and Consultation Regulations requiring that all staff are included in consultation arrangements, led the company to review its existing arrangements.


The company would prefer the current collective-bargaining machinery to be adapted to allow non-union representatives to be informed and consulted alongside union representatives. However, other options may be possible, including establishing employee forums that would be open to all staff and would operate in parallel to the Company Council.


Although it has a very good working relationship with all the unions, the company has moved away from relying solely on collective machinery to inform and consult employees. It takes responsibility for communicating with all employees and has improved its direct methods of communication. It holds ad hoc forums on specific issues to generate feedback from employees. Staff surveys have shown that employees want face-to-face communication, where possible through their line manager. ‘Time with your manager’ sessions have been introduced for operational staff to ensure that individuals have regular conversations with their line manager.


HR seeks to get across the message to line managers that negotiating skills are basically communication skills, and that authentic conversations are needed to establish trust-based relationships with employees. ‘Partnership’ in the company is seen as being essentially between employer and employees, while the relationship with the trade unions is a professional one. In addition to regular team briefings by line managers, the company is increasingly using email and the company intranet to communicate with employees.


Employee Relations at VitaSoy Vitasoy is considered as one of the global beverage and healthy nutritious food company that mainly developed soy-based products. The said success was achieved by investing money and effort towards customer relationships. Just like the said companies, Vitasoy also focuses on the different employee relations activities and strategies in order to ensure satisfaction and motivation from the employees. First, the company focuses on the aspect of security and safety of the employees. The company is continuing its improvement of safety and health in the workplace by the process of carrying out risk assessment of work sites in regular manner, at the same time, establishing policies and guidelines in order to improve and take correction action. Aside from that, the company also focuses on offering regular and intensive training regarding safety and health to the staffs regardless of their status inside the company. Conclusion

In general, the emergence and application of atypical employment in the modern business environment has a big impact on the different aspects of human resource management, particularly the issue of employee relationship. Thus, it is important to consider the fact that this issue has a great impact on how the company will going to ensure motivation and good performance from the employees. As a result, it is important to complement the current changes in the human resource environment with the different strategies which will be applied in order to ensure good performance and better production, which will enable companies to maintain the improve their position and share in the market.


Flexibility in the workplace is a key theme in almost every organization and it is often pursued by endeavors to introduce resilience in employment and the expectation of relevant benefits.


 


Nevertheless, it should not be disregarded that employees are individuals with emotions and perceptions and the climate of insecurity that has been building up is likely to shake the trust and most importantly the commitment towards their employers.  In spite of the externalization of the labor market and the ease to hire personnel, organizations require the skills of employees as well as their commitment in order to operate efficiently.  To a degree, flexibility has been won on the expense of commitment as theory suggests but there are also indications that the focus is turning. Attention now is on how to ensure that employment flexibility does not thwart commitment but it facilitates the transit from the older type of commitment of loyalty in exchange for security to a commitment based on employability, a challenging working environment and the enhancement of employees’ skills and talents.


Any effort to infuse trust and commitment in the labor force needs to be coordinated and carefully implemented as it can produce long-term benefits for the organization.  Consequently, managers should not ignore long-term strategies by favoring more short-term agendas.


Extending that, the organization requires an overall shift in its management polices towards employees, promoting a positive outlook and avoiding unnecessary declarations and examples that will give rise to any sort of negative climate.  Communication is essential from top to bottom in building a partnership with employees. This is important because communication can help companies to focus on the human resource aspect of the company. First open communication enables the company to focus on the feelings and reactions of the employees regarding the relationship of individual employees inside the organization. Furthermore, it can help companies to focus on the different factors that can help to maintain understanding of employees, consequently prevent any conflict from happening, which ensure good performance from all employees.


Equally, the role of HR departments is important in gauging employee attitude and especially the perceptions as described by the PC. This could assist organizations in avoiding violations in the contract or at least minimizing the detrimental outcomes which could adversely affect employee commitment.  Through a positive environment of openness and co-operation, employment flexibility and commitment can co-exist. Thus, it can help those atypical employees to feel that the company is exerting effort in order to make them feel comfortable in the working environment at the same time, given them the sense of opportunity to become a full-time employee in the company.


 


In general, it can be said that it is vital for organization to focus on the human strategies that will handle both the needs of the typical and atypical employees. This is important because motivation and commitment is connected with the different benefits and appraisal, together with the overall working environment. Therefore, it is vital for organizations to have strong bond with the unions and the local and national laws or the government in the process of establishing policies, rules and regulations for the atypical employees. It is important to build a fair and equal regulations and policies for all the employees, regardless of their status inside the company.


 


References


 


ALLAN, C., 2000. The hidden organizational costs of using non-standard employment. Personnel Review [online], 29 (2), Available from: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet?contentType=Article&Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/0140290204.html [Accessed 26 June 2009]


 


Australia Government. Available from: http://www.workplace.gov.au/workplace/Programmes/WorkFamily/TeleworkingorHomeBasedWork.htm [Accessed 26 June 2009]


 


Business Enterprise Regulatory Reform. Available from: http://www.berr.gov.uk/employment/employment-legislation/employment-guidance/page18475.html [Accessed 26 June 2009]


 


Commute Solution. Alternative Work Schedule. Available from: http://www.commutesolutions.com/letsride/altwork.html [Accessed 26 June 2009]


 


GOUDSWAARD, A. & Andries, F., 2002: Employment status and working conditions. European Foundation, Dublin


 


GUEST, D.E., 1998.  Beyond HRM: commitment and the contract culture. In: P. Sparrow/M. Marchington (Eds.): Human Resource Management: the new agenda,  37-51.


 


JACOBSEN, D.I. (2000): Managing increased part-time: does part-time work imply part-time commitment?


In: Managing Service Quality, 10(3): 187-200.


 


MEYER, J.P./PAUNONEN, S.V./GELLATLY, I.R./GOFFIN, R.D./JACKSON, D.M., 1989. Organizational commitment and job performance: it’s the nature of the commitment that counts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 74(1): 152-156


 


Sims, R.. 2002, Organizational Success through Effective Human Resources Management. Westport, CT: Quorum Books


 


TORKA, N., 2004. Atypical Employment Relationships and Commitment: Wishful Thinking or HR Challenge? Management Revenue [online], 15(3). Available from: http://www.gruner-druck.de/hampp-verlag-services/get?file=/frei/mrev_3_2004_324 [Accessed 26 June 2009]


 


Toshiba Australia. Available from: http://www.isd.toshiba.com.au/sig/sigdownload.html [Accessed 26 June 2009]


 


 


 


 


 



Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com


0 comments:

Post a Comment

 
Top