Employment Relationship In New Zealand Organizations

Nuances of employment relationship

Discuss About The Technology Academic Completing Education.

Employment relationship refers to the legal connection between the employees and the employers. When an individual works under certain legal and organizational conditions in exchange for remuneration, an employment relationship is generated in the organization (Ilo.org, 2018). The research paper aims to find out the nuances of employment relationship in the organizations of New Zealand by addressing the issue of the perceptions of the younger management regarding the performance and productivity judgment of the older employees of the organization. The researcher will be conducting the research by taking a case study company in New Zealand and conducting a survey to collect primary data relevant to research topic. The response data will be analyzed qualitatively to reach to a logical conclusion.

Employment relationship is an essential part of the organizational culture. It is the fundamental step of employer and employee relationship. This relationship starts as soon as an employer hires a new employee. The success of a business depends much on this relationship, as a good relationship can lead to employee happiness, motivation, job satisfaction and increased productivity. Mutual respect and mutual reliance are very important for creating the employment relationship (Rosenbloom, 2014). The building of this relationship requires many HR policies to be implemented. Most importantly, the employers must create an environment where the employees can feel comfortable and trust the employers and build a relationship. However, there are many boundaries in such employment relationship, such as, there should not be very close relationship between the employer and employee, which can hamper the productivity or results in favoritism or unfairness (Latorre et al., 2016).

As stated by Sobral, Chambel & Castanheira (2016), the agreement between the employer and the employees on the conditions of working together creates the employment relationship. The employees agree to work under the supervision, monitoring and control of the employers or managers in exchange for the remuneration and other benefits. Apart from the regulations, bounded by the employment legislations of the nation, there are rights and responsibilities in an employment relationship, enjoyed by both the parties. The aspects of employment, such as, working hours, tangible and non tangible benefits, holidays, career growth opportunities all determine the development as well as improvement of the employment relationship (Tyosuojelu.fi, 2018).

According to the Labor Laws of ILO, employment relationship helps in creating the reciprocal rights and obligations between the employers and employees. This is the medium through which, the employees gain access to the rights and benefits of the employment. The relationship also determines the implementation of the social security and labor law provisions for the employees. It also provides the primary point of reference to determine the extent and nature of the employer’s rights and the obligations towards the employees (Ilo.org, 2018).

Types of employment relationship

Employment relationship can be of various types. In organization, all types of relationships among the employers and the employees fall under the different categories of employment relationship. In terms of wages or salaries, the employment relationships are categorized as permanent or fixed term and temporary or part time. Various positions, such as, trainees, contractual apprenticeship, employees with disabilities and employees with promotion subsidies, all have different terms and conditions, which determine the dimensions of employment relationship in an organization (Stat.fi, 2018). All these categories have different parameters of rule and regulations, bounded by the law.

Positive employment relationship ensures high degree of employee engagement and leads to greater and improved business outcomes and better well-being. Management of employment relationship is very much crucial as that helps in establishing a healthy relationship in an organization. The management process involves many elements, such as, psychology contract, employee communication, employee engagement, conflict and meditation, management for absenteeism, dispute resolution, resolving gender pay gap, flexible working practices and workplace diversity (Rumbles & Scott, 2016). According to CIPD (2018), the employers must formulate and implement the policies regarding all the above mentioned factors to establish good employment relationships. For example, a trust should be built between the employees and the employer through transparent internal communication. The employees must be informed about the growth strategies and business development, so that they feel engaged with the organization. This requires an efficient internal communication system. The effective communication strategy includes the social media, role of the line managers and two-way or the multidirectional communication and finally implementing the communication strategy to enhance the employment relationship.

There is New Zealand Employment Relations Act 2000 (ERA) introduced by the Parliament of New Zealand in October 2000. All the employees of all the organizations in the country are covered under this Act. It specifically includes the homeworkers, that is, those workers who purchases raw materials from the suppliers and work at their homes and sell back the products to the providers. However, the Act does not cover the volunteers, armed forces, some sections of the police, judges, NZ SIS, and relationship between the employer and the contractor or between contractors and the sub-contractors. The Act has outlined some of the duties and obligations of the employers and the employees to ensure an establishment of positive employment relationship in every organization. It has also mentioned the terms for breach of the duties and penalties for that (Legislation.govt.nz, 2018).

Positive employment relationship

It is a very common scenario in every organization that the managers supervise and measure the employees’ performance and productivity. Perceptions in the employment relationship management are as significant as the reality. The behavior of the employers as well as the employees is a reflection of their perceptions. The beliefs and knowledge about any particular scenario helps in shaping the perceptions of the individuals and that guide them to act in a particular manner (Vidyarthi, Anand & Liden, 2014). These perceptions should not be ignored. The perceptions might be wrong but the organizations must try to understand the reasons and issues and address those to change the perceptions. Both the employees and the managers must understand the power of perceptions and act accordingly to channelize the positive aspects and amend the loopholes in the system (Downey et al., 2015).

The researcher plans to conduct the research using qualitative methods of research. This depicts the plan of the researcher about conducting the research in the most appropriate manner and getting the most rational conclusion to the research problem.

The research topic revolves around the perceptions of the younger managers about the productivity and performance of the older subordinates in an organization. Hence, this requires perception analysis process to be applied for analysis of the data. The researcher will be adopting the interpretivism research paradigm as it allows the researcher to apply the interpretation skills to analyze the topic of the research. It mainly deals with small sample size (Cowling, 2016).

Following this philosophy, the researcher will adopt the deduction approach of research. In this approach, the researcher draws the inferences from the gathered data to answer the research questions. In this process, the research phenomenon is tested against established theories and the researcher does not have to generate new theories like the induction approach or choose one potential solution from a set of solutions like in the abduction approach (Sekaran & Bougie, 2016).

The researcher will adopt the case study research design to address the research issue. Since, it requires first hand information about the perceptions of the managers about the older subordinates; it will be easier to collect the data and analyze to get the insights from some individuals who have relevant experience. Hence, case study research design will be most suitable in this case. Bank of New Zealand is one of the biggest banks of New Zealand, with over 5000 employees in 180 branches across the country (Bnz.co.nz, 2018). It is chosen as the case study company due to the reason that, in the banks, such circumstances are common where many older subordinates work under the younger managers. Hence, it is assumed that collection of primary data would be easier.

Management of employment relationship

In the given research, the researcher will follow the interview strategy. It helps in gaining the first hand and in-depth insight about the research topic (Brinkmann, 2014). Since, perception analysis needs to be done, interview strategy is the best option to gather knowledge about the managers’ perceptions on the older employees’ performances. It will be done on 3 managers of Bank of New Zealand.

Primary data will be collected for this research. To collect the data, the researcher will conduct an interview on 3 managers of the Bank of New Zealand, containing questions focusing on the topic of the research. 5 questions will be framed in way that would address the dimensions and nuances of employment relationship in the bank, especially, the managers’ perceptions about the performances of the older subordinates. Since, interpretivism philosophy is chosen for conducting the study; the sample size cannot be large because that would create much complexity in the data analysis. Therefore, small sample size is chosen by applying purposive sampling technique under non-probability sampling. 3 managers will be chosen from one branch of the bank and the researcher will visit the branch personally to conduct the interviews.

The researcher will be applying qualitative data analysis method to conduct the perception analysis on the response data. The analysis will be based on the interpretation skills of the researcher and thematic analysis will be done. The results of the perception analysis will be presented via graphs, charts and tables for visual representation and explained accordingly as per the themes of the analysis.

There are few ethical considerations in this research. Firstly, since the research topic will address the dimension of the employment relationship between the younger managers and older subordinates, data needs to be collected on the productivity and performance judgment by the managers about the older employees. Hence, informed consent must be needed from the participants of the survey. Secondly, the data must be used for educational purpose only and the respondents should be informed about that. Thirdly, plagiarism is a serious offence in the educational world. Hence, the researcher must maintain the originality of the paper by citing all the information correctly.

Items	Amount
Arranging equipment	$         75.00
Visit to library for literature study	$         45.00
Designing the interview questions	$                –
Visit to one branch of Bank of New Zealand conducting the interview	$         55.00
Translations of the audio transcripts of the interview responses	$         –
Miscellaneous expenses (For eg. Purchasing of a book, journal or annual report of Bank of New Zealand, cost of print out, subscription charges, etc.)	$      250.00
Total	$      425.00

(Source: Author)

As stated earlier, Bank of New Zealand is chosen for the case study and 3 managers will be selected as respondents for the interview. Thus, the researcher will have to visit one branch of the bank to conduct the interview on the research topic.

	Month
Task	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Making a strategy
Making a framework
Literature review
Primary data collection
Conducting interview
Data analysis
Presenting the findings and discussion
Providing the conclusion
Thesis submission

(Source: Author)

References

Bnz.co.nz. (2018). About us – BNZ. Bnz.co.nz. Retrieved 16 April 2018, from https://www.bnz.co.nz/about-us

Brinkmann, S. (2014). Interview. In Encyclopedia of critical psychology (pp. 1008-1010). Springer New York.

CIPD. (2018). Employee Communication | Factsheets | CIPD. CIPD. Retrieved 16 April 2018, from https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/communication/factsheet

Cowling, M. A. (2016). Navigating the Path Between Positivism and Interpretivism for the psychology Academic Completing Education Research. In Constructing Methodology for Qualitative Research (pp. 45-58). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Downey, S. N., Werff, L., Thomas, K. M., & Plaut, V. C. (2015). The role of diversity practices and inclusion in promoting trust and employee engagement. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 45(1), 35-44.

Ilo.org. (2018). Employment Relationship. Ilo.org. Retrieved 16 April 2018, from https://ilo.org/ifpdial/areas-of-work/labour-law/WCMS_CON_TXT_IFPDIAL_EMPREL_EN/lang–en/index.htm

Latorre, F., Guest, D., Ramos, J., & Gracia, F. J. (2016). High commitment HR practices, the employment relationship and job performance: A test of a mediation model. European Management Journal, 34(4), 328-337.

Legislation.govt.nz. (2018). Employment Relations Act 2000 No 24 (as at 28 September 2017), Public Act Contents – New Zealand Legislation. Legislation.govt.nz. Retrieved 16 April 2018, from https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2000/0024/109.0/contents.html

Rosenbloom, D. H. (2014). Federal service and the constitution: The development of the public employment relationship. Georgetown University Press.

Rumbles, S. D., & Scott, P. J. (2016). Managing the employment relationship. In Leading, managing and developing people. CIPD Publications.

Sekaran, U., & Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Sobral, F., Chambel, M. J., & Castanheira, F. (2016). Managing motivation in the contact center: The employment relationship of outsourcing and temporary agency workers. Economic and Industrial Democracy, 0143831X16648386.

Stat.fi. (2018). Type of employment relationship | Concepts | Statistics Finland. Stat.fi. Retrieved 16 April 2018, from https://www.stat.fi/meta/kas/palvelussuhteen_en.html

Tyosuojelu.fi. (2018). Employment relationship – Occupational safety and health. Tyosuojelu.fi. Retrieved 16 April 2018, from https://www.tyosuojelu.fi/web/en/employment-relationship

Vidyarthi, P. R., Anand, S., & Liden, R. C. (2014). Do emotionally perceptive leaders motivate higher employee performance? The moderating role of task interdependence and power distance. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(2), 232-244.