Managing Workforce Engagement And Commitment

The Concept of Unitary and Pluralistic Perspective Regarding to the Employee Relations

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An important part of a business organization is its employees. The success of a business organization highly depends on the current state of employee relationship. A good employee relationship helps the business organization to retain the skilled staff for a long time. Moreover, a good relationship encourages the workers to give more work effort in the business operation process. This implies that a good employee relationship is also important for an organization in order to increase the labor efficiency. Employee relation is the effort given by a company to manage the relationship between the employers and employees. The concept of the trade union emerged to protect the employees from the dominance power of employer through the equal bargaining power (Markedbyteachers.com, 2016). Moreover, another role of trade union in an organization is to represent the workers’ interest in maintenance of good employer-employee relationship. In this assignment, the main objective is to make an examination on the conflicting perspectives of the role of trade union that exists in an organization. In the second segment, these approaches will be used to resolve the employee relation problems in a business organization.

The most popular two employee relation approaches are unitary approach and pluralistic approach.

Under “Unitary Perspective”, a business organization is assumed as an integrated and harmonious system, where both employers and employees share same goal and objectives. In this approach, the existence of trade union in the business organization is treated as an unnecessary element. Even if a trade union is recognized, then the role of that union will be to act as a communication means between the employers and employees of the business organization. From the employee point of view, this unitary approach means working practice should be flexible and the overall business process should be improvement-oriented, multi skilled and ready to resolve the issues with an efficient manner whenever it is required (yourpersonalresearchwriter.blogspot.in, 2010). On the other hand, from the employer point of view, unitary approach means,the employment policy should be such that that it would able to motivate the workers, the objectives of the organization should be properly communicated to staff and theemployee reward system should be so designed to secure their loyalty and commitments. Moreover, the employers assume that under this approach it is the duty of each employee to discuss their personal objectives and integrate these objectives with the organization’s ultimate goal.

Key Ingredients of Effective Collective Bargaining

Pluralistic Approach is completely different from the unitary approach.Under this approach, the business organization is treated as a coalition of competing interest group mediated by the organization’s management. This approach assumes that there exists a greater amount of conflict in the business organization than harmony. Therefore, it may happen that management in its mediating role may pay insufficient attention to the needs and claims of employees (www.whatishumanresource.com, 2016). In such a situation, the employee section of the business organization forms trade union with the aim of protecting their needs and claims. For this reason, in the pluralistic approach, trade union is seen as a legitimate representative of employees in the business organization. This implies that, under this approach there exists a conflict of interest and disagreement between the employer group and employee group in the business organization. These conflicts are addressed by the collective bargaining power of trade union and the employer group of the business organization.

Collective Bargaining is a negotiation process between the employers and employees. At the time of bargaining process, the trade union plays a significant role. This trade union acts as a representative of employees group. The trade union always tries to increase the existing wage scale, makes the working hours favorable to the employees group, makes the employer to arrange necessary training program, improve the health and safety regulations of the company. Though the main objective of the trade union while making the collective bargaining process is to improve the work condition of the employees, sometime the trade union participates in the decision making process of the employer through this the collective bargaining process.  An effective process increases the morale and the productivity of the workforce, restricts the freedom of the management, prevents the management from doing unethical labor exploitation, and motivates the workers as they can now approach their owner directly on various matters. 

There are seven key ingredients of the effective collective bargaining arrangement. The collective bargaining process will not be successful without sufficient degree of organization. This implies that the strength of the worker’s union should be high enough so that the employers cannot be able to refuse the negotiation process. Another key ingredient of the bargaining process is freedom of association. Without this ingredient, it is not possible to make an effective bargaining process. Moreover, the bargaining process will not begin without the mutual recognition between the both workers group and owner group. An effective bargaining process by the trade union is not possible to make without proper political climate. This implies that, without the government support, the workers of any business organization cannot be able to form trade unions and make an effective bargaining process. In addition to these, the trade union should have sufficient authority power over its member. Otherwise, collective bargaining process will not be successful. Moreover, the strict prohibition of the give and take policy and unfair labor practices in the trade union are other key ingredients of effective bargaining process arrangement.

Merits and Demerits of Different Contemporary Approaches for Promotion of Effective Employee Relations

 Different contemporary approaches are used to promote effective relations in an organization. Among various approaches, partnership, engagement and employee voice are considered as most effective approach to maintain good employee relationship.

 The approach of the partnership working can be defined as an association of both employers and employees, which is based on the fulfillment of common as well as individual objectives of employer, employee and trade union. It has been observed that, the adaptation of this approach help the organization to achieve their goals by equating the objectives of the employers with that of employees. In this approach, there is little chance of emergence of conflicts in the organization related decision making progress. A healthy partnership helps a business organization to address the business related issues more quickly. Though this partnership approach involves a great communication between both the parties, but at the same time, it also motivates the employer to increase their commitments and dedication to the works. Another merit of this approach is it helps to raise the morale of the workers, which in turn increases the work productivity (Ipa-involve.com, 2016). On the other hand, this approach has some demerits also. This approach makes the trade union less powerful and puts the employees section in relatively weaker position than the employer section. Moreover, the introduction of this approach in the work environment needs more administration and increases the operation cost of the employers.

Another popular approach is employee engagement. According to this approach, there should be a proper condition in every organization, which will enable all the members of the organization to give their best effort every day (sloanreview.mit.edu, 2016). Moreover, this condition will motivate the employees to contribute in the organizational success through their commitment and dedication to the organization. This implies that, employee engagement is trust, integrity, two way commitment and communication between the organization and its member. This employee relation approach increases the likelihood of the business success by improving the organizational and individual performance, productivity and well-being (engageforsuccess.org, 2015). For this reason, the significance of this approach is increasing continuously with the passage of time. This approach has some merits (Butler, Tregaskis and Glover, 2011). It tends the employee to generate positive attitude towards the organization. Employees are seen to be respectful and helpful towards their colleague. Moreover, this approach motivates the workers to go beyond the job requirement and looks for the opportunities, which can in turn improve the organizational performance. In addition to these, it has been seen that, the job performance is directly linked with employee engagement. Even if the employee engagement is the willingness and ability of the employees to contribute in the organizational success, it has some drawback also (www.thetutorpages.com, 2016) Sometime employee engagement program are designed by the employer so that they can able to exploit the talent of the skilled labor to the company’s success.  Sometime, the main objective of this employee engagement program becomes “More take, less give” from the organization.

Employee Voice is another employee relation approach. It is the participation of employees in the decision making process of organization by raising their voices to highlight their satisfaction or dissatisfaction of jobs (Lund Dean, 2014). The significance of voice concept is increasing gradually in a variety of discipline (Burris, Rockmann and Kim, 2014). At present, the term “employee voice” becomes an elastic term. The popularity of this approach is increasing overtime as it ensures all the employees of a business organization that they can their view directly to the management authority. Some advantages of this approach are-1) It tends the workers more focused in their job, 2) it enhances the capability of the workers through effective HR management processes, 3) it helps the organization to retain their skilled labor and 6) it articulates and helps to shape the internal culture of the organization (Kaufman, 2014).

 In this part, the main objective is to use different employment relation approaches that are discussed in the above section in order to resolve the employment issues in Tesco. Tesco is multinational grocery retailer of United Kingdom. At present, the number of employees in this company is 500,000.  Recently, this company is facing some problem with their employees, which in turn is affecting the work culture of this company. Due to the festive season, Tesco workers are facing tremendous work pressure (Business Insider, 2016). This tends them to do extra hours. However, the workers do not get extra payment for this. This causes a kind of job dissatisfaction in their mind. Tesco is grocery retail stores.  Since the business success of a retail business depends on the performance and commitment of the workers, therefore Tesco should solve this employment problem as soon as possible in order to sustain its business growth.  Many Tesco workers complained that, they have to work for 65 hours in week whereas according the agreement, their total work hour in a week is 37 hours.  In this context, it can be said that, Tesco should adapt employee engagement approach and employee voice approach in order to solve this employment relation issues. Under these two approaches, the employees can directly talked with the management authority regarding their issues and vision on the future business success through trade union. In this particular case, the TESCO authority has argued that, they would pay their workers for the extra work. However, this decision of the management was not conveyed to the workers for some reason. This makes the workers think that, the company is exploiting them unethically. This hampers the existing employee relation in Tesco. Now, if Tesco employs employee engagement and employee voice approach, then the workers can talk directly with the upper management authority.  Then, it will be easy for the workers to get the information on the managers’ current step. Moreover, another benefit of these two approaches is it will reduce the possibility of the emergence of conflict because of any miscommunication between the management authority and the employee union.  In addition to these, it can be said that, if the workers of Tesco are aware about the extra hour payment, then they will be encouraged to put more effort beyond their work hour. Moreover, this also makes the employees to feel that, the management of Tesco is concerned with the well –being of its workers. This will in turn motivate the workers and generates positive attitude towards the work. In this way, Tesco can resolve the current employment issues with the help of employee engagement approach and employee voice approach. Here, in this context, it is important to note that, these two approaches will make the employees more involved with the current goal of the organization.  This will upsurge the all over organizational performance and help Tesco to acquire more market share.

Conclusion:

The business organization having strong employer and employee relationship is able to reap various kinds of benefits such as increment in the employee productivity, high employee’s loyalty to the organization, reduction of conflict in work environment, provision of the motivation to the workers to give more effort. Trade union plays a significant role in the employee relation in a business organization. Different behavioral theorists perceive the scenario of employee relation in business organization and the factors that are likely to affect this relation differently. Because of this, there emerges a different approach in the employee relation field. The main objective of Collective Bargaining is to improve the overall working conditions. An effective collective bargaining process is very important for the employer, employee and society as whole. A healthy employee relationship is the key driver of the future success of a business organization. This relationship is also beneficial from the employee side also. In the second part of this assignment, it has been shown how Tesco solves its current employment problem using different employment relation approaches.

References

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