Employee Voice Covers - Coursework Example

Running Header: Employee Voice Covers Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code & Name: Date of Submission: Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Employee Voice 4 Employee participation and involvement 5 Employee communication 7 Representative participation 10 Collective bargaining 10 Conclusion 11 Introduction Employment relations are normally concerned with the practice and theory which are associated with the administration and terms of the employment. In normal circumstances employment relationship is involved with the socio-political element of expression and incidence of conflict, how the power and responsibilities are distributed between the employees and management and the legislative and social regulatory framework which do exist among the employment relationship. Normally as business increase in revenue and size, they do face a challenge which is inevitable of communication breakdown between the employees and managers between departments (Gennard & Judge 2005, p. 85). The deficiency in communication gives a result to a “silo effect” among the departments there by creating a difficult stratification between the team members and their managers. Typically, these organizations becomes a victim of lengthy top-down communication which used to work in small organizations in the earlier days but today’s companies and organizations should come up with ways to convert to bidirectional channel from the one-way communication so that the employees will be in a position to give their feedback to the management. For the execution of a well informed decisions relating to the business, the managers do require more than a ledger of numbers for the understanding of what is going on the employee’s arena. The employee’s deals one on one with the clients and they can provide valuable feedback on firsthand experience. When the managers do create a bidirectional communication between them and employees it provides an organizational culture that helps to breakdown silos and comes with a team work between the staff and management. Employee Voice Typically, employment relations is apprehensive with control and power in the employment relationship and to which extent the administration is ready to make decisions that are unimpeded. A key area in the employee relation is the way by which the employees are in a position to influence managerial decisions (Torrington 2011, p.455). Normally the employee voice refers to different variety of structures and processes which do enable and other times empower employees indirectly or directly to contribute to decision making in the firm. There are several mechanisms by which the employees can contribute to making decision with the management. Traditionally, the employees have been pressurizing to be allowed to have a say at their place of work and this has been stemmed from notions of industrial democracy. This pressure is normally exerted as a reflection by the employees to show the extent they feel empowered and they are at liberty to articulate management concerns. This was increasingly being supplemented from the employer view that utilizing and allowing employee voice lend to growth of business. In the early 1970s the employee voice that was used in decision making was through participation of the workers indirectly through representation of the trade union. In the 1980s there was a decline in the trade union recognition and membership, direct involvement by the employee was achieved through establishment of the forums managerially and the usage of the communication channels. In the 1990s there was a shift on the focus to partnership between the workers and the management and the making of the decision jointly. Channels or mechanisms through which the employees use to communicate can be both informal and formal and do have a variety of intentions which range from simply passing grievances to means by which the employees and employers do share responsibility for their decisions (Rose 2007, p. 482). In order to bring together the outcomes, form, mechanisms and purpose of the employee, voice has been categorized to co-operative and mutuality workplace relations, contribution of the employee to management decision making, expression of collective organization and individual dissatisfaction articulation. Some of the forms of the employee voice are normally bottom-up which do result not only from the managerial forums but more from the desires of the employees to be listened to whether individually or collectively, informally or formally, through representatives or directly. Methods for employee voice are normally introduced by the management may be as a part of the plan of involvement in the making of the decisions or may be the employees pressurizing to have it (Dundon & Gollan 2007, p. 1190). In the normal circumstances it is the management that dictates the degree of the employee voice and there is a term used known as representation gap that is used to refer to the dissimilarity which can be made by the employee to the management to influence decisions and the extent of the influence they would like to have. Employee participation and involvement The employee involvement is normally defined as having a dual aim of engaging the contribution, understanding and support of all the employees in the company and ensuring that their cooperation and commitment objectives is achieved. Employee involvement normally seeks to bind the employee’s talents via soliciting of their ideas, opinions and views to address and identify problems of the organization. Employee involvement brings along the degree of sharing powers too close between the employees and the managers in the decision making (Strauss 2006, p. 790). Employee involvement also is underpinned by the assumption that employees and the managers do share interests which are common and that the management are supposed to hold on to the decision making fundamentals. Despite the fact that the employee involvement is associated with the empowerment of the employees it does not show the accurate redistribution of power in the relationship of the employment as the managers can take back this empowerment if in the normal circumstances does not serve its purpose. In the normal practice, employee involvement is regularly focused on the involvement of individuals and small groups in addressing operational, local issues by the facilitation of sharing of information between the employees and the line managers and within the work groups. In general terms, employee involvement does not normally extend to the provision of opportunities to workers of having input into level which is higher and decision making which are strategic such as wider organizational policy or working conditions and payments (Dundon & Rollinson 2007, p. 620). Mechanisms put into place for employee involvement are habitually direct in the sense that the representatives of the employees are not involved. The involvement mechanisms examples do include team working, quality circles, suggestion schemes and self-managed workgroups. Employee participation in general terms has been regarded as a further extensive form of voice than employee involvement for the reason that it tends to include a greater extent of decision making jointly between the employees and the management. Employee participation is stranded in pluralism in that by implicit it recognizes that there are a range of stake holders that do exist whose interests normally do not at all times match. Employee participation do imply some extent of sharing power and intensity of absolute management by the employers and this leads to resistance by the managers and in particular when the trade union is involved in the representation there is perception that it slows down the process of decision making. The contrast between the involvement and participation is that the mechanisms that are involved in the participation are derived from the employees themselves and not managerially controlled and imposed. Employee participation results are desires from the employees themselves to have greater influence on the decisions that affect them either indirectly or directly rather than the desire of the managers to improve organizational and individual performance (Bryson 2005, p. 1120). Participation is normally involved with negotiation, a conflict can occur between the management and the employees and in particular where employees do participate in decisions which are of higher level and interests which are differing are more likely to occur. Employee communication There are different types of communication of participation initiatives and employee involvement that do provide employees with contradictory degree of influence over decisions of workplace. First is the downward communication which normally refers to top to down communication from management to employees. Typical practices do include company newsletters and magazines, staff intranet, presentation, memoranda, notice boards, employee reports, video briefings, communication meetings and team briefings. In the past years there has been an increase in the usage of ICT in communication between the employees for example the use of e-bulletins and emails. Communication practices in normal circumstances refer to processes that are used by the management to communicate to the staff and inform them about the resolution they have come up with and to explain the rationale of these decisions and in particular when the information is from senior administration with a purpose to communicate about the organization strategy, objectives and mission. Alternatively, this type of downward communication between employees and line managers could be used to communicate expectations on the performance and staff impact on business decisions widely (Hardy & Sullivan 2006, p. 463). Effective communication between the management and the employee is a basic means of development of psychological contract which is positive and will improve individual’s identification with strategic objectives of an organization and help in development of sustainable organizational structure. Although employment relationship has been cited as a very significant constituent in successful employee management, problems do result from inadequate communication and misunderstanding where the intentions of one of the parties are misrepresented or not made clear. In those cases managers and employees normally come to a consensus on the best way forward. The second one is the upward problem solving which its main concern is to empower workers to advance the processes of the work by encouraging them either in small groups or individually to come up with solutions to solve specific challenges that occur locally and also taking greater responsibility in the decision making for example in allocation and work organizations. This is normally part of a wide focus on high quality and high performance (Wilkinson & Dundon 2004, p. 302). To be specific the underlying principle for such activities is giving the employees a superior ownership when it comes to decision making for the development of increased association with firm strategic objectives and the improvement of job satisfaction and increased motivation among the workers. Workers at times can signify an untapped resource of understanding and knowledge of work processes and job roles and therefore such involvement can bring in benefits to the organization by capturing the expertise of those who are very close to the work condition (Lloyd & Newell 2005, p. 372). The examples of upward solving methods may include suggestion schemes, employee focus groups, attitude surveys, problem solving groups or quality circles; self managed teams or autonomous team working where the employees normally work in groups and they do take responsibility of their own tasks, they come up with ideas on how the tasks can be accomplished and normally a team leader is appointed from the members of the group. The extent of upward problem solving do vary from individuals to small groups who are charged with solving specific problems or wider measures are taking which are used to seek opinions from the employees that cover a wide area of issues which do allow the differences between the managers and the employees to be resolved by helping the managers and the employees to understand each other’s concerns better, wants, needs and expectations. Upward solving normally represents a kind of consultation where the employee’s views are required but they might not necessarily influence the actions or decisions that will be made by the managers. When the employees are involved in decision making in particular where their views do have a noticeable influence in the decision making process they can facilitate successful decision implementation and improve effectiveness of the whole process (Blyton & Turnbull 2008, p. 125). This kind of involvement can be a major means to strengthen the company ethos and culture and particularly help to promote the notion of unitary that the managers and the employees do share common goals and interests. Nevertheless, when the employees are empowered they might play a major contribution to an advanced psychological contract which in the long run might have an opposite effect. It has been suggested that employee empowerment will finally lead to unfulfilled expectations of control because the administration will not always meet the employee’s requirements. Representative participation Representative participation in normal circumstances may refer to mechanisms of collective and indirect participation by the employees in making of decision through management negotiation and consultation either with elected worker’s representatives or with trade unions (Conway & Briner 2005, p. 632). This participation basically provides the employees with an extent of influence over a wide range of issues in decision making representatives such as work councils, advisory councils and committees which are joint consultation. Where participation is through trade union employer recognition, the form and terms of participation is not wholly management controlled (Edwards 2008, p.225). In many circumstances trade union representations tends to have more influence and power over decisions and mostly because there is failure to consider employees view and coming to an agreement can lead to industrial action. Collective bargaining This is one of the representative participation which is very powerful. In normal circumstance it refers to joint regulation of certain areas of employment relationship which are recognized by the trade union and the employers (Bolton 2006, p. 302). The solidarity of the workers lies at the bargaining collectively and this result to a strong employee bargaining position through the management. Recognition agreement between the management and the trade unions do specify both the issues which are normally covered by the collective bargaining and the level of taking place of the collective bargaining being whether organizational, national or workplace is mostly referred to as multi employer bargaining. Conclusion Extensive research has been done and it has shown that satisfied and motivated employees tend to play a major role in terms of maintain commitment to customer satisfaction and organizational productivity. Employee relations are normally concerned with the regulation and management of the employee relationship in its social, economic, political and legal context. Although they are used interchangeably, employee participation tend to refer to activities which offer a chance for making decision jointly while the employee involvement is normally associated with practices that do seek to stimulate employee commitment and contribution to organizational objectives. Although employment relationship has been cited as a very significant constituent in successful employee management, problems do result from inadequate communication and misunderstanding where the intentions of one of the parties are misrepresented or not made clear (Taylor & Emir 2009, p.254). In those cases managers and employees normally come to a consensus on the best way forward. There are several mechanisms by which the employees can contribute to making decision with the management. Traditionally, the employees have been pressurizing to be allowed to have a say at their place of work and this has been stemmed from notions of industrial democracy. This pressure is normally exerted as a reflection by the employees to show the extent they feel empowered and they are at liberty to articulate management concerns. When the employees are involved actively they can change the organization positively. References Bolton, S 2006, Emotion management in the workplace, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke Blyton, P & Turnbull, P 2008, The dynamics of employee relations, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan. Bryson, A 2005, Union effects on employee relations in Britain, Human Relations, Vol. 4, no. 3, pp.111-39. Conway, N & Briner, R 2005, Understanding psychological contracts at work: a critical evaluation of theory and research, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Dundon, T & Gollan, P 2007, Reconceptualising voice in the non-union workplace, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 18, no. 7, pp 1182-98. Dundon, T & Rollinson, D 2007, Understanding Employment Relations, McGraw Hill, London Edwards, P 2008, Industrial relations: theory and practice. Oxford, Blackwell. Gennard, J & Judge, G 2005, Employee Relations, Oxford university press, London. Hardy, C & Sullivan, S 2006, The power behind empowerment: Implications for research and practice, Human Relations, Vol. 12, no. 51, pp. 451–83. Lloyd, C & Newell, H 2005, Changing management–union relations: Consultation in the UK pharmaceutical industry, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 22, no.3, pp. 357–82 Rose, E 2007, Employment Relations, Pearson, London. Strauss, G 2006, Worker participation: some under-considered issues, Industrial Relations, Vol. 45, no.4, pp. 778–803. Torrington, D 2011, Human Resource Management, Oxford university press, London. Taylor, S and Emir, A. 2009, Employment law: an introduction, Oxford University press, Oxford. Wilkinson, A & Dundon, T 2004, Changing patterns of employee voice: Case studies from the UK and Republic of Ireland, The Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 298–322. . Read More