Employment law and labour markets - Essay Example

? Employment Law and Labour Markets Employment Law and Labour Markets Introduction Headquartered in London, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) is an association of professionals in the management of human resources (HR). Through its members’ experience and research, the CIPD is charged with the responsibility of representing the HR community’s interests in public policy. This is a significant aspect of the body, because it has distinguished itself as a representative organ for public policy alone, rather than political interest. The body conducts research on all aspects that touch on the working life, ranging from recruitment to productivity, the balance of life and work and employment law. It also concerns itself with coaching employers and employees in cross-cultural working and building a healthy relationship between recruitment agencies and the HR community. These agendas culminate into the CIPD’s flagship policy and goal of a commitment to champion better working lives and work in order to benefit the society, economies, business organizations as well as individuals (CIPD 2013b, p. 4). Using questions as subheadings, this assignment will be divided into three parts and discuss the importance of this goal to different parties such as employees, trade unions, organizations and the government of the UK. It will further discuss ways in which organizations and other involved parties can work towards achieving the goal of better work and working lives. Finally, the assignment will point out and discuss the possible barriers that organizations face in trying to achieve the goal. Why do you think this goal is important for different parties to employment relationships? Since it affects a wide spectrum starting from recruitment time, the course of employees’ tenure and termination, CIPD’s goal of better work and working lives is significant to all parties that are involved in employment relationships. This is mainly because the experience of work and working lives, as well as the concept of a shared purpose, is not only determined by the kind of work people do, but also the way they are managed (Ellis 2012, p. 24). In this sense, management is viewed from the perspective of the HR department, organization level and the legislation or the government. Another factor that makes this goal important is the unprecedented rate of economic changes, especially after the global recession. This has presented a critical and urgent need to make sure that the way people work, the workforce and the workplace cultures are aligned with the contemporary world and support performance and future growth (Williams & Adam-Smith 2010, p. 39). To reach that conclusion, the CIPD had observed that the economies and societies that people live in shape the character of work and working lives. They established that to achieve better work and working lives requires a mandatory understanding of the key trends that shape the societies, organizations and economies as well as their implications. Through the CIPD model, the involved parties have a clearer insight of what work entails, where and how it should be conducted, including trends and the changing skills that jobs require. The CIPD considers the parties involved to be the employers, employees, managers and their representatives. By embracing the goal, all parties will be at par with the ever shifting career patterns, advances in technology and improved ways of working on a global level. CIPD’s focus on the workforce through the goal also brings an insight into demographics, expectations, attitudes, generational shifts and the base of changing skills and education and learning skills (CIPD 2013b, p. 5). Ultimately, the parties will be able to relate their understanding of this focus to the workplace. When the workforce understands the workplace culture, develops an attitude of engagement and trust, acknowledges and appreciates the way they organised, managed and developed, they become better placed to adapt and evolve with the organization. This is important for both the employees and the organization because of its ultimate implication of behavioral and attitudinal improvements. There will be notable improvements in the level of job security, motivation, employment relations, performance, commitment and the workforce’s intention to stay. Although the goal of better work and working lives brings about several benefits and advantages to different parties, there is the key shared benefit among them in the form of a healthy balance between work and life (Wanrooy et al 2012, p. 19). For the organizations, they will be able to recruit and keep the right employees as a result of offering a balance in work and life as well as flexible options of work. Consequently, they earn a competitive edge by gaining access to a broader pool of recruitment. The CIPD model enables employers to understand that a poor balance of work and life has the potential to cause stress, absenteeism and poor productivity. On the other hand, by promoting better work and working lives, employers will assist their employees to achieve the optimum balance which is an integral part of general wellbeing, motivation and work satisfaction. The general wellness translates into monetary gains for organizations since expenses associated with recruiting, training or absenteeism are considerably reduced following the higher levels of employee commitment, motivation and engagement (Holman et al 2003, p. 71). On their part, employees benefit by gaining the ability to manage several responsibilities at work, home and the community. When they achieve a work-life balance through the initiative of better work and working lives, employees can work in a flexible manner such that managing personal and family commitments can seamlessly run concurrently with earning an income. In this way, trade unions also become part of supportive workplaces that trust and value employees, since their objectives include the advocacy for professionalism and loyalty at the workplace from both employers and employees. The UK government would be a special type of beneficiary of the goal of the better work and working lives initiative from the perspective of youth employment. A 2013 CIPD report shows that there is a high rate of youth unemployment in the UK because most employers seek to recruit older and experienced workers. In the same report, CIPD has proposed eight recommendations that will help reduce the gap between employers and the youth, specifically targeting line managers who have been identified as the key barrier to youth employment (CIPD 2013a, p. 37). The success of the proposals has the potential to relieve the UK government the burden of having to deal with the growing number of unemployed youth who may turn into social problems. How can organisations and other parties try to achieve this goal? One way organisations can move towards achieving the goal of better work and working lives is by creating and sustaining positive psychological contracts. These contracts differ from the tangible ones in form of legal documents that may also differ among employees. Rather, psychological contracts are a representation of the notion of trust, understanding and relationship which may exist for either one employee or a number of them. More importantly, they represent informal obligations, perceptions and mutual beliefs between employers and their employees. When an organisation has such contracts in place and each party fulfils their obligations, it forms the first step towards better work and working lives because the contract is primarily concerned with the common expectations of both input and outcome (Kew & Stredwick 2010, p. 14). Therefore, in the context of employment, an organisation that creates and sustains psychological contracts develops positively the way the workforce is treated and what their contributions in terms of input are. Just like the CIPD goal of better work and working lives, a psychological contract is neither a process nor a tool. Rather, it is a philosophy and model that guides organisations towards better work and working lives by informing the way the workplace is structured and managed and also dealing with the workforce within them. The workforce in the organisation also gets to understand better the concept of give and take that is characteristic of being a member of staff of an organisation and, in particular, from a leadership position. Through positive psychological contracts, leaders can understand why it often becomes difficult to manage or motivate some employees, especially when the challenge is widespread or has been going on for a while. Psychological contracts enable organisations to align the needs of their workforces with those of their own, a notion that the CIPD acknowledges is elusive (Daniels 2006b, p. 53). Organisations also have the option of engaging employees in order to achieve the goal. Employee engagement can be approached from the perspective of three components which are related, namely, behavioural, emotional and cognitive. To result in a workforce that can be termed as engaged, the organisation must work through these components to ensure that its employees are involved in the conception, designing and implementing of processes and workplace changes. A study by the CIPD associated employee engagement with a broad range of positives outcomes at both the organisational and individual levels since employees who are engaged are innovative and better performers. It is, therefore, essential for the organisation to enhance the cognitive component of employee engagement because of its concerns with the employees’ conviction of the working conditions, leaders and the entire organisation (Taylor 2011, p. 69). Similarly, the emotional component is concerned with the way the workforce feels about all the three components and whether they bear negative or positive attitudes towards the leaders and the organisation. Then, the organisation’s value-added component stems from employee engagement’s behavioural aspect and is made up of the engaged employees’ discretionary effort which they bring as input. Such effort is usually in the form of energy, intellectual power and extra time that they devote to their tasks, shared purpose and the organisation. It is an appreciated fact that the level of engagement cannot be the same across the entire labour market, but organisations must create an optimum level suitable for their industries. For instance, the public sector in the UK has a higher extent of employee engagement in comparison to the private sector, but the employees in the private sector are engaged more frequently (Taylor 2011, p. 37). Further, men and younger employees are less engaged than women and older employees. Organisations must, therefore, be guided by the most significant drivers of employee engagement. Generally, they include the meaningfulness of the work employees do; their ability to communicate their views upwards the management hierarchy; the vision and communication of the senior management; how supportive the work environment is; how suitable employees are to the jobs they do; and the organisation’s style of line management (Nairns 2011, p. 63) On its part, the government can make use of its lawmaking power to achieve the goal of better work and working lives. For example, some legislation, such as those concerned with health and safety, are applicable across the entire labour market and affect all workplaces and workforces. Through the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the UK government can enforce safety and health legislation at the work place in conformity with the goals of the CIPD (Daniels 2006a, p. 46). Depending on the industry sector, the HSE provides advice on safety and health matters and also guidance on legislation that is relevant to different sectors. The HSE can also conduct studies into how effective regulations and safety and health issues are and their compatibility with the goals of CIPD. After consultations with employers, employees and their representatives, they can then make laws and regulations that support the cause of the goal. In the context of the current labour market, what might be some of the problems for organisations seeking to achieve this goal? Unemployment is still prevalent in the current labour market in the UK. Further, studies have indicated that employment may contract in both private and public sectors, with less than a fifth of employers reporting that they intend to increase their number of staff by over two percent even if the economy stabilizes (CIPD 2013c, p. 2). Low expectations that employees will be more productive and labour costs are cited as the key reasons as to why employers will not increase their workforces. With the speed at which the nature if work is changing, the people in employment may be overworked and, in turn, exposed to stress-related health hazards. Without a proper work-life balance, the way tasks are designed would probably put heavy workloads on the workforce, reduce resting time and lead to the underutilization of the workforce’s skills. Poor management style in some organisations will also result in the lack of employee engagement, create poor communication structures and bring about the absence of policies based on families. For example, when employees must seek approval for everything they do, including solving family problems, from an organisation that is insensitive to family needs, their work and working lives cannot be improved (Willey B 2012, p. 55). When the organisations fail to support interpersonal relationships in such circumstances, the workforce will end up in unhealthy social environments and miss out on the support of supervisors and coworkers. Another barrier to achieve the goal comes in the form of conflicting work roles or uncertain expectations that stem from the organisation placing too much responsibility on the workforce. This is usually caused by the organisation's lack of career concerns, growth opportunity and job security for its workforce. For instance, when an organisation is restructured, as will be necessary when positions must be filled without recruiting and the workforce is not sufficiently involved, anxiety over what will become of them is inevitable among the workforce. More importantly, some provisions of the employment law may put limits on the structure and form of employee engagement in workforce-management relationships and demand that organisations seek legal advice which may come at a cost (Willey B 2012, p. 48). For the goal to be achieved, organisational change is inevitable, which provides another aspect of a barrier to the organisation. It becomes more pronounced when the workload is not in line with the capabilities of the workers and the organisation’s resources and jobs are not designed to provide stimulation, opportunities and meaning. The result could be job and health complaints, low morale and high workforce turnover, beating the very purpose of better work and working lives. Conclusion In conclusion, the CIPD has born the responsibility of ensuring better work and working lives aimed at benefiting individuals, economies, businesses and the society, a goal that is important to all the parties (Budd 2011, p. 3). Following the global economic recession, the importance of this goal becomes apparent, because the economies in which people live form a key determining factor of their work and working lives. Ultimately, the economies will play a role in job satisfaction and the general wellbeing of the entire society. Organisations benefit from this goal because of the resultant balance between work and life among the employees, earning competitive advantages within their industries through better-performing employees. Employees are also able to manage their lives outside work in a better way. Organisations can achieve this goal by creating psychological contracts between themselves and their employees, as well as promoting employee engagement in the running of business. The government can also participate towards the achievement of the goal by exercising its power in enacting supportive laws towards the cause. The key barriers organizations may face in achieving the goal stem from the current labour market that was shaped by the economic recession, reducing the possibility of employers increasing their workforces even in the event that the situation improves. Poor management styles and some employment laws also present viable barriers. References Budd, J 2011, The thought of work, Cornell University Press, New York. CIPD 2013a, Employers are from Mars, young people are from Venus: addressing the young people / jobs mismatch CIPD, London. CIPD 2013b, Megatrends: the trends shaping work and working lives, CIPD, London CIPD 2013c, Labour market outlook, CIPD, London Daniels, K 2006a, Employee relations in an organisational context, CIPD, London. Daniels, K 2006b, Employment law: An introduction for HR and business students, CIPD, London. Ellis, C 2012, Contemporary developments in employee relations, CIPD, London. 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