Employees relations - Essay Example

Running Head: EMPLOYEES RELATIONS Employees Relations [The [The of the Employees Relations Abstract North East Health Care (NEHC) are manufacturers of medical gas equipment. The company has been established for over fifty years starting as a small family concern approximately five years ago, with the Shareholders injecting some capital, and under new management the company has seen rapid and continuous growth. NEHC's primary customers are NHS and private hospitals. Twelve months ago, the Company, recruited a Personnel Officer. The position was newly created and provided the Company for the first time with a resource dedicated to HRM issues. NEHC is of a predominantly unitary perspective, and does not recognise any unions. The company has just over 100 employees, only three are union members. Introduction The board of NEHC is made up of two Working Directors, the Managing and Financial Directors, and three major shareholders. The senior management team is made up of six Associate Directors and typically sees its function as that of directing and controlling the workforce to achieve economic and growth objectives. To this end, it believes that it is the rule-making authority. This is a strong unitary perspective with an autocratic and authoritarian style of management. A quote from the Managing Director epitomises this; "you tell staff what they need to know to perform their given task and no more" (Keith Harrison MD, NEHC). The employees within this unitary system are expected to accept their place and function gladly, following the leadership of management. Some employees have been with the company for over twenty years. Changes in government which resulted in changes to the funding of the NHS, have in the past had a positive effect on NEHC. The last five years have seen relatively easy with limited competition from only three main competitors, in a specialised market. The export market continues to thrive on the sale of equipment which has become out-dated in the home market but is suitable in developing countries. New technology in production has resulted in soaring production rates and spiralling labour costs. NEHC feels it still has its roots firmly fixed in a 'family-like' Company where every employee is as important as another and everyone is treated equally. Management believe employees are happy and grateful for the opportunity to work in an expending profitable and caring company. NEHC have in the last two months produced for the first time in twenty-odd years, a standard Contract of Employment accompanied by a first ever Company Handbook for all staff. Contained in the handbook is the Grievance Procedure, Disciplinary Procedure, Equal Opportunities Policy, Sickness Policy, Holiday Policy, Company history and general rules. This is the first" time most employees have been able to refer to written polities and procedures and not left to guess implicit procedural rules. Even some substantive rules have in the past been only verbal or at best contained in a brief job offer letter. Current Practice of Employees At NEHC North East Healthcare has no explicit 'Employee Relations' policy. The board of NEHC meets monthly and the senior management team meets the day after. One board member recently wanted the Managing Director to look at the Investors in People award. The Managing Director is very against this route feeling it is "people outside examining how you do things and wanting to get inside the organisation, disturbing employees" and something that is not suitable for NEHC. However, despite the MD's reservations, the Company recently completed an IIP questionnaire. This demonstrated, on a scale from 1 to 10, how close or how far away from being awarded the IIP a company was, by determining which practices there are in place at present. North East Healthcare scored 2 and this suggests that the board are a little out of touch as to how and what the day-to-day management of the employees entails or how the employees feel about the Company. The Board meets monthly at North East Healthcare and discusses the Company's progress and perhaps the low score from the IIP survey gives an indication of the strong financial focus on the part of senior management. After the senior management team's monthly meeting, managers are left to cascade any relevant information down through their departments. It was in such meetings that the contents of the Contract and Company handbook were decided. There have been some recent events that have highlighted a lack of communication. These include: Switchboard being asked for a named product, which they never knew the Company, produced A supplier asking for directions to a new company warehouse. Staff knew nothing about the location of the warehouse Sales leads being generated by an advert placed in a magazine, staff unaware as to what the advert was for Press arriving to take pictures of a large export order being loaded, production staff read in the papers its destination - Pakistan! Out of 30 employees questioned only 15% knew NEHC's annual turnover figures and not one knew the profit figures (available by law to the public) Data on absenteeism supplied by personnel came as a surprise to managers Unfavourable comments during exit interviews about managers not giving employees the information needed to do their work. Advantages and Disadvantages Of Trade Unions The research based upon employee relation in NEHC makes clear that the dissimilar mechanisms have advantages and disadvantages of trade union in NEHC depending on what is expected in terms of information, procedure and result. Moreover, dissimilar countries have unusual levels of complexity in collecting the information (Ball, C., 1994). What is significant is not which system is adopted in NEHC, but the recognition of the advantages and disadvantages connected by dissimilar systems to set aside for choices at the national level concerning what will suit the particularities of the state of affairs in a given country and endow with the tripartite partners with a better understanding of the facts. Devoid of such an understanding, consensus-based policy-making is not possible. Advantages of Trade Unions The major advantages of trade unions identified by medical gas equipment workers were clustered around 'ease of entry' into NEHC work and 'suitability to patient'. The worth attached to ease of access is partly a likeness of the rural origins of these employees. As noted before, most NEHC workers were latest migrants who had been in the city for less than five years (Bronchain, 2003). Their major reason for migrating was to search for employment primarily since job opportunities were lacking in the NEHC in which they had lived before. The majority did not have proper residence status and lots of were unregistered. For these women, the main benefit of NEHC work was that employers did not need elevated levels of educational attainment, skills, previous work experience or entrance to capital for company. As one employee put it, 'It is easy to find the work, easy to learn it, and easy to do it.' Moreover, gas equipment sector employers were willing to hire workers holding temporary or no formal household registration like NEHC. As conversed over, a much higher percentage of medical gas workers, chiefly those in the private sector were temporary or unregistered migrants in comparison to NEHC workers in other industries (Paugaum, S., 2001, pp.287-304). No doubt, the responses clustered beneath the heading 'suited to my skills/preferences' in the NEHC annual report refer to exact characteristics of workers that were seen as pertinent to the job. For example, many employees believed that factory work made better use of their instructive qualifications than farm work or a range of forms of off-farm enterprise obtainable in rural areas. Others referred to the detail that they previously knew how to use sewing machines (Program of the Democratic Trade Union of Scientific Workers, 2001). Though, a number of workers described medical gas work as their favored option. A number of gave personal cause as the major advantage of trade union. It was clear that the connection with fashion, with the ability to make clothes for themselves and their family in the future were among the reasons that export gas work using umbrella of trade unions appealed to a number of customers (Olney, S. 1996). Other personal reasons included getting to know medical professionals from different parts of the country and making new friends due to interaction of trade unions. For some, the advantages of medical gas work had little to do the work itself, but the fact that it was paid work or offer a temporary income until they could find favored forms of employment (Nat'l Foreign Trade Council). Disadvantages of Trade Unions No doubt, twelve to 13 percent of medical gas workers could not think of any advantages of medical gas equipment work. The reasons for this are clear from the disadvantages listed by the respondents. Only three percent of medical gas workers did not report any disadvantages of trade unions connected with their jobs. The irresistible best part of complaints focused on troubles directly or indirectly connected to working hours (Geddes, M., 2005). This is not astonishing given that they worked longer hours than any advance group of workers in our sample. Approximately 50 percent openly stated that the long hours of work were the main disadvantage of trade union (Trade Agreement Trade-Offs; 2004). The rest complained concerning having to sit in the identical position for extended periods of time, tiredness, having no time or energy left to benefit from the company of friends, for finding a boyfriend or increasing social relationships, having to work late into the night and a variety of occupational health troubles counting headache, backache, poor vision, sore throat, dizziness and rhinitis. Though lots of workers had said that the cause they had come to the city and taken up factory work was their longing to meet new people and make new friends, it was evident from their responses that their jobs left lots of them with small time and energy to do so (Brugiavini, A., 2001, pp. 157-277). The Impact Of Trade Unions In several member states, EQUAL has shown that tTrade Unions can augment their impact on the employment and work place addition of disadvantaged groups. Dissimilarity subsists between NEHC in the trade unions' role and involvement but these problems are hardly ever seen as being part of unions' mainstream social bargaining activities (Mailand, M., 2002). Though, in some companies, EQUAL partnerships led by trade unions have demonstrated significant progress in developing quality standards and system for complete employment services, or in guidance, and mobilising shop stewards and shop floor representatives for vigorous participation in the carrying out and development of diversity strategies. One example is a country-wide support system to augment the contribution of disadvantaged people in NEHC learning during a network of trade union Learning Representatives which provides leadership towards, and/or creates, new learning opportunities that unite a rejoinder to individual wants with training related to skills requirements of exact jobs or sectors (Calmfors, L., 2001, pp. 1-134). Recommendation Flexibility of work at NEHC and employment as a whole ought to be discussed. Working and living circumstances ought to be built-in in the bargaining process. New standards covering both security and time should be developed. A 'gender'-based approach to all aspects should be introduced. The debate should be extended to the relevant local actors and civil society. The introduction of new coordination mechanisms involving a number of entities (trade unions and civil society) could widen the debate in such a way as to bring about a redefinition of the terms of territorial development and help to attain in general compromises, in exacting regarding changes in working time (Casey, B. and M. Gold 2000). Authorities, NECH and bodies that assist in hostility bias should strengthen their monitoring activities. Equal Partnerships emphasise that the survival of parity or anti-discrimination legislation had provided a significant lever in raising employers' interest in disadvantaged groups. They stress that "pressure" from European Directives and Regulations had a vital crash and that, as a outcome, employers were more receptive to action instigate under equal (Chiarini, B. 2002, 577-600). New coalition in favour of disadvantaged groups can be improved by placing a special stress, in the dialogue by and among the Social Partners of NECH, on approaches to apply and developing variety strategies and Corporate Social Responsibility in enterprises. Employers of this company will engage in the formation of opportunities for disadvantaged people and in new forms of partnership by employment services, if such collaboration is obviously focused on approaches to integration business objectives by social responsibility (Cook, A. H., 2002). Because of the constitutional responsibilities and duties that are placed on Public Employment Services, they might discover it hard, in their own right, to adopt and carry on a number of of the more pioneering approaches that have been productively piloted inside equal (Martens, M.H and S. 2004). Thus, authorities and pertinent agencies in the NECH ought to discover the option of "ring fencing" some of their obtainable resources. These could be used straight, or as matching-funding for EU support, to offer consultancy services on a supple, contractual foundation that could engage actors with new professional profiles and adapt further quickly to emerging wants (Nat'l Foreign Trade Council v. Natsios, 2000). Eliminate Statutory Exclusions, Narrow Supervisory and Managerial Definitions Congress ought to bring agricultural workers and domestic workers under NECH coverage by the same rights and protections as all further covered workers. Legal reform ought to also subject employers' claim of workers' self-governing contractor status to severe analysis by the NECH and the courts under standards thatmake workers' real-life reliance on employers the test for NECH coverage. Congress ought to also act to bring low-level supervisors and managers under the mantle of laws protecting rights of relationship, with sufficient safeguards against conflicts of interest amongst groups of employees. Company legislation ought to be enacted to defend public employees' implement of the right to bargain together and the right to strike, under conditions recognized in international norms. Welfare-to-work and workfare employees ought to be covered by laws protecting rights of organizing and communal bargaining (InternationalConfederationofFreeTrade Unions 1998). Make Prime Contractors and Employers of "Permatemps" Responsible for Workers' Rights of Association, Organizing, and Collective Bargaining NECH ought to enact legislation for trade union cutting through the fiction of subcontracted employment associations like those cited that are structured to avoid accountability for recognizing workers' rights. Fixing liability ought to be based on a test of effectual economic authority to set workers' terms and conditions of employment, not the procedure of an employment association (European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), 2005). The dominant person in the employment association in NECH holding real power over workers' terms and circumstances of employment ought to have legal accountability to recognize and bargain by workers when a majority chooses representation. This principle should apply to large apparelretailers for sweatshop workers, to building owners' associations for janitorial cleaning workers, to agricultural growers who use labor-supplying middlemen, and to further forms of labor contracting (Jenkins, G. and Poole, 2002, pp. 289-328). Accountability by the Prime Employer As recommended elsewhere in this report in sections dealing of trade union with contingent, atypical, and subcontracted labor, NECH labor law covering agricultural workers ought to cut throughout the layers of claimed non-responsibility to hold employers "up the line" liable for respecting workers' right to freedom of friendship. 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