Employee relations

Introduction

When employees join organisations, they have their own needs and expectations from the employer and colleagues in the workplace. Similarly, when an employer recruits staff, the former has certain needs and expectations, which have to be met by the latter. Mutual agreement on defining needs and expectations of each stakeholder may be reached through joint agreement between the employee and the employer or through collective agreement with the use of trade unions.

Foot & Hook (2008) have stipulated important rights of the employer and employee in the employment relationship. In this regard, the employer has the right to control work performance, integrate employees in the organisation’s structure and management system, and create an environment of mutual trust, confidence and supply of enough and reasonable work. In exchange, the employee is expected to obey lawful and reasonable orders, maintain fidelity and work with due diligence and care. The laws of the land usually govern these relationships and expectations and where breaches are made, leading to conflicts of interests and grievances, legal remedies have to be sought from a court of law. This chapter is devoted to examining key issues involved in employee relations, where the employee or employees’ representative and the employer or employers’ representative and the state are the key players. Therefore, at the end of the chapter, the learners should be able to:

· Examine the rationale for the management of employee/employer and state relationships.

· Explain the basic principles in grievance and discipline management.

· Make use of employment laws to manage grievance and discipline in organizations.

· Make use of worker participation strategies in human resource management.

Theoretical framework of employee relations

Employee relations have a tradition in industrial relations that emerged and grew alongside the growth in industrial production in Europe. The formation of masses of people working in factories and industries under strict rules and poor working conditions called for collective action on the part of workers as well as state intervention as a referee. Therefore, employee relations as a discipline is the study of relationships between employees, employees and employers and their associations and the state in relation to goals, values attitudes and behaviour. It is about the interaction between employees and trade unions, employer associations and the state through various policies and labour law as well as processes and of the provision of remedies where certain actors are aggrieved. Therefore, the key actors are the employer or employers’ associations who, in isolation or collectively, work together in order to defend their interests against the employees or the state. There are also employees or employee representatives (trade unions) whereby employees defend their interests alone or through trade unions. The objective of trade unions includes the regulation of the relationship between workers and employers/employers’ associations. Unity is used as a source of bargaining power. The state is the regulator of employment, employment conditions, and welfare through formulation and execution of policies and procedures for mediation.

The understanding of employment relationships and the dynamics involved is well established in four categories of theories which help us to develop a framework in which we investigate and explain various employee issues (Farnham & Pimlott 1992). For example, how should an employee react if mistreated or what attitude should employers take towards employees and vice versa.

Unitarist theory

The theory focuses on the unity of interests between the management and employees. According to this theory, the management is supposed to form the direction of the organisation and communicate it to the employees for compliance. The theory holds the following assumptions; that there should be employee compliance with a common objective and there is no need for a conflict of interests because employees and employers have good reason to coexist. Therefore, trade unions have no room to highlight differences with the management.

Conflict/pluralist theory

 Conflict theory is the opposite of the unitarist theory. The theory conceives an organisation as a place where there are divergent interests because there are different actors with different needs and expectations. A conflict of interests is inevitable because people belong to different teams that may have goals and objectives that conflict with the organisation. Since these actors display various sources of authority, foci of loyalty and even interests, the implication is that the management has to strike a balance between the goals and interests of the organisation and those of the employees. Management strategies such as decentralisation and employees’ participation in management decisions are in line with the recognition of the power of the pluralist approach to improving organisational effectiveness.

Social action theory

Farnham & Pimlott (1992: 9) define social action as ‘behaviour of having subjective meaning for individual actors’. The theory focuses on understanding the particular action employees take in situations concerning the relationship with the management rather than on just observing explicit behaviour in employment relationships because people perceive the world differently. Meanings are derived from the social environment we live in that is made up of goals, norms, values, attitudes, expectations and the situation as we interact with other people. Therefore, according to the theory, action we observe in employment relationships has a subjective meaning. For example, the subordinate may comply with instructions given by a superior not necessarily because he/she believes or accepts to be a good thing to comply with but because of other motives including avoiding conflict with their boss.

Systems theory (Dunlop)

The use of the systems theory in employment relationships has its genesis in physical sciences where objects are defined in terms of their constituent parts. Systems theory as a concept refers to a unified set of aggregates of interacting components or parts that are interrelated and interdependent to the extent that a change in one part of the system affects the other parts of the whole to which they belong. The components of the system in industrial relations are managers and their representatives, managerial employees and their representatives, and third party agencies such as the courts, police and the prisons. The environment shapes the values and interactions of an industrial relationship system. The characteristics of the environment include technology, which affects the skills and size of the workforce, markets and resource constraints, which impinge on the actors and the laws and the distribution of power in the wider community, which includes the extent to which the community can question the government or take industrial action such as strikes. It also includes the ideology which is a body of common ideas that define the role and place of each actor and that defines the ideas that each actor holds towards the place and function of others in the system. Each actor in the employment relationships system may have their own ideologies but they must be compatible with each other in order to coexist as a system.

Marxist theory

This is a Marxist-Leninist outlook towards the relationship between employers and employees in an organisation. The theory starts with the premise that labour is the essence of human beings’ fulfilment. But under the capitalist method of production workers are forced into an unequal relationship with owners of capital (employers and owners of organisations). However, since the worker cannot survive without work, has to sell his/her labour power (sell competencies) to the owners of means of production (machinery, tools, files, office) through exploitative arrangements. Work becomes punishment. Therefore, conflict between employers and employees is inevitable. The solution is for the worker to struggle to be free from the chains of exploitation, humiliation and worthlessness.