Employment Relationships and Union Agreements

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With the country still in recession and more job losses and spending cuts announced within the public sector, what can organizations do to ensure that a positive employment relationship is maintained and supported?

There are a number of things that organizations can do in order to maintain a positive employment relationship even when they have to lay back some workers and reduce their spending allocations.

Top on the list is to accord due respect and maintain cordial relations with retained employees and ensure that their morale does not deteriorate. It would be natural for senior management to assume that the employees who keep their jobs will be excited over the opportunity, however, since the recession kicked in, it has been discovered that such employees feel overworked and at the time they regard their jobs as being in a precarious position drawing from the constant fear of being laid back. Some sense of vulnerability dampens their work spirit. In such a situation, the companies are faced with double challenges since as an institution’s profitability goes down, low worker morale makes it even harder for the company to pick itself up. This is what is called recession fatigue.

Faced with numerous management challenges, organizations should not assume that restructuring and pairing down the manpower are the only things that could help the company stay afloat. the company needs to employ a number of leadership principles to ensure that it is able to sustain itself through the recession with the employees left on board. First, when strict measures have to be taken, the management should come out and clearly explain the challenges to the members of staff. It is understandable that most institutions will shy away from conflict, but employees will definitely respect honesty. Secondly, the management should ensure that the frequency of communication goes up.

Proper communication helps keep down anxiety levels and can also keep the staff morale stable. The senior managerial staff should personally take this role as a delegation to junior staff gives a negative impression regarding the commitment of the management towards employee well-being. Third, management should ensure that the morale of those individuals who are left behind becomes the number one company priority. The company should utilize all the resources at its disposal to ensure that the retained staff are as comfortable as possible. Finally, the institution should desist from taking hard-line stances on the retained members of staff.

Personal humility and ethical behavior are some of the key characteristics of effective leaders. These traits if put into practice will help deal with the individuals who are caught in the middle of company struggle and post-down-sizing syndrome. If senior managerial staff have these two characteristics, they could easily ensure that the employees remain motivated and committed to the success of the enterprise.

During a recession, it is imperative that a company’s operational costs are kept at the lowest level possible. This will of course is not a popular activity especially from the side of employees who will not be excited at the company’s efforts to constantly scrutinize their expense reports and tracking down the usage of such small things as pens. The institution’s leadership team should be well included at every stage of implementing the plan to deal with the recession and they should be encouraged to break out targets in their regions of authority to the highest specificity possible.

The company will as well be forced to increase pressure on the employees and demand accountability for performance; a move that will definitely not be well received by the staff members. However, as undesirable as these measures are, the employees will find the honesty of the company heads admirable especially if they (the employees) are presented with facts in advance.

The implementation of the principles outlined above may be challenging depending on the organizational culture of specific companies. However, ignoring the plight of the retained employees could easily jeopardize the company prospects once the recession is over. In general, it is safe to argue that the employees who are left behind after a period of job cuts are the ones responsible for keeping the company afloat in a period of recession. The better such workers are treated in the time the more dedicated they will be to the institution’s stability through the period of hardship.

What do you understand by the terms ‘Equal Opportunities’ and ‘Diversity’? Critically discuss a best practice approach for managing diversity at work

Equal opportunity is the situation created in a workplace when all forms of discrimination are eliminated. For Equal opportunity to be regarded all individuals should be given similar working conditions and equal chances of advancement irrespective of their race, gender, religion, or physical abilities. Diversity generally implies the creation of a work environment which accords respect to all the different individual distinction among employees and appreciating the unique contribution that workers with a variety of differences can bring to the workplace increases the productivity of the company.

Diversity especially in a work setting does not only include age, gender, racial and cultural differences. It goes ahead to include issues of morality and religion. Such differences when kept in check ensure that the workplace is well balanced. Individuals who are responsible for the maintenance of cordiality within the institution should regard these as challenges as opposed to problems that need solutions. It is well known that having all the employees under the same categorization only leads to a reduction in productivity levels.

Diversity in the work environment is a very important resource in an institution. This is because it helps reduce the routine nature of jobs as individuals from varied backgrounds combine efforts to come up with newer ways of making the work environment more productive. By the human resource departments of institutions ensuring that they recruit workers based on their academic and professional achievements, companies reduce the possibility of recruiting unproductive individuals based on a particular profile.

Getting workers with more experiences and pairing them with new recruits will result in a positive symbiotic relationship, where the latter learn from the former on acceptable company practice. The seasoned workers will also learn newer and effective ways to carry out certain functions in order to increase their productivity.

By institutions accepting the positive contribution of gender differences as far as productivity in the company is concerned, the traditional approach of assigning certain jobs to men and others to women irrespective of their potential is struck off by the company policy. This sees to it that the most qualified individuals are assigned a particular job irrespective of their gender.

It is generally well known that in any work setting, there will be individuals from diverse religious backgrounds. This should however be seen as a positive thing as the workers in this particular instance are able to appreciate that they all have a thing to learn from each other. The shame that individuals develop based on their religious beliefs is taken down and they can comfortably make meaningful contributions to the growth of the company.

Managers should realize that the most important tool for addressing the issues of diversity in the company is to hire qualified individuals. It is morally and sometimes economically irresponsible for companies to hire people on the basis of their minority status. This simply keeps alive the myth that no individuals within the particular minority group have the desirable qualification to take up the job. From a business point of view, most of the decisions made when recruiting should stem from the skill and abilities of an individual. After a minority is selected for a job, he/she should be regarded as any other employee with the management maintaining the appreciation for heritage and cultural choices of the various that such employees come with.

Another helpful pointer for the maintenance of diversity in the workplace is by senior management ensuring that their junior associates do not disrespect one another. It is commendable for individuals to appreciate that we all have different skills and abilities which are necessary for the proper running of the business. Disrespect based on the social-cultural or educational differences only brings about unnecessary friction among the workers leading to reduced performance and increased company expenditure on legal suits.

In general, it is advisable for companies to appreciate that as long as an individual performs his job to the best of his ability, it does not matter what his/her social-cultural or political-educational background is. The company is supposed to respect individual employee differences but also bear in mind that the institution needs to operate at optimum levels and should not therefore greatly adjust the company policy to suit employee demands.

What are Single Unions Agreements? Outline the advantages and disadvantages of such agreements for employers, employees, and trade unions

A single union agreement is a deal between a company and a particular trade union such that only that union will represent all the members of the company’s workforce. In this case, the selected union has exclusive bargaining rights for all the members of staff of the company. The employees on the other hand are not deterred from belonging to different trade unions. However, when seeking redress as a group, they can only do so through the particular union that the company has signed a deal with.

Advantages of single union agreements

A single union agreement is advantageous to the company’s management mainly because it simplifies the bargaining process. In large institutions, it is generally difficult to ensure that all the demands of various employees are attended to. Having one union representing all the staff members makes it easier to unify all the personal queries of the employees and attending to them in a way that would make all workers satisfied and at the same time keep in mind the policies of the established.

Such a deal also helps reduce competitive multi-unionism which usually comes with union demarcations clashing with the company’s need for flexibility. Institutions that allow their employees to be represented by various unions always have trouble reaching an amicable solution in times of crisis. This is mainly because each of the different unions would want the opinions of its members to be regarded as most important and in a way given more prominence.

On the side of the workers, single union agreements reduce the challenges of having to maintain loyalty to various unions. The individual is able to channel his/her concerns to the management easily especially since it is always much easier for management to recognize the collective issues of a group of individuals as opposed to those of one person. When a person belongs to more than one union particularly in a company setting, it is challenging for any particular union to seriously follow up on issues raised by the person mainly because of the belief that even if they (the chiefs of a particular union) don’t respond to the concerns raised, another union will follow up on them. As a result, some form of redundancy develops resulting in weak worker representation systems.

On the part of the trade unions, such agreements have the benefit of giving a comfortable work environment devoid of unnecessary competition. The selected union is able to put its records in order and in such a way establish a clear mandate drawing from the various categories of workers it is bound to represent.

Disadvantages of Single union agreements

The single union agreements have the primary weakness of not giving the employees the freedom of option. Once a company agrees that a particular trade union will be in charge of all its worker’s representation, it becomes challenging for a small group of individuals with specific needs to receive a hearing from the trade organization. This is because the agreement fails to give workers some wiggle room unless the concerns raised are those of the majority. Workers who are not satisfied with the way their issues are addressed have little if no option of seeking a second opinion. In a way, this arrangement ends up being more oppressive especially to the individual.

For the employer, such an agreement has the collective effect of branding the institution undemocratic. This is mainly because individuals who do not want membership to the specified union are forced to by virtue of their contract with the company.

This, therefore, makes the company appear oppressive given that the union may in the eyes of many appear to represent the interest of the company and not that of the workers. Single union agreements also make the company appear to discourage the spirit of competition especially because it appears to lock out other trade unions. This in a way makes the institution appear to propagate dictatorial tendencies, especially where the union is imposed on the workers and not selected by any democratic method.

In larger enterprises, the trade union itself is overburdened with the challenge of listening to numerous queries from the different levels of staffing. Issues concerning a particular group of individuals have to be addressed as if they affect the entire institution. It becomes even more challenging when various interests within the company raise conflicting queries, and the trade union is expected to represent all parties indiscriminately. In such a situation, it is very easy for the union to get overwhelmed and find itself with a huge backlog based on the back-and-forth nature of employee demands.

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