Effect of employee relations on “nonunionism”

Employee relations.

Employee relations is forming a mutual bond between employees and

employers by fulfilling needs and expectations of both parties through
communicating and understanding for the betterment of the organisation.
Employees expect their personal needs like better pay, sufficient leave, safe
working environment, promotions, job security, work life balance etc., social and
cultural needs as well as acceptance of their ideas and suggestions related to work.

There are several approaches to employee relations policy and level of

employees’ involvement in decision making is vary as follows.

Power Sharing

Partnership

Traditional

Adversarial

Involvement in decision making

Employee relations focus on individually or collectively. Today it is more

focused on employee relations individually. However collective employee relations
based on adding value to the organization being both parties are motivated. These
relationships are based on success of the organization, employee’s work
satisfaction, building employee trust, feeling on fairness and greater commitment,
helping organizations to improve profitability, efficiency and productivity, let
employees to involve in decision that may affect to their interests by voice to
influence and involving. This employee voice may be through trade unions, work
councils, business enhancement forums, quality circles etc. (Gennard and Judge,
2005).

Trade union recognition, Collective bargaining and participation &

involvement are some employee relations considerations in organisations.
Negotiation is an important feature of collective bargaining while employee’s
voice is predominant feature in participation & involvement.

In order to review employee relations it is necessary to understand

employee and employer expectations.

Employee interest Employer interests

Employment security Flexibility between tasks.

The opportunity to work with good Minimum standards of competence in

colleagues in a sociable atmosphere. the task for which they are being
hired, as expressed in qualifications,
training received and the experience.

The potential of advancement and A willingness to change

promotion.

Training and development An ability to work as a member of a

opportunities to upgrade skills, team
acquire knowledge etc.

Being treated as human being, not A capacity to show initiative

merely a commodity.

Job satisfaction in relation to job A talent to give discretionary effort

design, the degree of control over the
job (Empowerment)
 Family friendly employment policies. A demonstrational commitment to the
organisation’s objective.

Fair and consistent treatment by

managers relative to other employees

Influence on the day- to- day

operations at the workplace and at
policy level.

Table 01. Employer and Employer interest in labour market adapted from
(Gennard and Judge, 2005).

Figure. 01 Dimensions of the employee relationship. (Kessler and Undy (1996)

cited in Armstrong and Tylor (2014).
Unionism and employee relations.
After the industrial revolution trade unions played most important role in
ensuring rights of workers and their intervention were very helpful for the workers
to acquire more benefits from the employers. According to ( gov.uk, 2017) peak
level of the trade union membership in UK was arrived in 1979 and after that is
declining. Not only in UK but also in the world concerns , number of membership
of trade unions are declining and it raises a question that trade unions mediatory
role for negotiations is replaced by another substitute.
It can be identified three approaches according to the degree of union recognition
as:
1. Full recognition – (collective bargaining)
2. Partial recognition – (negotiations)
3. Single union deals.- ( single union agreement, strike free)

But most organizations seem unions affect to cost and operational efficiency
by means of collective bargaining which may increase cost for production and
services. Therefore organizations tend to provide safe working conditions, fair pay,
and other benefits for their employees in order to avoid forming unions. In
unionized process it is important to review employee relations. (Dias, 2011) Trade
union power in private sector in reducing while not same as the public sector. In
the management perspective it’s safer to marginalize the trade unions than
derecognize because it may easier to deal communication , handling grievances,
discipline and safety issues with union than establishing alternative to those which
may costly and difficult to operate. (Armstrong and Tylor, 2014) Some large
organizations prefer nonunion relations and adopted employment policies and
pay packages which may attractive than trade union membership. These
organizations deal with employees individually rather than collectively. Smaller
firms deals with employees situational basis and there are no substitution for trade
unions. (Armstrong and Tylor, 2014)

According Foulkers (1981) large nonunion organisations like Black & Decker,
Eli Lilly, Gillette, Grumman, IBM, and Polaroid benefit believe that they achieved
productivity .They have executed creative approaches of employee relations and
achieved higher productivity than would if they were organized. In their
organisations, employee turnover, absenteeism, resistance to technological
change are low and employee loyalty is high. They point out followings are the
reasons for attaining point higher degree of success
- Freedom to experiment with employee relations plans,
- Opportunity to deal directly with workers,
- Absence of an adversary relationship between employees and
management.

This study reveals nine common attributes, policies, and attitudes among
large nonunion companies as follows.(Foulkes, 1981)
1. A Sense of Caring
2. Carefully Considered Surroundings
3. High Profits, Fast Growth, & Family Ties
4. Employment Security
5. Promotion from Within
6. Influential Personnel Departments
7. Competitive Pay & Benefits
8. Managements that Listen
9. Careful Grooming of Managers
Further readings of the article: https://hbr.org/1981/09/how-top-nonunion-
companies-manage-employees.
 Effective communication helps in order to build up successful employee
relations and it makes a platform to identify needs and expectations of employees
as well as convince them the organisation’s expectations.

According to Tony et al (2005) upward problem-solving is the dominant form of

employee voice in non-union organisations which he has studied. Upward
problem solving and formal two- way communication are most favoured by
mangers and electronic means two – way communication also were favoured.
More than half of the sample were used suggestion schemes. Employee attitude
surveys were conducted only in large organisations while significant majority were
used project teams used as a channel for employee voice.

Today’s trend in building strong employee relations without involvement of

the trade unions by organisation through effective communication has
significantly affected the decreasing union membership. Therefore, as far as
organisations approach employee relations like partnership and power sharing
and strongly consider participation and involvement of employees when making
employee relation policies, those organisations will be able to acquire more
competitive advantage. In this context, organisation’s HR policy should recognize
the psychological contract, which is the expectation of employee and the
expectations of employer and allow employee voice and encourages employee
engagement.

Reference

Armstrong, M and Tylor, S (2014) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human resource

management practice. 14th edition .Kogan page limited: United Kingdom.
Dias, L (2011) Human resources management. Available at:
http://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=71 (Accessed: 30
March 2018).

Dundon, T., Wilkinson, A., Marchington, M. and Ackers, P. (2005) The

management of voice in non-union organisations: managers perspectives.
Available at:
https://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10379/2082/Employee%
20Voice%20in%20Non-Union%20Organisations.pdf?sequence=1. (Accessed: 30
March 2018).

Foulkes, F. K.(1981) How Top Nonunion Companies Manage Employees.

Available at: https://hbr.org/1981/09/how-top-nonunion-companies-manage-
employees. (Accessed: 30 March 2018).

Gennard, J. and Judge, G. (2005) Employee relations. CIPD Publishing. Available

at:https://books.google.lk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FuUmIixUldwC&oi=fnd&pg=P
R9&dq=Gennard+%26+Judge,+2005&ots=HcZMbepgmX&sig=BpfnXR9dEI8o9
no7h4FDToDNm6Y&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Gennard%20%26%20Judge%2
C%202005&f=false.(Accessed:30 March 2018).

Gov.uk, (2017) Trade union membership 2016: statistical bulletin , Department for
Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. Available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/trade-union-statistics-2016.
(Accessed: 01 April 2018).