Employee relations refers to ‘an assortment of employer initiatives for improving workplace communications, for engaging employees either directly or indirectly in decision making and for securing employee compliance with management rules through disciplinary procedures.
Employee participation stems from a pluralist approach, it also provides for employees to have some say in decisions. It gives rights to employees to consultation on matters likely to affect the economic status of employer or any proposed change that might affect employment status. The pluralist view point is that different groups in an organisation have different interests and conflicts are therefore likely to arise which will need to be managed. Managers and owners will be interested in increasing their pay while employees may be interested in increasing their pay. Employee involvement is about a management desire to encourage individual employees to be committed to the organisational values. Different categories of involvement can include; sharing information, consultation, financial participation, quality improvements, individuals and community. The purpose of employee involvement is that is assumed that employee commitment will be increased if they are allowed to be involved in decision making. Organisations can involve employees in decision making by creating questionnaires that ask for their opinion on certain areas of the company and see if any ideas can benefit the business. Also one on one’s with management is good as they are able to air their opinions in person and certain employees can help the business more profitable or more efficient. Also a few examples of ways in which this can happen is by have discussion groups, also voting can be brought in by the company, or even a company intranet where employees can post ideas on their website which is seen by management. It is said that information is knowledge and knowledge is power, so the more information being pumped into a company by any source the better.
Organisations are now using social networking sites to communicate with staff. It is a very cost efficient and quick way of communicating to staff members as nearly everyone is part of one social networking site. The information being provided on the sites are things such as; staff holiday dates, company days off and even messages sent from managers to the staff to ask questions or the other way around. An example of a company that uses online networking sites would be marks and Spencer, they use it to communicate with all staff and also allow staff members to put for their ideas and grievances forward to management. Other ways in which they communicate to staff is through company newsletters and publications, company videos and team briefings which are all posted online. They also use it as a way of recruiting as individuals who are interested in working for them can submit a copy of their C.V, this saves the company from sorting through loads of paper work and allows them to have these on their system so when they are looking to hire they can sort through them quickly and easily. Other organisations to use social networking sites to communicate with staff and the general public are nightclubs. Nearly all nightclubs use social networking sites to advertise specialist nights they are promoting and telling staff when they are working. An example being Yates nightclub, they are mainly on facebook which is the most popular networking site in the world and is used by millions of people worldwide. They use this site to advertise their club which reaches more people than any other form of advertisement and this is free and quick to set up. This is why organisations are choosing to use these sites due to the fact that they are quick and easy to set up with no running costs and can reach people all over the UK and even the world.
References
Mullins, L. (2010) Management and organisational behaviour.9th ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
All 15 posted well done!
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