Human resources report writing: Managing employee relations in contemporary organizations

 Human resources report writing: Managing employee relations in contemporary organizations

Content:

1. Executive Summary………………………………………………………3
2. Introduction………………………………………………………………4
3. Management style adopted by ACME……………………………………….6
4. Importance & benefits of ‘Individualism’…………………………………8
5. Changes applied by ACME……………………………………………….9
6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………….10

1. Executive summary:

The aim of this report is to shed light on the management style adopted by ACME Engineering. But that management style has been taken on by them is in terms of employee relations. It will highlight the policies and procedures followed by ACME for the employment. Further, study of the report will make a discussion on the employee relations, dealing with employees, nature of management style and the approaches used by ACME. In contrast, justifications also have been provided from the case study and academic literature to support the management style accepted by ACME to make it different from other organizations.

Next part of this report will describe the key benefits of that employee relations management style and also focus on its importance in this context. Consequently, this part of the report critically discusses the reason to pick and approach that explicit management style. To support the reason, evidences have been cited and explained from the case study of ACME. Additionally, in-depth discussion goes on towards the core part of this report and explains the changes applied to the management style. Some ideas also have been drawn by considering the changing context of British employee relations through 1980s and 1990s. Accordingly, by drawing a set of ideas, the implications and consequences of this changing context of British management over the employee relations management style have also been detailed. Moreover, the report also evaluates the degree that the style taken on by ACME could be made possible due to the changes in British employee relations framework. 

1. Introduction:

In extensive terms, employment relations are concerned with the theories and practices linked with the management and instruction of the employment relationship. Here in particular, ACME engineering organization has been taken into consideration to identify the management style approached by them in dealing with employees. To recognize that style, it is required to provide an insight of the related organization, so that an idea can be gripped about its framework of employment relations and how they perceive and treat their employees. ACME engineering is an organization which is into manufacturing and sales operations. Moreover, this enterprise basically focuses on the individual and wants to let their employees work without the help of trade union. Similarly, it can be said that it is a non-union organization and still work for modifying the employee relations in this pattern.

In order to achieve its goals and objectives, ACME endeavor to develop and maintain healthy employee relations. As a result, it found its employees critical and more focused to their work and the business. It works on the strategy of working with individual’s value, importance in the organization. Further research also reveals the values of independent variable at work place (Meglino & Ravlin, 1998).

Case study represents that ACME follows the informal management style while treating with the employees which forms the non-threatening relationships.

Furthermore, to make it more clear and precise that what type of management style ACME approached for employee relations; a brief description has been discussed in the next section of this report.

1. Management style adopted by ACME: 

In an attempt to describe and identify the meaning of management style in employee relations, two aspects of styles come across. One is individualism, it proposes the degree to which personnel policies and practices are focused on the competencies and rights of the individual employees. Second is collectivism, it is regarded as the extent to which those policies are intended towards persuading the development of collective representation by entailing the employees to have collective voice in management decision-making (Purcell, 2007).

As per the case study, ACME offers the individual to have their own voice in management decisions and in their workings. It can be pursued from the study that ACME got many proposals in the early days from the union parties who were basically looking for single union agreements, but this small organization did not accepted those offers and decided to work without any assistance of a third party or trade-union. Concerning this study, it can be identified that ACME used individualism management style in their organization not collectivism.

In addition to this, the concept of individualism can also be understood in terms of employee and industry relations. The concept and theory of individualism will help in justifying the adoption of individualism style by ACME. Individualism style suggests that every human individual is of primary importance and makes them highly involved in the contribution to the organization (Adam, 2009).

More evidences can be taken from the case-study to validate that ACME follows this style. One of them can be seen in their employment style or way of recruiting the employees as they look for the individual’s arrogance, quality and ability even at their fresher level of joining the company. Additionally, It can also be exemplified on the basis of analysis that it takes the managers’ and supervisors’ opinions into account for management decision-making. Further, to identify that ACME approaches this style, following evidence can be picked from the case-study:

• ACME has defined three categories named grade A, B & C. Through these grades, every individual is identified and allocated to their particular area of job. This category wise allocation of individuals shows that ACME approaches ‘individualism’ management style in the employment. As according to individualism style
• Moreover, ACME considered that if it would have union environment, it would cease to be an individual and termed in simplistic terms that they are not working with any third-party and on the other hand individuals are engaged in decision-making process. In support, an author also represented the impact of individualism on decision making by individuals in organizations (Husted, 2001).
• ACME has totally open access within the premises because they believe in dealing with individuals along with their unique roles.

Accordingly, an academic study also proves that there has been decline in collectivism and expansion of individualism, which not only reflects the changes in Australian’s industrial relations structure but also has a few implications for prospects of other. They described those future implications most importantly for English-speaking countries.  (Bray & Macneil, 2011).

Individualism and collectivism

(Source: <http://paradigm-shift-21st-century.nl/individualism-versus-collectivism.html>.)

Thus, on the basis of these detailed justifications, it can be alleged that ACME follows ‘individualism’ employee relations management style within its premises. Further, it is also required to know the benefits and importance of this style that ACME adopted this in employee dealings and employment. Forthcoming section of the report will throw light on this style’s significance and the reason to take it into practices.

1. Importance and benefits of ‘individualism’:

Individualism is referred as self-orientation, a prominence on self-reliance and control and the pursuit of individual aims that may or may not be steady with in-group goals. Moreover, it is concerned as an enthusiasm to deal with the members of the in-group to which an individual belongs, and a culture where people derive arrogance from their own accomplishments (Goncalo & Staw, 2005).

In individualistic surroundings, people are motivated by self-interest and attainment of personal goals. The importance of this management style can be noticed in the firms that usually focus on individual employee accomplishment and uniqueness. As an outcome, these firms are considered to be more favorable to engender innovative and creative ideas rather than the firms focusing on team-work. To support this point, a study presented the data in order to reveal its significance. The study shows that individualistic groups instruct 37.4 ideas on an average and collectivistic groups create 26.1 ideas on an average (University of California, Berkeley, 2012).

One benefit to endorse individualism in the workplace is that employees have a high level of personal liability that is employees cannot freeload on one other, estimating that others will pick up the slack. Individualism also generates some extent of healthy competition, as each worker can exhibit his own capacities and skills clearly. As part of this competition, employees can demonstrate enormous amount of innovation and creativity as they make every effort to get excellence (Article Base, 2006).

 Although, managing employment relationship’s importance may be sought in terms of speed, instant change, short-termism and self-reinvention, even then individualism helps the employees to be liberal in accepting the outside group of people that are distinct from themselves (Dundon & Rollinson, 2007).

The new Individualism

(Source: LearningMiles, 2010)

In this framework, ACME’s case-study can be put across to pick some points to highlight the importance of this management style approached by them. This can also be identified that why the company use this informal style in employee relations. Therefore, the company gives every individual employee equal importance and respect their voice in organization. Here to support this, UK and Ireland’s case studies also comes into consideration which shows the changing pattern of individual employee’s voice. It depicts that changing scenario of unionism into individualism has grown the employee’s voice in terms of its scope and impact on the efficiency of work and productivity (Wilkinson al, 2004).

Moreover, this Japanese manufacturing company offers an idea that it is the salary system that tied back to an individual. It follows and implements this style of individualism because their concept and theory of observation states that if a team and organization are functioning well that is just because of the individual’s well performance. Further justifications can be provided to support the reason for using this style by ACME.

It proposed that individualism will keep the authoritative style away from both the employees and employers. In a particular way, it can be analyzed through case-study that Martin Lawrence (who joined ACME in 1986) talked about the working style of employees when he goes around the work station. He dictates himself to be offended if employees suddenly start working after seeing somebody coming with the authority. Therefore, this became a key reason that ACME moved towards ‘individualism’ because according to them, they wanted to have young confident and arrogant individuals, who could work independently and raise issues, so that they could think and innovate efficiently without any terror of authoritative leadership. The main reason of acquiring this management style by ACME is their philosophy of non-union ship. They did not want to take help of third party, in other words any assistance from trade-union (Berkeley, 2012).

Furthermore, it was pointed out that ‘individualism’ style of management could me made possible to the organizations due to the changing structure of British employee relations through 1980s and 1990s. Next portion of this report will describe and discuss the changes made in British employee relations context and it will also evaluate the extent that this style could be approachable by the organizations.

1. Changes applied by ACME:

As per the study of British management style in employee relations, it talks about both collectivism and individualism. Before 1980, the effect of collective bargaining was sought in Britain that mostly worked with the trade unions. But the decline in union ship had been noticed by the British from 66 percent in 1984 to 53 percent in 1990 and to 45 percent in 1998. Allover 47 percent of the workplaces were observed working without union members. It represented a landscape of transformation in the context of British employee relations (Bacon & Storey, 2007).

Britain changes constrained that policies and laws that need companies to take up employment practices that they would otherwise evade, but which can result in beneficial results for workers and the organization. Additionally, it was made a point to be noted that managers also reduced the emphasis made on collective agreements. This reform in British influenced the future organizations in approaching individualism and not going with the trade unions (Bryson & Gomez, 2005)

This also was a point to take into consideration that if new agreement will show the changes in the management style, this will definitely point out a break from the fundamental pluralistic inclinations of the managers which may appear to have steady between  1980 and 1990 (Mc-Graw Hill education, n.d).

Before these changes, every organization used to follow collectivism and there has been a culture to work with the help of trade unions. But after these amendments, changes could be made possible to remove and to be anti-union (Heery, Kelly & Waddington, 2003). ACME also took advantages of these changes and applied them in its organization to make its effective and different from other enterprises. First and foremost idea that ACME picked was to set a principle of not accepting the proposals of unions. Subsequently, if they agree with those union parties, they will have quasi- union members in which everyone would represent themselves in their dealings with the company.

Employee Relations

 (Source: Emerald group publishing limited, 2010)

In addition, British management researched for both individual and participative approach in employee relations and found the different results. A number of case studies depicted that if participative approach results in the reduction of union association in management decision-making and present less influence of union then trade-union zeal for partnership is expected to diminish. In this context, ACME also had an idea about not working with union. The management concerned that if trade-union is involvement in work then it may discourage an individual employee’s voice. For this, they adopted an idea of providing training to the fresher employees and also taking help from the experienced workers (Bacon & Storey, 2007).

Further, ACME created a hierarchy of managers, supervisors, team leaders and other members of the staff, which eliminate the need of a trade-union indirectly. Finally, it can be noticed that changes in British context of employee relations were in terms of involvement of trade-union and how they affect the management style followed in the organizations. Moreover, the application of changes can also be observed in the pay and appraisal system of ACME that individual started working on personal contract to seek high performance for appraisals (Morgan & Zeffane, 2003).

They formed a pay and incentive structure that depends upon individual employee’s participation, attitude & behavior and performance. The best applied change has been perceived through their communication department which enrolls each employee to put their views, feedbacks and accomplishment of the targets. This also provides the solutions of issues raised by the workers and on the other hand, it works like trade-union. Given all the ideas and changes, ACME put those changes in their plant up to some extent (Morgan & Zeffane, 2003).

Conclusion:

As a part of conclusion, some ideas can be picked out from the previous study and the points noticed out. Entire report discusses about the management style approached by ACME, a Japanese plant. Precisely, it has been noticed that ACME used an informal management style, whether it was employment or employee relations. This informal style is ‘individualism’, which states about the degree to which an individual integrates in a group. ACME mainly focused on the work behavior of individuals rather than a group or a team. It declined the help of trade-unions in the organization and decided to work without them. The main reason behind that was to raise each individual employee’s voice.

However, the company recruited fresher youths more than the experienced ones because ACME considers them to be more evolved with the work and the contemporary ideas. Similarly, it was benefited by approaching this management style in terms of employee’s loyalty and stability with the job. For more reason, employees of ACME also got ready to work overtime as they were respected and taken into care by the management.

Further, report emphasizes on the changing context of British management style in employee relations. By this, it was made a point that British management analyzed both the changes working in collectivism and in individualism and presented the results. They observed the difference and the quality of work performance by the employees. Favorably, the inclination was towards the individualism after the changes made. ACME also applied some changes in their plant for employee relations management. To justify that ACME approached this management style and why it chosen this to implement, evidences have been cited from the case-study and academic literature.

Therefore, it can be concluded that ACME completely was in favor of individualism and it approached this management style to make it distinct from other Japanese plants.

If you want HR Management Assignment Help study samples to help you write professional custom essay’s and essay writing help.

Receive assured help from our talented and expert writers! Did you buy assignment and assignment writing services from our experts in a very affordable price.

To get more information, please contact us or visit www.myassignmenthelp.Com