HRM assignment on: Management of people – employment
Managing people:
The landscape of human resource management evolves getting along with managing both employee and employer perspective of employment relationship. It manages from employee recruitment, selection & retention to local and international employee relations, pay & other benefits. HRM plays a vital role in managing employees at their work place, and developing their interpersonal relationships. Employees are concerned as key assets of an organization. Without their involvement in decision-making and other operational and functional activities, organizational objectives cannot be accomplished. When employees do not get satisfied with the things going wrong with them within the premises, they seek HRM to listen and resolve their problems. Reason, they believe in the capability, integrity and strategic approach to deal with their issues and conflicts (Sparrow & Cooper, 2003).
Therefore, the main aim of this essay is to seek the influence of workforce surveillance in managing people at work from both employee and employer’s perspectives. Therefore, it provides the study and practices of employment relations in the organizations. For this, it attempts to recognize a few different approaches to its practices. An emphasis also has been put on human resource management, its development and link with industrial relations. In the next phase of the essay, associated key stakeholders and their way of act to frame employment relations processes have been described. The entire essay revolves around the human resource management, theoretical and empirical analysis of employment relationship processes framework.
Employment relationship refers to the relationship between an employer and employees, where employees work for employer under certain terms & conditions. For this, performance the employees get remuneration in return. It is an underlying belief that various mutual rights and commitments take place and are formed through the employment relationship. Moreover, through this an employer pays attention towards his/her duty and rights and gains benefits. The basic idea behind employment relationship is to seek nature and level of an employer’s obligation towards his/her employees. The current study of the employment relationship demonstrates that changes have occurred in the labor market which has given birth to the relationship which doesn’t fit within the constraint of employment relationship (ATA, 2006).
Additionally, the situation is not same in every country with respect to the employment relationships. In this context, a discussion has been brought forward to evaluate the employment relationship. However there can be explained several theoretical and empirical approaches to the employment relationship which have been developed over the time. Some of the core approaches and theories related to employment relationship are unitary, pluralism, and marxism. In other words, these approaches and their application in managing people at workplace cover scientific management theory, human relations theory, systems and strategic choice theory. Among these approaches, Marxism includes some key theories such as labor process theory, feminist and post modernist theories in relation to human resource management and employment relations (Abott, 2006).
Furthermore, two approaches individualism and collectivism also have gone forward and proved to be effective in employee relation’s framework. Here, collectivism is termed as working towards a common goal under the assistance of trade unions. On the other hand, individualism is totally opposite to collectivism, it is about rewarding individual employee’s work according to their performance. In sum, individualism approach also discourages the requirement for efforts of collectivism at work place. Moreover, there is an employment contract in employment relationship which builds the employer and employee’s relationship strong and understandable with the time. This contract merely has been described in a traditional and legal structure. Apart from this legal contract, there is another non-legal dimension of relationship which is generally known as psychological contract. It is build with the mutual understanding between employers and employees and associates some understanding expectations of employee’s from the employer (Kaufman, 2004).
As far as psychological contract is concerned, it presents the expectations of employees from a range of job security, promotions, wages & salaries, pay & other benefits. Another aspect which is considered more in employment relationship is organizational culture. It includes the combination of beliefs, vision, mission and understanding of approaches. The culture helps employees to understand his/her employer precisely and in turn fosters the organization’s development (Patrick, 2008).
Additionally, a few industrial and organizational sociologists talked about the use of power, politics and resistance and meaningful work of employees under surveillance. A variety of technologies are being used for workforce surveillance such as computer, telephone logging, online and electronic recruitment, mobility tracking and closed-circuit television. In this case, it has been progressively noticed that internet has shown the immeasurable role in surveillance. In 2006, on the basis of survey done for 294 US companies, Proofprint and Forrester found that more than a third with thee thousand employed worker used internet and email at workplace (Alge, Ballinger & Smithson, 2001)
Clocking in, use of surveillance techniques at workplace is not new; it primarily examines and weights the employee’s output individually or as a group and go with organization hand in hand. Essay further talks about the end results and influence both employees and employers are experience at workplace because of internet, electronic devices and email’s use. One of the major concerns regarding use of workforce surveillance is employer’s productivity and quality concerns. Next, use of surveillance at work provides with the fair data of employees that are used in fairly routine ways and are not subject to great deal of survey and analysis (Ball, 2010).
Further, the strong point to be pointed out is worker’s email and other confidential and specific reports are stored electronically. But on the other hand it can create some issues regarding recording of employee’s confidential information (Credit card no, account no, etc) by employers. There are some factors that can be taken into consideration during the monitoring process. In this case, if employees are told about the surveillance system, they usually focus on work and tend to put high level efforts on account of being noticed by employers as an individual (Botan, Carl & Vorvoreanu, 2005).
Some decisive points have been drawn out from the above discussion, that interned has emerged as an opportunity to the employees and employers both but up to a limited extent. Privacy, ethics and issues related to human rights have been considered associated with workforce surveillance as a part of the employment relationship (Richards, 2012). Besides, according to some of the authors the study of collective aspects of employment relationship is regarded with industrial relationship. Industrial relationship is so far concerned with the social justice through fair employment practices. There is always a conflict situation with respect to industrial relations that it is just about labor relations and unionized situations of employment, but it is more than that. Here to understand it in a better way, relationship between human resource management and industrial relations can be explored. Taking about their relationship, two man points comes forward under consideration. First, how and in what way does human resource management frames a challenge to IR? Second, if in any case conflicts take place between the two, then how can they be resolved so that they can go together with each other? (Edwards, n.d).
Moreover, industrial relations replicate and influence the structure in which current organizations must drive. Following this, an organization’s strategy and culture and the relationship between management and labor is an integral aspect of that structure. Besides, HRM demonstrates a set of managerial initiatives and alternatively does not deal with the rules and procedures as IR has a set of rules governing the employment relationship. On the basis of theoretical work in organizational behavior context, it is supposed that HRM consists of a set of policies which are crafted in order to maximize organizational commitment, flexibility, and employee commitment and work quality as well. In continuation with this model of HRM, collective industrial relations have a minor and less significant role to play. Consequently, HRM’s unitarist approach and IR’s pluralism approach do not fit with each other in organizational work place and therefore regarded unable to get along with each other (Silva, n.d).
In the framework of industrial relations and HRM, a survey of multi-cultural organizations has been taken into consideration on how they manage people’s value and perceptions. It was found that language and communication play a significant role in managing different people at workplace. For that, they can be provided training and motivation programmes. People having diverse culture, values and perception can be made aware of the organizational management and culture so that they can result in highly motivated and better work quality (Holden, 2001).
Here, this section of the essay engrosses the role of stakeholders in employment relationship. Stakeholders associated with an organization have genuine interests vested with the company and on the other hand have a common goal both overlying and contending with one other. Stakeholders in employment relationship are employees and employers themselves, unions, governments and employer associations as well. Employees mainly focus on higher wages, job security & stability and moreover favorable working conditions. Alternatively, employer’s emphasis on higher productivity diminished costs and increased profits (Wilton, 2010).
Additionally, employers along with the specialists handle employment relations on a daily basis by taking the help in legal and non legal matters. Moreover, employees are highly educated in current time; they act flawless and seek the attention of employers through employment relationship process. Accordingly, they require challenging and interesting work to grow and to be empowered. Union leaders act in the form of powerful role in employee relations from the end of employees. Finally, government as a major stakeholder in employment relationship seeks for economic stability aspect and ensures the economic development. For this, it works in favor of harmonizing the objectives of all the parties involved (Garran, 2008).
Furthermore, influence of workforce surveillance can also be viewed on the basis of porter’s five forces model. First rivalry amongst the competitors in this context can be stated that other organizations which are not using such surveillance system for monitoring their employee at workforce can attract the employees. Because wherein the employees are monitored and restricted to some extent of technologies’ used in the organization, they usually feel undervalued and start seeking for other organizations. In simple words, organizations having friendly framework without any surveillance can be the strongest competitor. Next, threat of new entrants demonstrates that new organizations can enter with the updated technologies in terms of employee’s surveillance and monitoring at workplace. Further it can be pointed out that already existing companies can have risk factor associated with the workforce surveillance system on account of employees being judged based on their performance that is monitored. On the other hand, new organizations make their remarkable entry in the market and grip more of the employees from well-established organizations (Porter, 2008).
Afterward, bargaining power of buyers and suppliers articulates about how much and up to what extent can buyers and suppliers negotiate. As far as buyer’s bargaining power is referred in terms of workforce surveillance’s influence, it represents the importance of buyer to one’s business and switching cost to them from one to another that of someone else. Here, power can be viewed in terms of employee’s demand according to the work performed under surveillance. In addition, use of extraordinary technologies reveals the strong bargaining power of buyers. Talking about supplier’s bargaining power, fairness and uniqueness of the technology supplied dictates the negotiation power of suppliers. In case of choice of fewer suppliers those are offering good and high-quality technologies, they tend to be strong with the dealers. Finally, threat of substitution can be defined when a unique or different surveillance software or technology is being used by an organization for a vital process, others can use a substitute of it by doing it manually or outsourcing it. In support, it is known as a threat of substitution under Porter’s five forces model (Harvard Business Review, 2008).
For a conclusion, it can be said that employment relationship is a notion used by the organizations defining the relationship between employees and employers. In case of facing any difficulty employees assure that they will be assisted by the employer. In simple words, industrial relations is a term which can be used to define it in a better way. In today’s context, employers mainly focus on employee motivation, training & development and ensure the profit maximization and productivity development in return. Further, essay highlighted the role of internet, email and other electronic equipment in workplace to monitor the exact performance of each individual. Workforce surveillance considers and aims to get employees attention to work and quality and also refers to privacy, ethics and human rights aspects of the employees. It also outlined the relationship between IR and HRM as their pluralism and unitary approaches. Finally, it put its emphasis on stakeholders and their separate actions in employment relations process to get the benefits.
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