1. The current economic recession has been prolonged and we can see how it has distorted the trust between employees and management many companies. During recession the trust between employees and management goes down because your future path becomes blurred and one day or another you have to take the tough decision that might be firing employees. So, when there’s a recession employees start doubting the management’s intentions where as management starts dealing with the employees in a strict way because they know jobs aren’t available in the market. One way of reconciling this trust is by using proper employee management techniques. One instrument of improving employee-management relations is by using employee empowerment method. By empowering you mean that you delegate more authority to them and give more power to subordinate. This way they can come up with new ideas and cost cutting methods and firms might not only cut costs but it might also benefit from good relationship with employees.
Source: Management by Richard L. Daft, 4th Edition, pp. 545-548
2. According to a book written by John Gennard on employee relations, employee-management relationship suffers because of different aims of both management and employees. For example, management wants higher profits which includes lowering costs and could lead to downsizing and loss of job for labor. On the other hand, labor wants the security of their jobs and higher wages. The book further states that during recession these aims become more conflicting and the need to maintain cordial relations become more vital. The book recommends that this relationship could be improved by bilateral negotiation between management and labor union and by joint consultation by the both parties before decision making. For example, in recession due to slump in demand your organization cannot pay high labor costs and firing is inevitable. But this can be avoided if management decides to involve labor union in the decision making process. Both parties could come up with alternatives like Labor union might agree to accept a lower wage and firing or redundancy is avoided.
Source: Employee Relations by John Gennard and Graham Judge, 4th Edition
3. Actions taken by top management is also vital in building strong and good relationship between the management and employees. In an employee relations book written by Laurie Dicker, he states what an employee says how his general manager has used way to improve the relationship with them. There was a general manager who asked his employees that if they had any issue they can either meet him in the office or can call him any time they feel like, rather than sending applications, emails or meeting with him after passing through so many formalities. He said he will keep his office door open all the time for employees to see him and discuss issues with him. This greatly improved the employee motivation and built good relationship with employees. This can be extremely useful at the time of recession as you get first hand information about what’s happening at production centre and you get new ideas from people who are closer to the action and this can lead to great cost savings by the firms.
Sources: Development in Employee relation by Laurie Dicker, 1st Edition pp. 4-10
4. Effective Employee Relations: A guide to policy and practice in the workplace states the there are two parties in production maze. One party is management and the other is employees or workers. The book states that the only way two parties can function well together is if there is an air of trust between the two. One way of showing trust to the employees is by reducing the supervision over them. This way they will feel that management trusts them and will work to win the hearts of the management. Similarly, this is important in the time of recession as less supervision means that the cost of hiring supervisors will be saved. Furthermore, in the volatile environment of recession decision will be taken quickly as there will be few layers between worker and management and thus communication will have to travel through fewer channels and will be quick and not broken.
Source: Effective Employee Relations: A guide to policy and practice in the workplace, written by: Richard Pettinger, Australia, 1999, pp. 43-55, 243-254)
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