EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS

Employment Relations

Employment Relations

Changes in society and legislation can somehow contribute to the influences on employment relations. There are several key influences that create impacts on the employment relations in workplaces nowadays, and they are the social influences, legal influences, economic influences and the new organizational behavioral influences. The existence of social influences involve the increased number of people from a greater range of ethic backgrounds in the workforce, increased number of people juggling families and work, declined union membership and people becoming more focused on issue such as discrimination, unfair work practices.

The legal influences which consists of regulations and legislations, encourage the employers and employees to make direct agreement about the terms and conditions of employment that will apply at the workplace, and in this way, the power of unions are weakened as there are restrictions on union right of entry to workplaces and on the enforcement of union membership. Meanwhile, the economic influences on employment relations include the level of economic activity, which involves several stages. Globalization is also another major economic influence on employment relations. It means that Australian businesses have to produce products and services that can compete worldwide, and it is expected that more and more Australian businesses are likely to be doing business in other countries. And as a result, (Davis & Lansbury 1993 100-12) managing multicultural and diverse workforces provides a challenge for employment relations managers, while efficiencies have also to be matched with competitors all over the globe.

New organizational behavior also has an impact on the employment relations; for instance, in businesses with a traditional pyramid structure, high-level managers are at top and workers are at the bottom with layers of middle managers in between. As a result, there is little or even none if any direct contact between top management and the workers, while the process of decision-making rests with management. However, with the new ideas developed in businesses today, flatter management structures and team structures have been used increasingly. In these kinds of structures, workers may have direct contact with the top management in the business. In flatter structures have fewer middle management levels. Teams of workers may report to the top management and this employment relations function is more likely focus on the development of workers or as a team, use of intrinsic rewards and corporate culture.

The impact of team structure have been evidently shown in the case of Singapore Airlines(SIA), in which the business has made use of the team concept to handle every ground customer services which take place before embarkation. The service teams cover every operation from check-in duties and flight departure, instead of dedicating check-in duties and terminal functions to separate staff groups. The formation of this type of service team has instilled a sense of belonging among team members which works towards higher efficiency and strengthening the staff cooperation and morale. Hence, this ensures the quality of services. In a long term view, the formation of these services may possibly enhance the reputation of the ...