Advisory, Conciliation, and Arbitration Service (ACAS)



Advisory, Conciliation, and Arbitration Service (ACAS)

Question 1: Employee Relations (Situation Analysis)

Few years back, I was working for a one of the leading organisation of our country. Where, I was appointed as a manager. As time passed, my responsibilities and job description became so tough to handle, but, I never compromised on my work. Most of the times I gave valuable suggestions to my co-workers and tried to motivate them to achieve better targets. Once, I asked few questions from my assistant that when was the last time you took a good look at your workforce? What did you see? You probably saw a rapidly changing group of employees that is getting more diverse by the day. The accelerated growth of diversity in the workforce over the past 20 years has spawned new developments in managing employee relations, making it one of the biggest challenges facing managers. To meet this challenge, managers must improve skills such as active listening, adaptability and decision-making. These core skills can assist supervisors and managers in tackling difficult issues that may arise within their workforce.

However, while the scenario and questions mentioned above are key, my situation focuses on the two most important skills for managing employee relations: interpersonal communications and conflict management.

Interpersonal Communications

The first skill for managers to understand and practice is interpersonal communications, because it is the foundation for all actions in the workplace and it allows the supervisor or manager an opportunity to build relationships with the overall workgroup without alienating anyone in the work environment. Working with diverse groups of people requires a tremendous amount of interaction. If these interactions are positive, they can help create the right workplace climate, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

In addition, because interactions occur daily, it is important for managers to have the respect of their employees. If this respect is absent, the supervisor or manager will have a difficult time getting things accomplished. (Slade, 1997)

Influence. This dimension is for those who thrive on constant interaction with people. The interaction allows individuals the opportunity to develop and extend their personal sphere of interpersonal influence. This provides professional satisfaction with the ability to influence, negotiate and leverage valuable information as a method to enhance ideas. Think of these individuals as having highly developed salesmanship skills because they have the ability to constantly keep people highly motivated, no matter what the situation.

Interpersonal facilitation. This dimension describes those who are perceived and known as "people persons." They are very aware of the interpersonal aspects of the work environment and are intuitive, because they are constantly monitoring the situation behind the scenes. Those who focus on this dimension pose critical questions to themselves, such as: What is going to be our strategy to ensure positive employee relations? Moreover, what employee relations issues are going to impact the business and what is the proper way to address them? "People persons" use these questions and subsequent answers to look for ways to improve organisational effectiveness through proactive ...