3MER Supporting Good Practice in Managing Employee Relationship

3MER Supporting Good Practice in Managing Employee Relationship

Description of the MER guide

In this level 3 CIPD learners are introduced to employment law and factors that affect employment relationships. The internal and external factors which impact employees’ status, individual rights and termination of contracts are explained in this unit.

A healthy relationship between employees and employers is essential for any organisation’s growth through their interest differ as employers’ interest is to minimize cost and maximize profit. In contrast, employees’ interest focuses on increasing their earning and other terms of employment contracts, such as flexible hours and bonuses.

This unit discusses best practice that helps both parties (employer and employees) work together. It’s good for the learner to understand that an organisation with positive employees to employer relations is considered healthy. This is why employees are supposed to have a good communication channel with their employers, as this will help them air their concerns, and the employer will be able to address the matter adequately.

Factors impacting employee relations

As we have mentioned above, there are internal and external factors that impact employee relations. The internal issues are evidence inside an organisation and calls for the management and organisation personnel to resolve them. On the other hand, external factors are out of organisation control. Examples of Internal factors are:

Employment Contracts: This is an agreement between employer and employee and contains the period of the contracts, terms that are either in writing or orally which are agreed by employer and employee, and lastly, the implied terms(These terms will not be in writing or orally but maybe obvious, i.e., terms like employees will not steal from the employer).

Statutory terms: These terms must be in writing in the statement of employment particulars. Additionally, you must follow these terms, or less a court action might be involved if broken and need be.

Employee motivation: the employee’s performance through appraisal can motivate them to attain personal and organisational goals. This will improve organisation performance, productivity as well as improve the relationship in the organisation.

Examples of external factors are:

Social impacts: As an organisation strives to meet the need of the business, managing the need of the employees is necessary given that they have families and may need incentives such as flexible working hours,  home-based working or sharing of the job, as well as other benefits, for instance, holidays, maternity or paternity leave among others.

Other external factors include technological factors, as well as competition in the industry where the organisation functions.

Employment status

There are various terms of work in an organisation that an employee gets engaged in; these terms include fixed-term, temporary term, and permanent term. The human resource professional taking this unit must understand those terms to explain to the employees the kind of contract he/she is involved in, for this will help reduce conflict that might erupt between HR and employees concerning the same.

This is essential as employees learn their legal rights when they understand the contract they have with an organisation. This will, in turn, improve their productivity as well as positive interaction with the organisation.

Additionally, when employees understand their contract term, it’s easy for them to deliver excellent results as they know what is expected of them. Hence, learners taking this unit need to understand all aspects of the employment terms to guide the employee to understand their position in the firm. This will ensure the smooth running of the organisation.

Employee rights

This unit aims to provide insight into the employees’ rights and the employers’ role to ensure that those rights are not infringed. In this respect, most countries have developed legislation that governs these organisations’ running and ensures that the rights of employees are respected.

Examples of this legislation are working hours of the employees, sick leave, paternity or maternity leave, and annual leave, to mention a few. These guidelines ensure that employers take the right actions in treating their staff to different work circumstances.

These guidelines ensure that employees get equal treatment and that no one is discriminated against in the organisation, e.g., All workers should get an equal amount of payment. No one should be paid more than others, especially when all of them are in equal rank.

Learners should understand the right of employees and the rights of an employer to ensure there is balance in how these two related and that there is equal treatment.

Discrimination, harassment, and victimization

Learners taking this unit should understand an essential aspect that ensures equal treatment of workers regardless of gender, ethnicity, religion, culture, and age. They should also understand the legal laws that guide them and other staff on matters of victimization, harassment, and discrimination within an organisation.

Understanding this will help increase positive relations among workers and staff hence facilitating the growth of the firm. When these aspects are ignored, there will be a negative impact on staff growth and relationship.

Psychological contract

This is the perception of the employees and the employer on what their obligation is towards each other. This concept is essential to the learner because they can easily understand both parties’ behaviours in the workplace. It’s important to realize that psychological contracts differ from legal agreements. The human resource professional should strive to establish mutual understanding in the organisation, giving forth mutual trust among the two parties.

Terminating employment contracts

At one point in a firm, employees have to leave the organisation. One should ensure that legal laws regarding the contract’s dismissal or termination are followed as a human resource expert. Among the best are exit interviews that a human resource should take into consideration. This will guarantee a good relationship between an organisation and the employee leaving.

Learning objectives

At the end of this unit, learners should:

• Understand both internal and external factors that affect employees’ relations
• Understand and able to differentiate various employment status
• Have a better understanding of legal laws that govern relationship within the workplace
• Understand psychological contract and practical concept that revolves around it
• Understand the concept and best practices that allow peaceful termination of contracts

Conclusion

This unit is for learners who want to develop a career in the HR department and enjoy in-depth knowledge of managing their workplace relationships. Similarly, this unit helps the learner understand various aspects that they should have to maintain healthy relations between employer and employees at their workplace.  Additionally, this unit will benefit HR who want to understand legal laws that guide how an organisation should conduct itself concerning relationships.