Assignment Sample on P31793 Managing Employment Relations
Introduction
Employment relationships refer to the relationship between an employer and the employees which eventually impacts the overall business activities of an organization in the long run. In today’s highly globalized world, managing employment relationships has become a truly difficult task to carry out and due to this reason it directly impacts various activities associated with Human Resource Management (HRM). In this report, a detailed discussion will be made on the various important aspects related to employment relations including the challenges present in the process of field of employment relations and the ways in which it may be managed in a proper way in the United States.
Discussion on the major employment relation issues and challenges affecting the United States
Issues related to lack of trust
Trust issues have always been a major factor which impacted employment relations to a considerable extent where employees of the United States often find it difficult to trust their employers on various grounds including job roles and emotional detachment with the employers. Employment relationships are created by considering the employment laws and regulations such as Equal pay act, Immigration Reform and Control Act where the behaviour of the managers also plays a crucial role in maintaining individual relationships (Farnham, 2017). On the other hand, it may be asserted that lack of clear organizational goals and vision may also create trust issues among the employee and the employer which directly impacts employment relations in a negative way in the USA. Disputes in leadership roles as well as faulty and unplanned leadership styles often create unpleasant employment relations in the USA which translates into trust issues in the workplace. Unhealthy workplace practices including lack of active engagement with the employees is also responsible for creating trust issues which ultimately results in giving rise to confusion and trust issues.
Figure 1: Factors associated with trust
(Source: Farnham, 2017)
Employers of an organization often do not disclose or share all the necessary information with the employees of an organization which directly impacts productivity by weakening the bond among the employees and employers. Improving the HRM practices and activities will definitely prove beneficial in overcoming issues by providing specific guidelines in order to achieve optimum levels of competitiveness by reducing conflicts in employment relations (Chiang et al., 2017). Employment relations in many countries including the United States have been severely affected due to emerging trust issues in organizations which needs to be overcome as early as possible through transformational leadership (Yue et al., 2019).
Issues related to job satisfaction
Positive employment relations always depend on the level of job satisfaction and organization or a company offers to its employees and due to this reason it is often considered to be an extremely important factor to keep the employees satisfied. In other words, it may be mentioned that the concept of minimum wage is not always successful to implement as companies prefer to choose skilled employees instead of employees having low skill which impacts the performance of an organization and it directly impacts employment relations as employees may provide a negative feedback about the organization (The Economist. 2022). Job satisfaction of the employees also depends on the job roles which are given to specific employees and it becomes a crucial factor in maintaining a good employment relation and the United States is no exception to it. Frequent changes in job roles and responsibilities often create a sense of unfulfilment and dissatisfaction among the employees which directly impacts the employment relations in the United States (Dobrow et al., 2018). The outbreak of the Covid-19 has impacted the entire employment relations in a negative way where the mental health of the employees have deteriorated to a considerable extent due to salary cuts and changed work conditions (Goldfarb et al., 2022).
The HRM department of organizations of the United States often fails to implement and adopt strategies and policies which may improve the levels of job satisfaction of the employees and impact the employment relationships in a negative way. Role played by managers and leaders of companies of the USA becomes an essential factor in addressing the issues present in an organization which also improves cross cultural work conditions (Edwards, 2004).
Figure 2: Factors responsible for job satisfaction and maintaining employment relations in the USA
(Source: Edwards, 2004)
Communication issues
Due to lack of strong communication among the managers and team leaders, employees often feel isolated and unimportant which lowers the motivation level of the workforce to a certain extent. Lack of proper communication also impacts the levels of commitment of the employees which get reflected in the performance of the workforce and this also creates disharmony in the workforce. Issues related to communication are considered to be one of the most common issues affecting employment relations in the United States and due to this reason changes in the HRM policies and strategies play a crucial role in maintaining healthy and effective employment relations in the long run (Farnham, D., 2017). On a contradictory note, it has to be argued that managing the international workforce of companies operating in the USA becomes a truly challenging task where the decision making process is entirely responsible for handling the issues in an effective way.
Employers of the United States often fail to understand the importance of maintaining a strong network of communication in the organization which becomes an important factor in handling organizational conflicts in a strategic way. The issue of maintaining proper communication has arisen as a major challenge in the United States in maintaining successful employment relations. Cross cultural diversity management has become a serious issue in managing the employees of the USA at present time which needs to be handled with extreme care and precision in order to carry out global business operations smoothly (Spector et al., 2017).
Issues related to recognition and appreciation
Employers often fail to understand the importance of recognizing and appreciating the efforts made by employers which ultimately impacts the entire employment relation in a negative way by reducing the levels of motivation of the employees of the United States. On a broader note, it needs to be implied that focusing on practices related to cross border transfer of the employees play a vital part in enhancing organizational success (Ferner et al., 2012). Managers and leaders of the companies of the USA fail to accept the fact that recognizing even the smallest efforts made by employees encourages the employees and boosts their motivation levels to a significant extent which eventually impacts employment relations. The HRM department of various companies and organizations has become reluctant to pay attention towards the efforts made by the employees which is deteriorating the employment relations in the United States.
Appreciation and recognition certainly improves the productivity of the employees and also improves the loyalty of the employees and due to this reason it becomes an essential aspect of maintaining healthy employment relations in the USA. Increasing loyalty of the staff through effective employment relations proves beneficial in gaining competitive advantage and lack of staff loyalty creates unwanted issues which impacts organizational growth as well as employment relations in a negative way in the USA. Policies and strategies related to organizational structure become important in dealing with several issues related to Human Resource Management (HRM) in order to run global business operations in a hassle freeway (McDonnell et al., 2010).
Discrimination issues
Discrimination in the workplace has always been a major issue throughout the world and the United States is no exception to it where employees often face problems and challenges related to discrimination on the basis of gender, culture and skin colour. In a more specific way, it may be opined that focusing on human factors through applying changes in the HRM practices enhances the effectiveness of HR managers to ensure a better work environment along with analysing the tools and techniques used by HR managers and leaders (Morgeson et al., 2019). Employers fail to address the issues of discrimination in the organization which ultimately leads to anxiety, depression and discontent among the employees to a great extent and due to this reason employment relations get profoundly impacted in a negative manner. Modern business organizations of the United States always prefer to have a culturally diversified workforce in order to increase creativity and performance yet issues relating discrimination hinders the entire process. Employees often fail to mitigate the issues which result in departure of skilled employees which impacts organizational productivity and the workforce becomes weak along with affecting the reputation of a company in the global context (Attaran et al., 2019).
Discrimination on the grounds of race and ethnicity is a major factor affecting employment relations in the United States and in order to confront the situation, HR managers and leaders are required to implement strict policies and regulations. Changes in management styles along with implementing coordination at every level may prove successful in transforming the employees working in the USA (Cameron and Green, 2019). Discrimination issues, whether direct or indirect are required to be dealt with utmost attention in order to manage employment relations in a positive way by ensuring better organizational culture.
Critical assessment of the implications in order to manage the issue of employment relations in the United States
Employment relation is the crucial aspect of business management where it coordinates the issues of employees related to selection and engagement of employee, training and development, recognition, working hour, wage distribution, conflict management, work place safety and termination of employment. It accompanies the business framework with related changes in the market operatives to maintain a healthy relationship between employer and employee to collaborate for organizational success. The industries and regulations of USA are actively working to marginalize the employee issues in the organization to influence the organizational delivery according to the market demand maintaining economic growth and organizational prosperity.
Managing lack of trust
Trust management is a significant part for the organizational directives which differentiate the employee efforts and performance in order to propel business operation to achieve sustainability for the long term. The more reliable employer may generate employee happiness with a healthy work life balance which positively accommodates the business goal with increased productivity and employee relationship with organization for strong commitment to all together achieve the market heights. Eventually, employers of the USA are legally monitoring the employees to engage and direct the employee trust issues where it has to empathise and frequently engage to acknowledge the challenges with constructive approach for eliminating the issues under effective leadership. The management usually listens to both sides without any biases which may encourage the employee’s trust in the employer with clear foresight and protection of employee interest in a pragmatic approach. It needs to mention that, management practices proactively engage with the employees to eliminate the conflicts and lack of trust as per the state and federal government laws of USA as the equal pay act, the Age discrimination in Employment Act and the family and Medical leave Act. Further, these laws are guiding and strengthening the American employer to manage the employee relations fulfilling individual concerns with work place safety, anti-discriminatory approaches, clear vision and objectives, team bonding, recognition and engersizing for innovation with personal benefits and development to accompany the individual aspects in the organization (Greenhouse, 2009).
Evaluating the employee job dissatisfaction
Employee job satisfaction is a vital aspect in the employee-employer relationship where employee aspects are crucial for business management and organizational benefit where high job satisfaction has reduced the employee turnover. On a specific note, low payment, under employment, lack of opportunity, emotional discretion and health issues are the contributors of job dissatisfaction and negatively impact the overall business status. The US Department of Labor (DOL) has enforced more than 100 labour laws for the consecutive term to increase the participation of employers in managing employee choice particularly the Fair Labour Standard Act has accommodated the organizational internal business conduct. The Employment and Labour Laws 2021 has specified the responsibility of both the employee and employer relation in a clear way to communicate the government decision amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and growing employee dissatisfaction. Moreover, frequent engagement with the employee effectively addresses the issue with a personal development plan and opportunity to explore the potential for promotion and development for better job credibility and satisfaction with psycho-physical support (Katz and Colvin, 2020).
Figure 3: Employee well-being in the workplace
(Source: Katz and Colvin, 2020)
Regulating communication issues
Communication is the essential part of organization where it enables the acknowledgement of organizational policy and vision to achieve market competitiveness where lack of communication may ruin the business outcome adversely. The strong and omni-channel communication helped the employer to maintain the professional relationship with the employee to assess the individual effort and convey the need of the organization with clear visionary and work place practices. On a contradictory note, high capital mobility, decentralised collective bargaining, and weak regulatory frameworks for employment relations has developed according to capitalism paradigm to frame the employment practices in the USA both in union and non-union sector. It is compulsory to eliminate the barriers of communication for managing the cordial relationship between employee and employer for better coordination and collaboration in business operation. The National Labour Relation Act has been adopted to protect the rights of employees as well as employers to encourage collective bargaining, and curtail certain ill-practises of labour and management practices in the private sector. Additionally, the federal Service Labor-Management Relation Statue has verified the miscommunication in the organizational management where employer personal effectiveness is shaping the working culture with cooperation and conflict management along the diverse employee strength. The enhanced communication among the employees and management may boost the employee trust and satisfaction for an improvised business procedure for inspiration to creativity and innovation (Baldé et al.,2018).
Managing recognition and appreciation
Recognition and appreciation is quite influential to the employee for a high magnitude of employee relation management where employees’ efforts are assessed and scrutinized for the time being and the employer bestows the rewards to motivate. Appreciation of good performance always motivates the employee for exerting more excellence in performance management to outstandingly represent the organizational value and practice. The adoption of performance metrices has helped to grow the culture entangled with employee attitudes, knowledge and practices with rewards and recognition on the work premises through openness which positively accelerated the business growth with employee coordination and effort (Alassaf et al., 2020). Apart from that, appraisal, reward, bonus, remote working opportunity, promotion, leaves are the potential way to indicate the appreciation and recognition for employee performance and forward the confidence level of the employee for managing everyday tasks more smoothly.
Controlling discrimination issues
The business organizations is protected from the evil of discrimination on the ground of the ethnicity, race, colour, religion, gender and language are predominantly objected where the Anti-Discrimination Act- 1977 aims to bring the neutrality in work place. More specifically, the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 1964 has been protecting the employee and job aspirants from potential discrimination in the organizational work culture. The Genetic Information Non-discrimination Act, The worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, work are some other laws enacted by the Federal Government of USA to prohibit discrimination. The ground of discrimination’s national origin, culture, language, religion, race, colour, sexual orientation and familial status in the organization practices has been prohibited to strengthen the employee-employment relationship with stability (Usa.gov, 2022). The organizational effectiveness and employee satisfaction has a lot of dependency in the organizational culture where any kind of discrimination is treated as an intolerant approach. Employee relations are crucial for the employer to proficiently serve the customer with essential products and services where the internal management of the organization actively takes care of employees to generalize the company policy to all the employees (Frege and Kelly, 2020). It articulates the health and well-being of individual employees along with offering an opportunity to quickly address the complaint in the organization avoiding micromanagement and sharing the benefit of doubts for more engagement and participation of employees in the organizational framework of people management.
Conclusion
In a concluding remark, it needs to be clearly stated that employment relations in the modern business world plays an extremely vital role in maintaining a strong workforce which helps in maximizing productivity and performance of an organization. Paying attention to the numerous issues and challenges related to employment relations in the United States such as discrimination in the workplace, issues related to trust, issues related to job satisfaction and recognition and appreciation will certainly assist the firms in achieving optimum levels of productivity along with meeting organizational objectives. Finally, managing the issues and confronting the challenges associated with employment relations will also provide better ways to retain skilled employees for better growth and development of companies in the future.
References
Alassaf, D., Dabić, M., Shifrer, D. and Daim, T., 2020. The impact of open-border organization culture and employees’ knowledge, attitudes, and rewards with regards to open innovation: an empirical study. Journal of Knowledge Management.
Attaran, M., Attaran, S. and Kirkland, D., 2019. The need for digital workplace: increasing workforce productivity in the information age. International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems (IJEIS), 15(1), pp.1-23.
Baldé, M., Ferreira, A.I. and Maynard, T., 2018. SECI driven creativity: the role of team trust and intrinsic motivation. Journal of Knowledge Management.
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2019. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Chiang, F.F., Lemański, M.K. and Birtch, T.A., 2017. The transfer and diffusion of HRM practices within MNCs: lessons learned and future research directions. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 28(1), pp.234-258.
Colling, T. and Terry, M. eds., 2010.Industrial relations: Theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.
Dobrow Riza, S., Ganzach, Y. and Liu, Y., 2018. Time and job satisfaction: A longitudinal study of the differential roles of age and tenure. Journal of management, 44(7), pp.2558-2579.
Edwards, T., 2004. 15 The Transfer of Employment Practices Across Borders in Multinational Companies. International human resource management, p.389.
Farnham, D., 2017. The changing faces of employment relations: Global, comparative and theoretical perspectives. Palgrave, Macmillan Eduction.
Farnham, D., 2017. The changing faces of employment relations: Global, comparative and theoretical perspectives. Red Globe Press.
Fernando, D., 2021. Challenging the cross-national transfer of diversity management in MNCs: Exploring the ‘identity effects’ of diversity discourses. human relations, 74(12), pp.2126-2152.
Ferner, A., Edwards, T. and Tempel, A., 2012.Power, institutions and the cross-national transfer of employment practices in multinationals.Human relations, 65(2), pp.163-187.
Frege, C. and Kelly, J., 2020. Theoretical perspectives on comparative employment relations. In Comparative employment relations in the global economy (pp. 9-28). Routledge.
Goldfarb, Y., Gal, E. and Golan, O., 2022. Implications of employment changes caused by COVID-19 on mental health and work-related psychological need satisfaction of autistic employees: A mixed-methods longitudinal study. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 52(1), pp.89-102.
Greenhouse, S., 2009. The big squeeze: Tough times for the American worker. Anchor.
Katz, H.C. and Colvin, A.J., 2020. Employment relations in the United States. In International and Comparative Employment Relations (pp. 49-74). Routledge.
McDonnell, A., Gunnigle, P. and Lavelle, J., 2010. Learning transfer in multinational companies: explaining inter‐organisation variation. Human Resource Management Journal, 20(1), pp.23-43.
Morgeson, F.P., Brannick, M.T. and Levine, E.L., 2019. Job and work analysis: Methods, research, and applications for human resource management. Sage Publications.
Spector, P.E., Cooper, C.L., Poelmans, S., Allen, T.D., O’driscoll, M., Sanchez, J.I., Siu, O.L., Dewe, P., Hart, P., Lu, L. and De Moraes, L.F.R., 2017. A cross-national comparative study of work-family stressors, working hours, and well-being: China and Latin America versus the Anglo world. International Human Resource Management: From Cross-Cultural Management to Managing a Diverse Workforce, pp.257-280.
The Economist. 2022. What harm do minimum wages do?. [online] Available at: <https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2020/08/15/what-harm-do-minimum-wages-do> [Accessed 1 February 2022].
Usa.gov, 2022. [online] Available at: <https://www.usa.gov/labor-laws> [Accessed 1 February 2022]
Assignment Services Unique Submission Offers:
