Strategic Aspects of Employee Relations

The objectives of this chapter are to:

1. To provide explanation regarding the explanation of the decline in the number of trade unions in the coming decades.
2. To do a review regarding the different developments taking place in the field of industrial actions as well bargaining.
3. To provide an account for the extent till which an increase in the regulation of employment would take palace.
4. To take a look at the effects of these fashions and study the relations between employment.
5. To lay down the main choices that manager have in places where collective employment takes place.
6. To do an assessment of the different approaches used for involvement of people in managing organizations.

When a survey of the various activities as well as priorities that the specialists in the HR department was done in 1980, there was not a least bit of doubt regarding the presence of employee relation as the activity on which most amount of time as well as resources were spent by the company.

During the processes of recruitment as well as selection it was made clear that there was a lot of scope as well as ability to make decisions. However ever since that time, the situation has undergone lots of changes. The survey taken by HR managers in the present times have brought out the fact that the issue concerned with relationship of employees has gone down the pecking order and is not likely to get too much importance even in the future. Emphasis is now largely given to recruitment of people and then retaining their services. New technology has now also been introduced for proper HR management.

The main reason for this happening is because the people feel that relationship between the employer and employee is in a really sweet state in the USA. A survey of the HR managers that took place in 1998, brought out that the climate at the workplace of the different employees were good or very good, very few people saw it to be poor. The Industrial Relations Service in the year 2000 claimed that pressure was being placed on the workforce to grow more efficient. However that has not been met with protests or any kind of conflict. The relationship between the employees is hence not seen as a problem of the organization. Most of the employees also told in the survey that they too felt good about the climate of employee relationship existing in their workplace. The claims of the workforce were however a little dull in nature. The employee relation is an issue which might have lost a bit of importance to the HR managers; however they still carry their significance. A good climate among coworkers does not exist automatically. The managers have to get much involved to ensure that no love is lost among the people.

State the reasons according to you for which there has been a fall in the importance of the activities related to employee relations? What is required to be done to cause a reversal of such a position?