Employee Relations

Management
 What is Employee Relations?

 Employee relations refers to the interrelationships,

both formal and informal between managers and
those whom they manage.

 How are we managed? how we would like to be

managed? how and why conflicts arise? and how
these can be resolved at work? These are the basic
concern of employee relations.
 Traditional and newer concerns

 Traditional focus on ‘actors’ like managers, employees,

government, unions.

 Until recently looked at person, unions,

manufacturing, manual work.

 Today, increasing interest in ‘new’ actors – customers,

families, other interest groups - and in service sector,
women and complexity of employment arrangements.

 Widening focus has broadened scope of employee

relations concerns
 Why are Employee Relations worth studying?

 For many people work is central in terms of time, money,

identity, status, social relations

 Most of us experience work as employees – we have an

employment relationship – between ourselves and those
who employ us, and an employment status

 However many different interests at work (‘stakeholders’)

– owners, shareholders, managers, employees, customers
– all exert pressure on employment relationship
 For employers – the ‘labour question’ a central one

 Need labour to produce output

 Need to ensure labour does what employers want

 Need for control – of labour costs and activities - and

need for welfare

 Tension – control v commitment

 The Employment Relationship

 It follows that the ‘employment relationship’ is a central

feature of work but it is dynamic.

 It is also complex – has many dimensions and levels –

economic, legal, social, psychological and political

 Shaped by historical experiences

 Employment relationship now seen as core to the study of

employee relations

 Many employment relationships, many employee relations

 The Employment Relationship

Parties to
Relationship

Operation Substance
Employment •Individual:
• Level Relationship reward, job,
• Process career
• Style •Collective: joint
Structure agreements
• Formal rules
•Informal Source: Kessler
understandings and Undy 1997