Employee/Employer Relationships - Essay Example

Employee/Employer Relationships Traditionally, the relationship between employers and employees in the developed economies was based on the need tomaintain stability both in the worker’s contribution and the firm. The relationship between the worker and the employer was aimed at ensuring the organization did well financially. Therefore, in the white-collar sector, it was expected employee careers would advance along an escalator of sorts, where employees who followed the required organizational rules were expected to rise up the career ladder. In exchange for continued employee productivity and expected career advance, the organizations enjoyed employee loyalty and low turnover. This established stability in the relationship between employers and employees was disrupted by new trends in the business environment that included globalization and the Information technology, demand for highly skilled employees among others. This easy provides an analysis of the reasons for change in the relationship between employees and employer from 1900’s to today before exploring the consequences of such changes to contemporary business organizations. The change regarding relationship between employees and the employer can be explored by going back to the industrial relations that resulted from the industrial revolution period. During this period, employers perceived their employees as a factor of production, which resulted in a controlled and informal relationship between the two. Over the years, employee relations have moved from a focus on issues to do with traditional industrial relations to tackling of issues concerning core and periphery employees, unitary and multi-skilled workforce (Sengupta, Bhattacharya & Sengupta, 2006). There has been an increasing demand by employees for a flexible and diversified workplace environment. Both employees and employers have over time become aware of the need to include flexible arrangements in the hours worked by employees as a result of the new workplace demands such as part-time, temporary contracts and the introduction of distance working. The workforce available for employment in addition to patterns of work has continued to be diverse over the years making traditional recruitment practices irrelevant. The year 2000 ushered a growth in internet access therefore facilitating a move to a 24/7 society. The internet has created new jobs in e-commerce while jobs were lost in traditional areas making it possible for employees to work from home. Such developments have reduced the need for employers and employees to engage in face to face communication or interacting daily in the workplace. Working over the internet means employers are only concerned with a timely delivery of service by the employee as opposed to stressing physical presence of employees in the workplace (Sparrow & Cooper, 2003). As late as the 1970s, business organizations had lifetime employment models and long-term plans for internal development of talent where good employees were mentored to take up positions from senior officials who were retiring. The companies were caught off guard by recession in the 1980s making their forecasts on business growth and the number of employees they needed unattainable given that organizations had more talent than they needed (Wrigley, 2006). Volatility of the business environment due to economic recession which comes with a drop in organizational profits and increased cost of doing business has contributed to the change in the business environment has had a far-reaching impact on the relationship between employers and employees. In such financial situations, business organizations have overtime resorted to cutting costs through such measures as lying off some of their workforce or hiring different employees whenever the available skills does not meet the current need for new skills. Such trends have resulted to increased job insecurity among employees who are aware of the fact that they are can only keep their employment positions for as long as the organization deems their services necessary. Due to the laissez-faire arrangement between the workforce and the employers, employees have begun to think of themselves as free agents, looking to other organizations for new opportunities of growth and changing jobs whenever better ones become available (Wessels, 2006). The result of such an arrangement where employees do not stay at one organization for a lifetime has been a reduced loyalty of the employees to both the organization and the employer. Given the emphasis of on turnover and hamper employee productivity, employees feel there is a lack of mutual benefit viewing the arrangement as favouring the employers more. More importantly, while lack of job security has been thought to be a catalyst for employees to become more entrepreneurial and adaptable to the workplace demands, lack of mutual benefit inspires the most adaptable and entrepreneurial employee to seek other employment opportunities with better rewards for their talents (Phillips, 2008). Another factor that has continued to change the level of employee loyalty to an organization is increased number of young employees who have different prospects concerning their careers, in addition to striving to be once own brand or boss. Globalization as made the world a single marketplace therefore increasing internal and external competition among organizations both in domestic and international arena. The Increased competition has resulted in a change in employee and employer perceptions on performance expectations, payment scale, and working hours. The competition has resulted in increased workplace mobility since employers have become more nimble with respect to hiring and firing. This trend in hiring and firing has had a two way consequence with employees becoming aware that business organization swill not offer them a lifetime employment whereas business organization are ware that employees will move on after some time. Another aspect of globalization is the increased social and business networking in addition to the explosion of available information about companies and prospective career paths. These aspects have made it easier for employees to find new jobs in other industries or regions thus making it possible for employees to move from one job to another (Weiss, 2009). The decline in the power of unions has also had an impact in the relationship between employees and employers. During the early 1900s most of the activities employers did to increase employee loyalty were not undertaken to increase employee job satisfaction and productivity, but to appease the unions. Business organizations were worried about union activities in their organizations which would result in a possibility strike if employees felt discriminated upon. Therefore, business organizations were cautious in their treatment of employees so that they would not feel the need to join a union. In the modern times, this is not the case given the continued decline in union power and influence over most of the business organizations. It is now easy to quash any employee attempts to try to organize which makes employees fate to be in the hands of the employer (Zagelmeyer, 2004). There has been an increased demand for highly skilled employees in business organizations which has contributed to a change in the employee/employer relationships. Employers are increasingly demanding for verbal and mathematical, in addition to interpersonal and organizational skills (Klein & Mittnik, 2002). The increased demand for information, introduction of new technology, and globalization have increased demand by employers for advanced employee skills. Therefore, employers are striving to improve productivity through reform in the way they organize and motivate employees. The change in employer/employee relationship has also resulted in efforts by the employers to increase the quality and lower costs of goods and services. Employers have resorted to experimenting with increased involvement and interaction between employees and the management through creation of innovative work practices that includes team working, worker involvement in purchase decisions, total quality management, quality circles, and peer review of employee performance (Corrado, Haltiwanger, & Sichel, 2009). To mitigate the negative effects of the changing relationships between employers and employees, contemporary organizations boost their productivity through mechanisms such as profit sharing, increasing worker autonomy, decentralizing responsibility, and joining payment with performance. Organizations are also forced to device measures that will improve employee perception about their employers such as introducing changes in workplace and factory layouts to increase efficiency while reducing internally-related injuries. These work practices can result in high performance especially when joined with increased employee training, introduction of new technology, improved employee-employer communications. Contemporary organizations that incorporate several of these mechanisms into their practices have been called "high performance" work organizations (Fottler, Savage, Khatri, 2010). In responding to the need of flexibility in the workplace, employers put in place strategic measures that will accommodate flexible workforce. Contemporary organizations include employees who work under different arrangements including leasing agency workers, on call workers, contingent workers, independent contractors, and temporary help (Gleason, 2008). This increase in creative staffing arrangements presents employers with the need to examine in order to formulate a new definition of employee and workplace to determine the expected wages and benefits in addition to other standards and regulations of employee relations. Organizations that have taken advantage of employee demand for flexibility have reported increased productivity as they are able to tap the most out of the employee. In conclusions, there have been a number of changes in the work place environment that have resulted in a change of employee/employer relationships. Such changes include the introduction of new technology, globalization and the need to have a highly skilled workforce. Organizations have also found it difficult to maintain their employees due to competition for the available skills in addition to the new trend where employee loyalty has continued to decrease making it easy for the employee to change employers based on their need for job satisfaction. The changing employee/employer relationships over time have resulted in contemporary organizations’ efforts in making adjustments to accommodate the changes in workplace environment. Contemporary organizations have put in place measures that ensure they continue to get highly skilled employees that will guarantee high productivity at a lower cost. Such measures include accepting contingent workers who are able to offer their services when needed as opposed to maintaining permanent workforce. Organizations that have put in place adaptive measures have continued to report high productivity and turnover due to their ability to respond to the needs of their employees. References Corrado, C., Haltiwanger, J., & Sichel, D. (Eds.) 2009, Measuring capital in the new economy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fottler D. M., Savage G., & Khatri, N, 2010, (Eds.) Strategic Human Resource Management in Health Care. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing. Gleason, S. 2008, The Shadow Workforce: Perspectives on Contingent Work in the United States, Japan, and Europe, Growth and Change, 39(3), 523-526. Klein, I., & Mittnik, S. 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