Solution

Question 1 (1.4)- Good employment relations; achieved in organisations

According to Bulinska-Stangrecka and Bagienska (2021), good employee relations is defined as the employees and employers relations. In employment relations, this is relevant in both personal and collective based workplace relationships. This is through a reflection on an increased personalisation of employment relations due to an increase in popularity of individual employees workplace rights. In supporting this, CIPD (2023) which is a CIPD supported factsheet not that upto 87% of the respondents note relationship with both management and employees as “very good” or “good” with less than 3% noting that it is “poor” or “very poor”.  Post COVID-19 pandemic and eventual economic slowdown as contributing to reduced number of hours of work, unemployment and issues with job insecurity, businesses closed, inflation and disrupted supply chain networks. The identified challenges lead to occurrence of new approaches of work in remote working which alter success of the employees relations. In Saudi Aramco for example, employee relations is categorised in the specialist knowledge in CIPD HR professional map under a constant review. This is by making sure the relations with organisation and people is managed in a transparent and following set laws (CIPD, 2022a).

For the people professionals achieving “good employment relations”. The best practice would include;

Working with line managers

The need to work with the line managers by people practice professionals is informed by the fact that workplace conflicts influence employees relations in the level of managers and employees relations (Kaufman et al., 2021). This is informed by the likelihood of conflicts emergence in workplace among different stakeholders. According to CIPD (2023b), the line managers are involved in overseeing individual employees/teams and assessed based on their performance of the employees they are overseeing. For example, working in Saudi Aramco organisation, line managers are involved in support of the wellbeing of their different teams. This is with the line managers being involved in actively monitoring workloads and approaches of working for supporting wellbeing. For people practice professionals, the rationale of this is informed by CIPD (2023c) noting that trends including performance-related pay for instance has increased on the line managers roles in enhancing the employment relations.

The strengths of involving line managers by people practice professionals in enhancing good workplace relations is guided by the fact that they are at heart of majority of workplace conflicts, causing it, experiencing, dealing or coping with consequences (Brandln et al., 2022). The outcome of this is positioning line managers as core in enhancing good employment relations of people management. For example, considering the Saudi Aramco case, as a result of increased conflicts in their operations, line managers are increasingly and closely engaged in organisations operations. This is by transitioning away from a rigid people management policies which contributed to immense employee relations challenges. In line with the Pluralism theory, Ackers (2021) noted that by recognising importance of inevitability of workplace conflicts provides a relevant chance to handle staff grievance. These findings are equally supported by Budd (2020) using Normative Models of HRM identifying line managers as core in policies development shaping and affecting employees behaviours and efforts.

For the challenges, people practice professionals working with the line managers for enhancing  “good employment outcomes” contribute to delayering of the organisation operations (Maulana et al., 2022). In Saudi Aramco for example, the implication of this include challenge in establishing those constituting front- and mid-level managers. Also, working with line managers for enhancing good employment relations is contributing to uneven organisation structure and layers particularly in regard to outsourcing and temporary working plans. This is since the employees in Saudi Aramco operate in a client-form arrangement as opposed to immediate employers. This means that it is not all the line managers who execute their functions similarly with the management not requiring a similar form of management process.

In summary, by the line managers and people practice professionals working together, they are in a position of successfully improving employment relationships. This is with the line managers being involved to manage different unpredictable tensions and antagonisms which are majorly ignored by the senior management and employers. In Saudi Aramco, employees are provided with constant support by their line managers, setting appropriate policies and strategies for improving employment relationships.

Workplace Representatives

In CIPD (2021) report, it evidence that having appropriate opportunities for employees expressing their voice is core for harnessing job quality. It is lack of job quality that largely contribute to increased employment relations challenges. In Saudi Aramco case, by leveraging on strategies improving the employees voice, it has been possible for their employees to feel valued, appreciate, recognised hence an increased involvement in the organisation active operations. According to Ip et al. (2020) workplace representatives would be selected by their fellow employee or management appointed. For example, in Saudi Aramco, since Saudi Aramco does not allow trade unions, they work with workplace representatives to receive information from and offer management information. The application of this approach is informed by radical theory Kaufman et al. (2021) which identify the challenges of employment relations to be as a result of existence of a capitalist society with inequalities in place in employment relations and broad society. This is supported in CIPD (2023d) which involve good work index and note workplace representatives as a best practice to complement and reinforce individual voice channels, managing misunderstanding in organisations hence successful employment relations.

The strengths of this model include the capacity for nurturing for appropriate employment relations. In Saudi Aramco for example their workplace representatives play the role of useful sounding board for their management on plans for their organisation. This was the case during COVID-19 where workplace conflicts caused by employees required to go for redundancy and business transfer were released from the organisation. This is supported by Peetz and Pocock (2009) noting that workplace representatives work as advocacy of the employees hence enhancing union power which promote appropriate workplace relations.

For the challenges, failure of the organisation management taking the input of workplace representatives in a serios way would contribute to resentment issues and mistrust. As evidenced in Ročkutė et al. (2018) the mistrust complicates issues leading to challenge in achieving a successful management of employees relations. In Saudi Aramco, with workplace representatives primarily being informal, they are insufficient in regard to encouraging flexibility in world of knowledge changes.

Question 2 (2.4)- Changing nature of work

As defined in Autor (2019), changing nature of work has a direct influence on areas of social, economy, environment, and cultural systems evolving significantly and uneven locally and internationally. The outcome of this include increased inequalities in the modern workplace environment and increase in opportunities to be leveraged on. Post COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic slowdown, the changing nature of work has been more prominent. These findings are supported in McKinsey & Company (2021) report

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