Positive Employee Relations Research Articles

Honesty Incorporated: Can the Development of a Trust Culture Create Sustainable Competitive Advantage?

Companies all over the world are trying to become better places to work because they realise that it is essential for their survival. A work environment supportive of trust and good employee relations at all levels clearly brings the best performance out of the employees which in turn benefits the organisation as a whole. Employees who are committed to their work will exhibit higher productivity, establish stronger relationships with customers, and provide better services, thus creating customer loyalty in the long-term. This in turn will provide higher returns for the company. Creating a culture of trust and positive employee relations is not an easy job. However, it tends to be stable and difficult to copy, thus providing a sustainable competitive advantage for the companies who are successful in creating such an environment. This study is an investigation of this relationship by statistically testing the firm performance of eight multinational companies which show up repeatedly on Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work for in America” list in 1998-2005, against their global-based competitors, over a five-year period. The paper serves to measure the influence of trust on financial performance by establishing firstly, whether or not there is a statistically significant relationship between organisational trust and financial performance, and secondly, whether those companies which employ a culture of trust possess a sustained competitive advantage in their industry. The findings of this research indicate that the companies that have continuously been on the “100 Best” list were significantly better performers, outperforming the competition in 80% of the qualifying comparative performance measures applied. The results provide evidence that the superior financial performance of the “100 Best” companies are attributable to the culture of trust that each of them had developed, and strongly support the notion of sustainable competitive advantage for those companies over their competition.

The Psychological Contract and the Union Contract: A Paradigm Shift in Public Sector Employee Relations

This article examines the changing nature of employee and labor relations in the United States. A significant shift has occurred in the employee relations environment between the public and private sectors. As union representation in the private sector workforce has steeply declined, there had been a sharp and steady increase in third party representation in the public sector workforce. The reasons for these changes are explored. The article goes beyond the issue of labor relations to the broader issue of positive employee relations in the workplace. Exploring employee relations from a behavioral science perspective, the article describes and discusses the psychological contract as an organizing framework for understanding and achieving positive employee relations in the workplace. The article also draws upon the author's professional human resource experiences in the public and private sectors.

Regulation in Australian hotels: is there a lesson for the UK?

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to compare employment relations in the hotel industry in Australia and the UK. Australian industry employment is regulated by the state and union recognition is enshrined. A substantial proportion of Australian hotel employers engage directly in firm‐level bargaining with trade unions, with unionisation rates across the industry far higher than in the UK. The analysis focuses on employment strategies emphasising numerical/temporal and functional flexibility since efforts to enhance workplace flexibility underpin employment regulation in Australia.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on interviews conducted in 13 exclusive, luxury hotels in Australia. Interviewees consisted of HR and departmental managers, employees across all hotel departments and relevant union officials.FindingsLabour utilisation practices in Australian luxury hotels reflect relatively sophisticated and systematic endeavours on the part of employers. The specific content and effect of these strategies varies in accordance with hotels' bargaining arrangements. Whilst employee relations outcomes were not entirely without problems in Australian luxury hotels, they do signify that regulation and trade union recognition can produce substantial benefits for employers and employees.Research limitations/implicationsRecognition of potentially positive employment relations outcomes in Australia points to the need for further research in the UK to reassess employers' attitudes to trade unions in a changing employment relations landscape.Originality/valueThe paper offers a comparison between Australia and the UK in an area that is still relatively under‐researched.

What's in Australian Workplace Agreements in the Hospitality Industry? A Content Analysis

This article unpacks the content of Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) in the hospitality industry and makes a comparison with collective agreements that have been negotiated in the industry. The article reveals that, in the hospitality industry, AWAs are minimal documents when compared to collective agreements, with AWA employers achieving wages and hours flexibility at the expense of employee entitlements. The lack of innovative provisions in AWAs suggests that, in an industry where low labour costs have a significant impact on the organisation's bottom line, there is a temptation for employers to use AWAs to decrease these costs as much as possible. There is little evidence of AWAs being used for alternate purposes — to foster positive employee relations, or to encourage and reward employees for good performance. Whether this approach will benefit the industry in the longer term is questionable. However, with the simplified agreement making process that was introduced through the Work Choices amendments to the Workplace Relations Act 1996 , it is suggested that AWAs will become an even more attractive form of employment for hospitality employers.

Human Resource Management and Economic Success: An Australian Perspective

In this paper we examine case for a link at national and firm level between human resource management (HRM) and economic success in Australia. A brief history of industrial development of Australia (and New Zealand) is presented and some differentiating factors noted (Dowling/Boxall 1994). A key factor with regard to Australia is relatively small size of population and economy and disproportionate impact of globalisation and global political and economic events upon performance of Australian economy. Recent empirical research in US which argues that there is evidence that positive employee relations effectively serves as an intangible and enduring asset at firm level (Fulmer/Gerhart/Scott 2003) is noted, as is December 2003 special issue of International Journal of Human Resource Management which focuses on Developments in Comparative HRM and concludes that there is evidence both for and against hypothesis that there are no universal prescriptions for effective HRM. The editors (Wright and Brewster) argue that the variety of views about what makes for 'good HRM' and variety of understandings of which policies and practices lead to success is not only inevitable, but should be welcomed (Wright/Brewster 2003: 1305). The author is in broad agreement with this conclusion. Key words: HRM, Australian Perspective, Firm Performance, Economic Success, German Companies Operating in Australia Introduction The focus of this paper is on extent to which there is a connection between human resource management and economic success in Australia. Before commencing this analysis it is appropriate to provide some historical context. In doing so, it should be noted that Australia and New Zealand have a similar history and are an interdependent economic region so some information about New Zealand is also provided. While not attempting to reduce impact of human resource management policies and practices on firm performance, this paper argues that human resource management is one of several key components of equation in developing a business strategy that can be implemented effectively in an increasingly globalised market. As Dowling and Boxall (1994) 1 have noted, Australia and New Zealand are small, resource-based economies with low populations (Australia, 20 million; New Zealand, 4 million) located in geographically remote South Pacific. Both are former British colonies. They operate Westminster-style democracies and enjoy a strong reputation for political stability. Unlike most inhabitants of South, however, Australians and New Zealanders have traditionally enjoyed high standards of living. In both countries, high agricultural productivity has traditionally been a major source of this wealth. New Zealand's success has largely been based on ideal conditions for sheep grazing (producing high quality meat and wool) and dairy farming (producing cheap butter, cheese and other dairy products). Forest products (e.g. pulp and paper) and fisheries have also added significantly to national income. Australia is similarly famed for its sheep products but is also a major producer of grains (e.g. wheat, barley and sugar). Besides these agricultural strengths, Australia has historically exploited its major mineral deposits. Australia, with a large land mass of over 7.6 million square kilometres, has grown rich on iron, ore, coal, gold, alumina, lead, zinc, and other mineral resources. Unlike New Zealand, Australia is a droughtprone country, so value of its profound mineral deposits cannot be underestimated as a factor in supporting national output. In both countries, success of resource-based industries has enabled governments to protect relatively inefficient manufacturing sectors. This protection has been vital to employment in Australian and New Zealand cities. As some have remarked, protection of manufacturing has enabled governments to spread benefits of high agricultural and mining productivity 'to an increasingly urbanised population' (Blandy 1988). …

Are the Great Places to Work Also Great Performers?

The article discusses research pertaining to the actual performance of the 1998 “100 Best Companies to Work for in America,” as listed by the periodical “Fortune.” The researchers used both stock market data and accounting data to assess firm performance. The study revealed that positive employee relations were beneficial for companies and may be related to overall improved performance. The research indicates that the time and money spent to create and support positive employee relations are a worthwhile investment.

The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance

This book offers management lessons from world's most profitable airline. 'As a former Southwest insider, I often wondered why other organizations couldn't duplicate business model. Anyone who wants to understand how it works should read this book' - Libby Sartain, Senior VP of Human Resources, Yahoo. 'Professor Gittell has tackled one of hottest and most important topics in business circles today - why some airlines continually fly high over economic wreckage of rest of industry' - Thomas Winkelmann, VP - Americas, Lufthansa German Airlines. 'Through extensive research, Jody Hoffer Gittell gets to bottom of what has sustained Southwest Airlines' positive employee relations and high performance through good and bad times' - Thomas A. Kochan, professor, MIT Sloan School of Management, MIT Global Airline Industry Program.Fortune magazine calls Southwest Airlines the most successful airline in history. In an industry that regularly loses billions of dollars, Southwest has had 31 consecutive years of profitability. The Southwest Airlines Way reveals secret to Southwest's remarkable success - high performance relationships - and it creates enormous competitive advantage in motivation, teamwork, and coordination among Southwest employees. Based on Professor Jody Hoffer Gittell's eight years of field research, this book explores Southwest's innovative policies, strategies, and techniques, showing how these methods can be implemented in any organization, and explains how to: lead with credibility and caring; invest in frontline leaders; hire and train for relational competence; use conflicts to build relationships; and, encourage mutual respect among employees, managers, unions, and suppliers.

ARE THE 100 BEST BETTER? AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BEING A “GREAT PLACE TO WORK” AND FIRM PERFORMANCE

We argue that positive employee relations effectively serves as an intangible and enduring asset, and may, therefore, be a source of sustained competitive advantage at the firm level. We survey a number of measures of firm‐level performance and conceptualize how each measure is likely to be affected by highly positive firm‐level employee relations. We then empirically investigate whether positive employee relations is related to firm performance, focusing on publicly traded firms included in the “100 Best Companies to Work for in America.” The relative performance of these “Best Companies” is examined via comparisons to both companies in the broad market and a group of matched firms. Our analyses suggest that companies on the 100 Best list enjoy not only stable and highly positive workforce attitudes, but also performance advantages over the broad market, and in some cases, over the matched group.

Motivations for the Introduction of Australian Workplace Agreements

This article introduces a typology of the reasons underlying the decision of employers to pursue Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs), drawing on case-study findings and a review of secondary literature and case law. Three key reasons are identified: to foster positive employee relations; to avoid the influence of unions in the workplace; and, to reduce labour costs. These reasons appear somewhat at odds with the rhetoric surrounding the 1996 federal legislation that introduced AWAs, which stressed the expansion of choice for both employers and employees. The article uses the typology in order to develop a discussion of the varied types of AWAs. Despite the apparent lack of choice for employees in relation to whether their employment is covered by an A WA, it is contended that not all AWAs are used for purposes that are detrimental to employees. However, given the increasing evidence of instances where AWAs are providing detrimental outcomes for employees, there is a clear need for legislative reform of the AWA provisions.

Structuring for high reliability: HR practices and mindful processes in reliability‐seeking organizations

AbstractThis paper theoretically and empirically connects the literature on high‐reliability organizations (HROs) to a broader set of organizations, which we call reliability‐seeking organizations. Unlike HROs, which operate high‐hazard technologies, reliability‐seeking organizations operate in high‐hazard environments. Reliability‐seeking organizations are tightly coupled to their unpredictable and complex environments in such a manner that although the human mortality rate is low, the risk of small failures amplifying into organizational mortality is high. To cope with these environments, reliability‐seeking organizations organize to remain open and flexible to emerging information and achieve the reliability demanded by their environments—intensity of innovation. These organizations utilize skilled temporary employees, positive employee relations, and an emphasis on training to innovate, and, in turn, generate greater financial performance. We test these hypotheses using a sample of 184 initial public offering (IPO) software firms that conducted their IPO between 1993 and 1996 and our results are consistent with our theorizing. Firms that utilized these human resource practices innovated more frequently and firms with more innovations had higher stock prices over time. Our findings combine to suggest a theoretical model of structural antecedents of a different type of reliability—intensity of innovation Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Tools for building a positive employee relations environment

Employment Relations TodayVolume 30, Issue 2 p. 51-64 Feature Tools for building a positive employee relations environment Teresa A. Daniel, Teresa A. Daniel teridaniel@aol.com InsideOut HR Solutions PLLCSearch for more papers by this author Teresa A. Daniel, Teresa A. Daniel teridaniel@aol.com InsideOut HR Solutions PLLCSearch for more papers by this author First published: 22 July 2003 https://doi.org/10.1002/ert.10086Citations: 8AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume30, Issue2Summer 2003Pages 51-64 RelatedInformation

Caring for the carers

In an ideal business world, employees would sing their way to work in the manner of Snow White’s dwarves. While the majority of organizations would concede that this is highly unlikely to happen, any company worth its salt will want its employees to be happy with their lot. Just think about the benefits that nurturing positive employee relations can bring. A stable workforce is more likely, which means a lower staff turnover and less investment on training of new recruits. Of course, stability implies loyalty. And what company wouldn’t welcome greater levels of commitment and increased fusion with organizational aims? Well, these are realistic outcomes, along with the advantage of having a workforce with superior knowledge, skills and experience.

Caring for the carers

In an ideal business world, employees would sing their way to work in the manner of Snow White’s dwarves. While the majority of organizations would concede that this is highly unlikely to happen, any company worth its salt will want its employees to be happy with their lot. Just think about the benefits that nurturing positive employee relations can bring. A stable workforce is more likely, which means a lower staff turnover and less investment on training of new recruits. Of course, stability implies loyalty. And what company wouldn’t welcome greater levels of commitment and increased fusion with organizational aims? Well, these are realistic outcomes, along with the advantage of having a workforce with superior knowledge, skills and experience.

Partnership at Work: Mutuality and the Balance of Advantage

A framework for the analysis of partnership at work is presented, emphasizing the principles, practices and outcomes of partnership. A survey using matched samples of 54 UK management and employee representatives found a link between partnership principles and practices, between practices and ratings of employee attitudes and behaviour, between these and estimates of positive employment relations and quality and productivity, finally between productivity and sales and profitability. The findings support a mutual gains model but show that the balance of advantage is skewed towards management and reflects generally low management trust in employee representatives.

Two key factors that belong in a macroergonomic analysis of electronic monitoring: Employee perceptions of fairness and the climate of organizational trust or distrust

Two microergonomic elements not usually discussed in treatments of electronic monitoring of VDT clerical work are employee perceptions of fairness (in work standards and measurement process) and the overall climate of employee trust in management. The author's field studies found these factors serving as major mitigating or intensifying elements in the stress that clerical employees can experience when they perform intensive heavy-duty VDT applications, and as central variables in distinguishing beneficial from harmful monitoring programmes. A case study involving change in supervisory monitoring policies for 200 customer service agents at one of Federal Express Corporation's telecommunication call centres in the USA in 1985–86 demonstrates how a Unit Head at a non-union company long known for its positive employee relations policies installed monitoring practices that the call agents considered unfair and a breach of the company's traditional climate of employee-employer trust. Employee protests, when communicated to top management, led to discarding the unilaterally-instituted and quantity-oriented monitoring policy and replacing it with a consensually-developed supervisory monitoring system balancing quality and quantity elements in a way that satisfied both employees and management. The present system of supervisory monitoring of customer service work at Federal Express (1991) enjoys broad employee support, suggesting that a fair system of monitoring, applied in an environment of earned trust between employees and employer, can meet critical productivity and quality interests of employers in clerical VDT work without creating harmful employee stress and discontent. It also suggests that empirical investigation of the fairness and trust factors represents an important and practical area of research in a macroergonomic analysis of employee monitoring programs and impacts.