Employer / Employee Relationship and expectations

Employer / Employee Relationship and expectations

The employer employee expectations, rights and responsibilities along with contracts of employment and psychological contracts both parties have various expectations and aspirations. Any damage to the aspirations and expectation can lead to negative impact between both parties. Thus, effectively managing these relationship is the ultimate objective of human resources professional to achieve employee engagement, motivation and job satisfaction at work-place (CIPD, 2017).

Legal and Psychological Contract

While the legal contract has limited representation of the relationship between the party’s employees are force accepting the terms of contract. On the other hand, the psychological contract is considered more influential as it manages the perceptions between the employer and employee and it also stands as a platform that influences how individually and collectively they behave at work day to day.  Basically, the psychological contract is built on actions and statements both parties based on the expectations and promises that bind both good and bad perceptions. However, the psychological contract is intangible in nature unlike the legal contract signed by the parties. Psychological contracts have a greater impact if the trust is broken and confidence is lost between the parties they can be serious issues such as Attrition, or termination based on who breaks the contract. Managers behavior could have a negative or positive impact on the psychological contract. HRM managers and frontline managers are therefore careful on how they will work to ensure the contract is not broken (Armstrong and Taylor,  2014).

Collective Agreement and Trade Unions

Trade Unions and collective agreement may have power through effective representation among groups of employees. As in the plantation sector in Sri Lanka where trade unions are influential they can quickly go into action such as strikes, work to rule and or agitate against the employer (Biyanwila, P.26, 2003). The public-sector TU of some sectors are thus strong in Sri Lanka such as the Government Nurses Union, The Government Medical Officers Association and other public-sector organizations. On the other-hand collective agreements and Trade Unions in the private sector are losing their influence in Sri Lanka as in the UK.

Nevertheless TU’s, Collective agreements, contracts of employment and psychological contracts affect the relationships between employer and employee and or the management and employees. Human resources managers have to train and develop managers and employees on how to enhance the relationships to engage employees, reduce conflicts and enhance relationships.

Reference

Armstrong, M., and Taylor, S., (2014) A hand book of human resource management practice. Thirteenth Edition. Published by Kogan Page UK.

Biyanwila, S.J. (2003) Trade Unions in Sri Lanka under globalization: Reinventing Worker Solidarity. University of Western Australia,  Organisational and Labour Studies Department PhD dissertation. August 2003.

CIPD (2017) The psychological contract: An examination of the history, state and strategic implications of the psychological contract, CIPD 17 the Jan 2017. UK