- What are the key benefits of maintaining healthy employee relations within an organization?
- What is the role of employee relations in Vodafone's business operations?
- What is the purpose of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, and how does it apply to Vodafone?
INTRODUCTION
The report covers the information of employee relation in organisation. Vodafone is the UK based telecom company with headquarter in Berkshire, England. It has 9584 employees all over UK with net sales of 8.43 billion euros (O'Dea, 2021). Vision of Vodafone is to be a communication leader in the connected world. Mission is to connect with the people all over the world and bring changes and bright future in society. The purpose is to reach a better future and creates a positive image towards change in society. The core value of the organization is trust and integrity towards customers in developing seamless digital experience. The report covers the meaning of employee relation its importance and impact on organization and shareholders. The legislation that impact the relation among employees. Strategies required to make successful relations and goal completion of organization.
Employee relation and its impact
Employee relation is about creating and maintaining proper relationship among employees and organization. It acts an antidote for communication, better management skills in business which helps in overcoming the problems of Vodafone. Important part for relationships is its culture and extent to which the organization can resolve the problems among employees. The people in organization develops proper standards and policies in developing good culture which are applicable with legislation and are fair and transparent in nature. The people who create the policies should have proper understanding labour laws and culture of organization. This will advise the managers to create the best outcome from individual and business. When a relation breaks, it is specialist duty to deal with problem with law or just by communication. Get Assignment Help from expert writer Now !
Importance
Individual decision-making:
Individual needs guidance on several issues to make proper decisions. Sometimes it is possible to lose important points, fellow workers can cover up those points and create brilliant idea to solve the problem and reach the target. On implementing a plan it is good to check pros and cons, and outsider can only verify it. On individual level, one will never able to know where project is going wrong or more people are required who can act as critic and give corrective directions wherever it is going wrong.
Easy to complete:
A healthy relation among employees would ease the workload and increase the productivity of all individuals. One cannot solve all projects so it is distributed among group to solve it in proper time frame.
Increases motivation:
Employee engagement creates feel about security and confidence among employees which delivers the best of employee towards work. Sense of trust between employee makes more motivated towards completion of goal.
Reduce Conflicts:
Trust among employees makes one adjust easily and stop in finding faults in each other. Individuals won't waste time on conflicts and disputes rather than concentrate on work and work hard to perform better.
Absenteeism:
Healthy relationship makes individual more serious towards work and feel like coming to office daily. Employees stop complaining, do not take frequent leaves and start enjoying the work.
Retain Employees:
When a Vodafone loose an employee, and they join with competitor, it will create a devastating situation for business. Employees who do not have good relationship with their employers are more likely to leave. But when an employee feels comfortable and appreciated among each other, then they are more likely to remain loyal. Businesses that encourages positive relationships among employees and managers are generally more successful, and since it creates employees more likely to stick around each other, business do not have to spend much on recruiting, hiring and training of new workers.
Value
Leadership:
Healthy relationships create trust between employees and employees are desperate to be inspired from others. If leader makes healthy relationships' employee will develop the habit of listing to manger and follow their thoughts. This will guide a employee in proper way in increasing their motivation and achieve Vodafone objective.
Communication:
Good employee relation will communicate capabilities of employee towards their work to supervisors. This will create trust among employees and the heads will show the right path to complete the goal. This will also eliminate the fake news about the Vodafone as work will automatically communicate the right progress of employees.
Culture:
Relation and trust depends on the culture of organization. A positive corporate culture will result in happy employees who want to come to work every day. Better the culture, happier the employees will be. It will lead to increase the morale and faster achieving of Vodafone objective.
Improves Trust:
Maintaining trust and confidence at workplace requires a lot of efforts by both employee and employer. Good employee relation will sow the seed of trust in workplace. Good relation can keep the organization efforts on track. The degree of trust will make the progress of business.
Employee engagement;
Employee engagement is used to define the efforts of an employer to manage their employee on the job. Good relation can exhibit better results and efficient workflow in Vodafone. When employees participate and share their views openly, employers can take proper step to improve the performance of employees. It makes better employee engagement and ultimately result in growth of business.
Employee legislation
Employee relation is the body of laws and standards that regulates the relationship between supervisors and employees. It deals with the rights of employees and all the responsibilities of supervisors. Without legislation on workplace will result in unfavourable treatments of problems of employees by employers and Vodafone will have no way in remedying the situation. Vodafone has to regularly remind the laws and responsibilities to employees, which will reduce them breaking any law inadvertently. Get more examples of assignment for free from Instant Assignment.
These legislations are:
Employment Right Act 1996:
This act protects the employees from the situations like unfair dismissals, redundancy, paternity and maternity leaves. This act tells employees their statutory rights regarding disclosure and detriment which means that employee should not disclose any Vodafone confidential information to other party. An employee has a right to receive paid leaves for public duties and responsibilities and employees has to give a reasonable notice for termination of contract (Aylott, 2018).
National Minimum Wage Act 1998:
This acts states that employer or worker is entitled to get a minimum amount of pay per hour. This act was introduced to protect the low paid workers without hurting other jobs and economy (Hafner, and et.al., 2017).
Employee Relation Act 1999
This act protects the relationship among employees and trade unions at workplace. This act was introduced to promote fairness, partnerships and family friendly practices at workplace. Act also states companies to increase the maximum compensation present for unfair dismissals. This act provides right to workers on proper grievance hearing and disciplinary actions taken by employers.
The Maternity and Parental Leave Regulations 1999:
This act states the employees have right to take leaves during their paternity or maternity period. Employers have to grant employees leaves to take care of their dependents. Employee has the right to take 18 weeks of leaves of work to take care of dependent under 18 years of age. They can take leaves with minimum of 6 months when a new dependent is born (Parental leave entitlement, 2021).
Part-Time Workers Regulations 2000:
Act states to treat part-time contract workers same as people who do same job on full time contracts. Part time workers are allowed to take same number of leaves as their full time ones (Wheatley, Lawton and Hardill, 2018).
Agency Workers Regulation 2010:
This act aims to protect agency workers from any kind of discrimination with other employees. It ensures that the workers will get the same amount of leaves and pay as other employees. Employer has to treat and provide safe working conditions like others (Hünefeld, Gerstenberg and Hüffmeier, 2020).
Transfer of Undertakings 2006:
It is the set of regulations that protects employees rights during acquisition or transfer of business. It states to transfer existing employees and their liabilities to new Vodafone by preventing any sort of dismissals. It covers all sort of claims, pay or leaves to be transferred to new business (McMullen, 2019).
Equality Act 2010:
This act prevents any sort of discrimination among employees at workplace and during recruitment process. It sates that employer should treat employees equally irrespective of their gender, religion or during pregnancy or marriage (Fell and Dyban, 2017).
Working Time Regulation Act 1998:
This act protects the employees from any sort of discrimination related to their working hours. All employees should be treated equally with same working hours for same job irrespective of their gender or religion.
Bribery Act 2010:
It is an act that protects employees from criminal activities related to bribery. It protects the employees from doing any sort of illegal activities to give employment or take favours to perform particular activity (Kim, Rees and Sila, 2020).
Data Protection Act 2018:
This act protects the employees and customers data. It controls how personal information is to be used by organizations or businesses. People should use this data fairly and transparently with following proper law procedures (Lim, 2018).
Vodafone adheres to all legislations made by UK government to run their business and protecting their employees.
Employer's rights, duties and obligations
Rights
The Vodafone has the right to hire the employee. While hiring, the employer can set the criteria of employment within the firm. The company can set qualification requirement and experience of the employee that they are going to hire, according to the work culture of the company (Liu, 2021). Employer can make assessment of the candidate to evaluate if the applicant fits into the firm like Vodafone.
It is in employer's right to fire any employee for any reason but there are terms and conditions for ending any employment. If any employee walks out of Vodafone without any prior notice, then they have certain rights, for example if employee leaves the job they can make the employee ineligible to get new job.
Vodafone has the right to distribute the job roles to their employees. They can impose rules on their employees to follow the company protocol and policies during work hours to follow the professionalism. The company provides electronic devices for performing tasks to their working staff (Unsal, 2019). They have the right to monitor their employees. Vodafone can demand from their workers to work hard for better results. Get more Samples Related to Coursework Examples.
Duties
Vodafone should train, provide information and supervision to their employees to work efficiently. They should provide their new employees a proper introduction to help them become familiar with the work place. Boosting their employees when their performance is good. It is essential for the company to provide enough facility to the workers (Chang and et.al., 2021).
Obligations
The employer, like Vodafone, must treat their employees equally regardless of their caste, creed, colour and origin. They must know about the laws and contracts. They should ensure that the employees at the workplace is safe and there is no risk to their health.
Employee's rights, duties and obligations:
Rights
The employee of Vodafone is authorized to get a written agreement before joining them. It can prevent any foreseen legal dispute between the employer and employee (Ahmed and et.al., 2017). The worker is entitled to get fixed leaves and holidays decided by the HR policy of Vodafone. They have right to get monthly salary. In case, if the employer wants to terminate the relationship between employee and the company, then a notice should be sent to the employee to make them ready to end the work with Vodafone.
Duties
It is a job holder's duty to perform the task efficiently which they were hired to do. They should do their work seriously and carefully. It is worker's responsibility that they complete their task in given time period. They should always remember that they are not putting themselves and the firm in any danger (Jennings and et.al., 2017). Employee should follow the instructions given by Vodafone. It is necessarily important for the working member of the company to take care of the devices provided by the Vodafone. Being an ethical employee, they should use the Vodafone fund given to them for company use only.
Obligations
An employee should always follow the instructions given by the Vodafone based on the contract. The working staff is obliged to inform the employer about the acts that can harm the reputation of the Firm (Mohanty, 2018). They should understand and follow the work pattern and working hours in the company. Also, they should always maintain the privacy of Vodafone.
Employee relation strategies
To perform better it is important for organization that employees feel comfortable with each other, and they together with good coordination to achieve the objective. They will be motivated and feel responsible to perform good quality work and enjoy it rather than taking as burden. To do that it is important to promote healthy employees relationships at workplace. Competition is necessary to promote positiveness among employees to climb on their stairs of problems. These are the following strategies required for good employee relation at workplace.
Sharing of power:
Employee should feel important and indispensable part of Vodafone. An individual should be give authority and power to make decision on aspects within its team, This will make employees accept challenges and not feel that work is imposed on them. When power is given to employees they feel part of organization, and they feel like owners which will increase there morale towards completion of objective. If not the employee won't feel a happier environment and will leave the organization.
Sharing values will create conducive work culture:
Vodafone has to encourage individuals to share their values for performing task with each other. This will increase the talking of employees among them and lead to increase in comfort level at workplace. Encourage workers to work together and taking decisions will lead to happier environment, and they feel as part of organization. A team leader should intervene only in extreme cases of conflicts and rest to be solved by themselves. On the other have employees who do not share many values among each other will lack in good communication and employees may leave organization to find good environment.
Effective communication:
It has been seen that poor communication leads to misunderstandings and confusions among employees while performing task. The communication should appropriate and relevant. Manager has to specifically tell employees about expectation regarding their work. If a task is given, employees may face problems. They should voice their opinions and resolve it to reduce the conflicts among them and worker will know what exactly they have to do to achieve the objective. This will lead to improve relation among employees and do not want to leave organization (Udejinta, 2018).
Continuous coaching and mentoring:
Many employees feel difficulties with their skills to perform the given task which will affect Vodafone in loosing time and money. By giving mentoring session s and continuous coaching will help the staff to improve their performance and resolve the productivity challenges they face while doing work. Coaching employees is needed because of the pace of changing working environment. In modern days employees easily become stress and overwhelmed whereas they are expected to do more and more to survive the competitions. Coaching will fill the gaps by overcoming the hurdles and develop new skills and knowledge to face situation. When someone is at their side help in developing their strengths will motivate workers to achieve objective faster (Pagdonsolan and et.al., 2020).
Sharing Culture:
Organization who give projects to whole team are expected to get good returns. This will make employees to work in a team by sharing their different cultures which will encourage them to work properly and understand different cultures which will result in increase in relationship among fellow members. Each employee will have the liberty to express their ideas and unique things about their cultures which will result in working together to find something beneficial for all. In absence of sharing culture employees will feel demotivated and feel to be seated among strangers. This creates a fear among each other and won't be able to perform quality work, even leave the Vodafone. This will act as stoppage in order to achieve Vodafone objective (Nikitenko, and et.al., 2017).
Stakeholder analysis of Vodafone:
Stakeholder Analysis is the useful technique for Vodafone in identifying and prioritizing stakeholder who influence or impact the working of business (Bendtsen, Clausen and Hansen, 2021). It identifies the people before any project begins grouping them according to their level of interest and determine how in the best way they can be utilized to achieve the Vodafone goal. The stakeholders for Vodafone are:
Internal Stakeholders
Stakeholders that are present internally of the company and have direct impact of operations done achieving organization goal. These are:
Owners:
People who own the Vodafone or have the shares of Vodafone. These people supply the capital or equity to business and have the power to say what is to run or what changes are to be done to promote the Vodafone.
Employees:
People who work inside the organization. They perform the manufacturing of telecom products and sell them in market. They are the people who face the customer and earn money. Employees carry out managerial or other functions of Vodafone and in return they expect benefits like incentives and career growth. If they leave businesses won't have sales and can lead to loss.
External Stakeholders:
External Stakeholders are people outside the business or who don't work inside the business but are affected by the actions of organization. These stakeholders are:
Suppliers:
Suppliers are people who sell stuffs to company and rely on business to get revenue from the sale of goods. Vodafone's suppliers are handset manufactures like Samsung, and Sony and network equipment manufactures like Ericsson and Alcatel- Lucent. The bargaining power of the suppliers have fallen due to entry of Chinese mobile operators.
Customers:
Customers are people who buy the business stuffs. The Vodafone cannot exist without its customers. To be in market business neds to make continuous efforts to meet customer needs. The customers are price sensitive in nature and organization has take care of this factor to improve sales.
Media:
Every business needs publication relationship to promote their products. Vodafone has to make interaction with media people to make announcements and advertise products. Media takes money from business to promote products, if failed the company can loose its reputation.
Government:
Government is a major consideration for Vodafone for formulation and implementing of strategies for different countries. As each country has different interest rates that can give a rise in pricing of products. Businesses have to take care of legal and regulatory measures on use of frequency spectrum in different countries.
Competitors:
Vodafone has geographic footprint in more than 70 countries which ensures that company has diversified revenue base to cope up with losses and fight rivals. It has competition with France telecom orange and Deutsch telecom T-mobile in UK. Business have to deal with them or customers will go to other operators.
Creditors:
Creditors are the people who lend money to business to gain some interest in return. Creditors are paid back from the sale of products. These creditors can be banks or bondholders. Vodafone has taken loan from banks to expand their business and to improve their quality of products. They are the liabilities of Vodafone to pay them with interest.
Communities:
The community in business are considered as important stakeholders of business. Both the party community and Vodafone is beneficial in different ways. If company promotes health and safety at workplace will motivate employees to do more work and get more sales for company. If company creates more job opportunities, community will have more employed people and Vodafone will have more number of employees representing company which will lead to economic development.
Recommendations
It is recommended that company should give opportunity to employees to grow. The current market is more competitive and employees are more concerned about developing and learning more to make themselves more desirable towards managers. It is often seen that employees left job for better development opportunities. It is very important for Vodafone to prioritize career development of employees to improve the employee relations and reduce conflicts between workers and supervisors. Creating an environment where employees feel they are part, and they will get growth opportunities and can achieve success from good employee relation will strengthen bond in organization. The businesses which invest in employees are expected to get invested back by employees.
It is recommended that Vodafone should give rewards and benefits with a proper purpose to employees. When business gives the raise for good performance, sometime it is not seen to motivate or engage employees towards work. It is seen as short term satisfaction and gradually it becomes a norm. Employee feel they got reward because they are deserved, long overdue has been given now or currently company is not having enough money. To improve employee relation it is sometime necessary to give personalized reward and benefits to employees. It can e in form of reward points that can be used to claim free foreign tours.
It is recommended that Vodafone should express gratitude and admiration for job done by employees. Finding different ways to express gratitude will help employee feel valued. Business should help employees understand how their work fits organization structure and sharing core values with employees will make them feel appreciated. They should encourage public recognition to employees to make them feel special in company.
It is recommended that Vodafone should promote work life balance among employees in workplace. Creating an environment which gives them flexibility choosing their interest outside the office will create a strong workforce. It will also improve the employee relationship among manager and employees.
It is recommended that Vodafone should take feedback of their employees on how they feel about their job role. This will make employee feel valuable and managers will get valuable insights. Accordingly, organization can make decision to increase morale towards work.
CONCLUSION
From the above it can be concluded that employee relation is all about creating relationship among employees. It is an important part of business as it helps in making decision, reducing conflicts and increases motivation. This makes employees a part of organization by enhancing their leadership and communication skills. Good relation also creates good culture at workplace. For smooth running of business Vodafone has to maintain the laws and standards made by UK government. Company has to maintain rights to protect employees from any discrimination and keeping the personnel information safe during work. To maintain good relation employer has to follow strategies related to sharing of power and values among employees. Giving training on regular basis will make them feel to be part of organization and upgrading their skills. Vodafone's operation is based on its stakeholders. These stakeholders are internals who invest and face customers or external who are affected or by the actions of company. It is recommended that Vodafone should distribute rewards for reason, give gratitude to employees and promote work life balance.
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