Scenario

The public sector organisation that you work for has recently undergone a merger with another similar public sector organisation that has had significant staff changes across key departments.

The incoming leadership, management and people practice teams are relatively new to their posts and have limited awareness of managing employee relations in the public sector as many of them have been recruited from the private sector.

There are concerns that this could affect commitment to existing employee relations practices. With this in mind, your people practice director has asked you to write a briefing paper. You need to provide the teams with knowledge and understanding about:

1. the various forms of representation that can be employed at work and how these are used to support workplace harmony, and
2. the different forms of conflict and dispute resolution and how to manage performance, disciplinary and grievance matters lawfully.

To complete the briefing paper, you should include written responses to each of the 10 points below, making appropriate use of academic literature, case and statutory law, codes of practice, research and good practical examples to substantiate your response and illustrate key points.  Please ensure that you use reputable sources as indicated on the unit reading list and that all cited sources are correctly acknowledged and presented in full in a bibliography at the end of your briefing paper.

Briefing paper

Referring to the above scenario:

• Differentiate between employee involvement and employee participation andhow they build relationships. (AC 1.1)
• Compare forms of union andnon-union employee representation. (AC 1.2)
• Evaluate the relationship between employee voice andorganisational performance.(AC 1.3)
• Explain the concept of better working lives and how this can be designed. (AC 1.4)
• Distinguish between organisational conflict and misbehaviour. (AC 2.1)
• Assess emerging trends in the types of conflict and industrial sanctions. (AC 2.2)
• Distinguish between third-party conciliation, mediation and arbitration. (AC 2.3)
• Explain the principles of legislation relating to unfair dismissal in respect of capability and misconduct issues. (AC 3.1)
• Analyse threekey causes of employee grievances. (AC 3.2)
• Advise on the importance of handling grievances effectively. (AC 3.3).