Being consistent in decision making
JUST recently we went through the employment grievance series where we went through five different components of the employment grievance. In the series I linked the said components to the contracts and how the contracts were conceived from the Human Resources Policies for the specific purpose of implementing the business plan. In this article I would like to impress on the readers the importance of being consistent in decision making and the best way to keep ones consistency.
Background facts
Our population is approximately 1 million.
Half of this populace is economically active and can be categorised as the formal workforce and the informal.
The formal workforce consists of approximately 140,000 workers and the rest is made up of the informal who make up the semi organized small & micro enterprises (SMEs) and the even more informal cash croppers, fishermen, etc based in our village and rural communities.
The Fiji Commerce & Employers Federation represents the employers of the formal workforce and the self-employed through the aforesaid SMEs and informal work forces.
The Employment Relations Act (ERA) administers the employment relationship between the workers and the employers and through benchmarking our minimum labour standards against the International Labour Standards forged by our ratification of the various International Labour Conventions it has ensured our good standing in the international labour market in comparison to many western and so called first world countries.
FCEF has dedicated one whole unit for the promotion of good employment relations based on the fundament principles of managements prerogative to manage, cost of doing business and workers rights.
Too often we hear the battle cry of the workers in the media on workers’ rights and very little of managements prerogative to manage.
Managements Prerogative to Manage
In all businesses it is managements prerogative to establish working boundaries for both the employer and the employees by way of policies that are normally aligned to the organizations business plan. The business plan or the objects or the main reason why the organization exist are normally broken down to strategic business plans upon which policies are designed to actually implement the plan.
These policies include the manning level and as such recruitment policies are developed to ensure the right amount of workers are recruited with the relevant skill levels to carry out the respective functions of the organization.
The policies spells out who is who, what must who does and who listens to who in the organisation.
A policy that is properly aligned to the Business Plan and compliant with the respective and applicable legislation without failure leads to productivity.
This is why it is always management’s prerogative to develop policies, recruit and terminate workers, establish Key Performance Indicators for both the workers and managements representatives on the floor. Cost of Doing Business
Simply put: if the cost to make a product is more than what you can sell it for then the cost of doing business will put you out of business.
Unnecessary overtime, long nonproductive hours, wastages, poor planning, absenteeism, inappropriate skills, inappropriate manning levels (either too many staff or insufficient staff) contributes to low productivity levels.
Inappropriate up-skilling and/or no upskilling at all is another contributing factor to low productivity. The challenge is about addressing the ignorance and not just about punishing the ignorant with a mind to the cost.
Workers’ rights
The minimum labour standards contained in the ERA are the workers legitimate rights. Everything over and above those standards are viewed as benefits/ privileges and only becomes a workers right once an employer agree to put it in the Collective Agreement.
Too often employers in trying to manage the cost of doing business take it out on the workers by depriving them of their rights. This is unlawful and those employers who have resorted to these types of management have always been corrected by the courts.
In the same token workers representatives have often impinged on managements prerogative to manage without any inclination to the cost of doing business and the overall interest of the workers whom they say they represent.
There is a simple test to this and that test is “how does the employers’ refusal to your claim affect workers’ rights?”