Rights
Employee rights: Employees have 3 different types of rights. Statutory rights, are rights which are protected by law such as anti discrimination laws. Secondly an employee has contractual rights. These rights are in your contract. Other rights are ethical treatment, free speech and privacy.
Employer rights: Employers have the right to run their business and make a profit. They also have the right to hire, assign, and discharge employees. Discharging people has some limitations as employees are protect by law to wrongful discharge or discharge at will. There are some exception to this such as criminal behaviour.
Balancing employer’s rights and employee’s rights.
Employees and employers sometimes have different interests in mind. For example an employer has the duty to create a safe working environment. Drug use would contradict this duty of safety. There for an employer might be tempted to introduce random drug testing. This contradicts the right to privacy of employee’s. Random drug testing might be common in certain jobs such as for pilots. Other employers might decide to do a pre-employement drug test or use other methods such as performance tests.
Some employers employ electronic monitoring in order to avoid theft, unprofessional behaviour or other issues. This monitoring is very invasive towards employees. If this is done it should be done openly with the employees knowledge. Most employees don’t like this however in stores there must be security cameras not just to monitor employees. Some companies monitor internet usage and emails. There should be this kind of monitoring as it is very intrusive.
Some employees may disclose employer’s mistreatment or other illegitimate practices to the the public. This is called whistleblowing. While an employee’s free speech is limited in certain ways. Employees can’t disclose company secrets or sensitive information to outsiders. Whistle blowing is an exception to this. It’s there for in the companies interest to resolve issues internally rather than external.
Some employees choose to get a second job. This isn’t beneficial to their original employer if they can’t focus anymore. An employer can’t decide what their employees do on their free time. But if there were to be a conflict this should be resolved on a case to case basis.
Office romances are a sensitive topic to handle as an employer. The author said that this conflicts with the employers effort to prevent sexual harassment. The big issues are when there is a difference in authority. However no-dating policies are rarely seen in companies. A few companies don’t have rules against it while others have rules in place in order to avoid romantic partners to supervise each other and to avoid conflict of interests.
Managing discipline
Companies rules have to be enforced in a fair way. This is achieved first of all by clearly communicating the rules to your employees. Secondly violations and consequences should be communicated clearly and enforced objectively.
There are two way of encoring the rules. Either progressively or positive progression. Progressive discipline aims to improve behaviour by handing out several warnings with harder punishments. In most cases in involves 4 different steps. It starts with a verbal warning, increases to a written warning after which the employee is put on suspension. When these steps didn’t help an employee is fired.
Positive discipline takes a more constructive approach. Positive discipline tries to fix the issue by helping the employee in question improve and learn from the mistakes. This is done with counselling. Severity does increase after multiple warnings and can lead to discharge eventually. This approach does cost more and takes more time. However it does have a bigger chance of changing the employees behaviour.
Preventing the need for discipline with HRM
During the recruitment process a lot of future issue can be avoided. Selecting the right people for the company, which fit in the corporate culture and their future team. During the training process the rules need to be explained correctly and regularly following up with new employees can help stop problems before they become an actual issue.
Case 1: New York inspector is charged with sexually abusing a female officer
A New York police inspector was charged with sexual abuse for allegedly touching one of his police officers inappropriately. The officer did not like this and told him stop. He didn’t listen. The inspector denied the allegations. While awaiting the further investigation and other procedures the officer was put on paid modified duties.
Case 2: Receipt rage: Why food is being served with a side of hate
The article talks about offensive comments that are placed in a restaurant’s computer system which can appear on a receipt. These incidents have lead to public outrage on social media and in the news as well as lawsuits. This combination to a loss of customers. Part of the issue is a lack of cultural sensitivity and generational differences between staff and customers. Secondly in the US, restaurant staff receive little training and low wages. The National Restaurant Association has no guidelines in this training and guidelines when the issues occur.
Staff should be trained in dealing with these issues. Secondly there needs to be more attention and documentation when staff say nasty comments about the customers. An increase in compensation can decrease frustration with staff and therefor a lower chance of staff saying these nasty comments.
German supermarket chain Lidl accused of snooping on staff (Connolly,K. 2008)
Supermarket chain Lidl got caught spying on it´s employees. Lidl used private detectives to install small cameras in the stores in order to watch their behavior, store managers were told that this was in order to decrease store theft. “The detectives’ records include details of precisely where employees had tattoos as well as information about their friends. “Her circle of friends consists mainly of drug addicts,” reads one record. The detectives also had the task of identifying which employees appeared to be “incapable” or “introverted and naive”.” (Connolly,K. 2008). This was discovered due to leaked documents. These documents now form the center of a major lawsuit against the company. Lidl maintains the surveillance was purely to monitor abnormal behavior in order to avoid thefts.
McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook was fired over a relationship with an employee( Cranely, E. 2019)
Ex-Mcdonald´s CEO Steve Easterbrook was fired after an internal investigation regarding him and an employee. This was a consensual relationship. Easterbrook later released a statement: “This was a mistake,” Easterbrook said in the email, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. “Given the values of the company, I agree with the board that it is time for me to move on.” He was voted out because of violations of the company´s policies and values. This was a though decisions as Easterbrook was responsible for a boom in share values and other company wide improvements.
References
Connolly, K. 2008 German supermarket chain Lidl accused of snooping on staff. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/mar/27/germany.supermarkets Accessed 5.11.2020
Cranely, E. 2019. McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook was fired over a relationship with an employee. URL: https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-fired-ceo-stever-easterbrook-over-employee-relationship-2019-11?r=US&IR=T Accessed 5.11.2020
McCarthy, S. 2015. Receipt rage: Why food is being served with a side of hate. Fox News. URL: https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/receipt-rage-why-food-is-being-served-with-a-side-of-hate Accessed 5.11.2020
Mele, C., Baker, A. 2016. New York Police Inspector Is Charged With Sexually Abusing Female Officer. The New York Times. URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/nyregion/new-york-police-sexual-abuse-of-officer.html?_r=0 Accessed 5.11.2020
Gómez-Mejía, L.R., Balkin, D.B., Cardy, R.L. 2016. Managing Human Resources. Eight edition, Global edition. Pearson. London
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