Employment Relationships
There is nothing especially new on this webpage. The ideas are laid out differently because the focus here is on tensions in employment. The layout helps the exploration of two new Frameworks.
Comparing the Two Perspectives
An organization has a range of requirements for functioning effectively. An employee and the management necessarily perceive these requirements through the filter of their different perspectives and (ethical) obligations.
► Management is required to organize and handle employment, i.e. the employees and their work, for the organization.
► Employees are concerned with being employed, i.e. getting employment in the organization and staying employed.
Take care to get these basics clear:
What management does is confusingly called 'management'; and all management requirements have to be met in practice by employees (i.e. You). Yet management and employee views of employment are fundamentally different. Management cannot determine what the employee's view should be: so it needs to understand it in order to manage well. Misunderstandings apart, there is also an inherent conflict of interest for anyone in management.
The 3 sets of requirements are shown in the diagram and described further here. In the diagram, the Organization's Requirements, as developed earlier, are shown on the left as a vertical hierarchy. The central vertical hierarchy shows Management's view of what «management» involves. The far right vertical hierarchy shows the Employee's view of what «employment» entails.
Elaborating the Diagram
CG1: Work for the Organization
Employees do all the work, and their work must be guided by management (i.e. more senior employees). Work entails use of the 7 means of achievement, but we do not need to consider their details here.
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As an Employee, . Work that is not a challenge is little more than a habit. So you must set expectations for yourself and regard at least some of these as challenges. You will have to handle expectations of others in relation to your own role and your chosen challenges.
Management must in general guide the work of employees. So part of the challenge of any managerial post is to set challenging but realistic and reasonable expectations for others.
Employees need formal powers in order to legitimately bring pressure to bear on other employees. That authority must be assigned to them by management. Exercising influence entails use of various instruments of control, but we do not need to consider their details here.
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Management must enable employees to exert influence over others in a legitimate way by assigning authority. Ideally, a comprehensive hierarchical structure is defined in which all posts are assigned sufficient authority to ensure that all work is covered and everyone knows where they stand vis-à-vis others.
As an Employee, you must influence others to get your work done. You should exert assigned authority—but it may not apply in some cases, and it may be ignored where it does apply. As your primary need is to influence, you must develop the social skills needed to use available organizational instruments.
Employees produce results, but not simply by doing work-CG1, much of which is just process. Far more effort, determination and application of resources are required to deliver results-CG3, and this is where management has a major role. Some would say this defines management. Results are sought in five broad areas, but we do not need to consider those details here.
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Results cannot be delivered except via Management: so a management resource must be deployed. That manager, often with the aid of other managers, then ensures that all other needed resources (financial, technical, material, informational &c.) are mobilized and properly applied—efficiently and economically—to deliver the desired result.
As an Employee, you must be energetic and resourceful. Whoever is managing you expects no less. You must call on all your abilities to get needed resources, overcome obstacles and deal with unexpected frustrations (emerging in accord with Murphy's Law
). Feeling that the resources provided by management are insufficient creates pressure, over-work and stress.
Because our concern here is employment tensions, the assessment focus is on each employee's status. For management, the performance of the employee is wider than described under appraisals of staff-CG42. It includes concerns emerging from other types of assessment (e.g. changing markets, new technologies). An employee similarly has concerns that range wider than the foci of quarterly or semi-annual personal appraisal.
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Management has a key duty to report on employees. While line-managers do the formal appraisal-CG42, any manager can give feedback and opinions in relation to any employee. In addition, management considers anything that may impinge on how any and every employee relates to the organization, and what the organization may want or expect from the employee.
As an Employee, you naturally attend to your personal appraisal-CG42, but beyond that you must be constantly aware of anything that might touch on «your position» broadly understood (i.e. not just your post or job). There are diverse informal inquiries that are possible, all covered here as tracking your position within the organization. Examples: You might: consider effects of your activities on others, note how co-workers perceive you, look at promotion opportunities, track market changes relevant to your work, think about how other assessments (evaluations, performance indicators) might affect your department or division directly or indirectly.
This flexibility is manifested, by both management and employees, as states of engagement, sensitivity and responsiveness. On the one hand, management is responsible for a specialized community of human beings; and on the other, an employee must behave like a human being to maximize the chance of being treated like one.
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Management has a duty to devise adaptations for individual employees, or classes of employees, or even all employees in the context of organizational demands. In addition, any employee may make specific requests for assistance in dealing with their particular situation. Without flexibility, the atmosphere and politics within the organization will become poisoned.
As an Employee, you must create a presence in the organization in order to become noticed and for your perspectives and personal position to be understood. That makes it easier for management to make adaptations for you. Presence requires alertness and mindfulness that help you take advantage of situations in a sensitive way. So it also makes it easier for you to suggest different ways to handle issues.
The organization has been created and funded for a purpose and it «commits» to fulfil that purpose. In practice, that means the organization must employ people willing to commit themselves to «the goals and the good» of the organization. Management decides the goals and the good; and employees, by virtue of their contract, are chosen because they express a readiness to commit to them.
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Management has a duty to adhere to policies that define the organization's position and that commit it to certain structures, standards and strategies. The most important commitments require sanction by the Board, which should contain some non-executives, sometime even a majority. So even top management may disagree with or personally dislike policies. Remember: policies are made as part of achieving
, not relating.
As an Employee, you must show your commitment by adjusting yourself to developments in the organization's policies, strategies and regulations as they emerge after you start work. Changes are often unexpected and undesired. However, you must be aware that the organization needs these policies. Adjustment ends up leading to some identification with the employer; and sometimes it leads to the opposite: handing in your resignation.
The organization can only attract staff to work for its benefit by identifying and offering suitable incentives. Management is responsible for recognizing what is suitable, not only within the contract, but also during employment e.g. as a reward for hard work or for an innovative idea. Of course, employees must provide incentives for the organization to take them on. Both parties have the freedom to accept or reject each other's incentives and the associated obligations.
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Management determines and authorizes incentives that will lead to recruitment and retention of staff. Using incentives is intrinsic to the total compact under which employment work proceeds. So management has an ongoing responsibility to ensure that the incentives remain satisfactory: becoming neither too generous nor insufficient.
As an Employee, you have an obligation to consciously select incentives that do genuinely motivate you to enter into a compact. Agreed incentives change with the passage of time, and what is important and motivating for you may also alter over time. Note that some incentives (like «challenging work»), cannot properly be offered, because they are largely under your own control.
THEE Note
Relationships v Work forms the internal duality when groupings of the structural hierarchy of employment are treated as levels and the focus is on the organization's requirements.
Levels 1 - 3 (CG1 - CG3) deal with getting work done.
Levels 5 - 7 (CG5 - CG7) deal with social relationships that set the context for work.
CG4 (Level-4), the heart of any 7 level THEE hierarchy, remains focused on making assessments. These are affected by and relevant to higher and lower levels.
The internal duality differs according to whether the focus is on management's requirements of employees or personal requirements of employment. The comparison can be viewed here.
These Levels specify core choices in employment life in regard to work. The various levels function and influence each other distinctively for management and for employees.
► The initial step in mapping the influences between the various choices involves clarifying the different intrinsic tensions facing management and employees.
Originally posted: 30-Nov-2011