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Employment relations

9.1: Role of employment relations- the importance of staffing

	Employment or human relations covers all types of interactions among people: conflicts, cooperative efforts and interpersonal and group relationships.
	The main purpose of staffing is to attract, acquire, develop, reward and maintain the human resources - the people - needed to achieve the business's goals.
	A human resource manager coordinates all the activities involved in acquiring, developing, maintaining and separating an organisation's human resources.
	Human Resource Management, in its simplest terms, is defined as the effective management of the formal relationship between the employer and the employees.

9.2: Human Resource Cycle- The staffing process

The 4 main elements of the human resource / staffing process are:

Aquisition- identify staffing needs, recruitment, selection

Development- training, development and maintenance of data bases

Maintenance- monetary and non-monetary benefits

Separation- voluntary and involuntary

9.3: Acquisition of human resources

Identifying staffing needs- human resource planning involves:

	Forecasting human resource demand
	Forecasting human resource supply (A replacement chart is a list of key personnel, along with possible replacements within the business).
	Job analysis is the systematic study of each employee's duties, tasks and work environment.
	A job description is a written statement describing the employee's duties, tasks and responsibilities associated with the job.
	A job specification is a list of the key qualifications needed to perform a particular job in terms of education, skills and experience.

Recruitment and selection:

	Recruitment is the process of attracting qualified job applicants by using advertisements, employment agencies and word of mouth, from which to select the most appropriate person for a specified job. Recruiting can come from internal or external sources.
	Selection involves gathering information about each applicant for a position and then using information to choose the most appropriate applicant.
	Orientation is the process of acquainting new employees with the business and their job.

9.4: Training and Development of Human Resources

Employee training refers to the process of teaching staff how to do their jobs effectively and efficiently.

Development is the process of preparing supervisors and managers to assume greater levels of accountability and responsibility within the organisation.

Training and development methods include:

	Informal on-the-job training
	Formal on-the-job training
	Conferences and seminars

Performance appraisal is the formal assessment of how efficiently an employee is working.

A skills inventory is a useful tool: it is a database containing information on the skills , abilities and qualifications of existing staff.

9.5: Maintenance of Human Resources

Maintenance is the providing of working conditions to encourage employees to remain with the business.

Compensation refers to the money or benefits an employee receives in exchange for their labour.

A remuneration package is the combination of monetary and non-monetary benefits.

What motivates more- monetary or non-monetary benefits?

Motivation refers to the individual, internal process that directs, energises and sustains a person's behaviour.

Research indicates that individual employees will be motivated by different things, such as:

	be asked to give suggestions
	being involved in conflict-resolution strategies
	being delegated more responsibility
	the boss taking more of an interest in your development
	being provided a safe work environment
	being able to negotiate the setting of objectives
	by having expectations made clear
	by communicating regularly with staff
	be being led through example

9.6: Separation for Human Resources

Separation is the ending of the employment relationship. It can be voluntary or involuntary.

Voluntary separation:

	Retirement- an employee decides to give up full-time or part-time work.
	Resignation- a voluntary ending of the employment relationship for a variety of reasons.

Redundancy is when a particular job is no longer required to be performed, often due to technological changes. It can be voluntary or involuntary.

Involuntary separation:

Retrenchment- when a business dismisses an employee because there is not enough work to justify paying him/her.

Dismissal- when the behaviour of the employee is unacceptable and it becomes necessary for the business to terminate the employment contract of an employee. The method of terminating an employee will depend on the type of employment:

	Casual
	Probation
	Temporary
	Fixed-term contract
	Permanent

9.7: Rights and Responsibilities

An employment contract is a legally binding, formal agreement between an employer and an employee outlining the terms and conditions of employment- the employers and employees rights and resonsibilities.

Equal employment opportunity and Anti-discrimination is mandated by the following legislation:

	Anti-discrimination Act 1977 (NSW)
	Affirmative Action (Equal Employment Opportunity for Women) Act 1984 (Commonwealth).
	OHS (Occupational Health and Safety)- all employees have a right to a safe and healthy working environment.