Employment and Welfare
Employee welfare issues and provisions reflect
- developments in contemporary business life.
- the obligations that an employer feels they have towards contributing to the good-life of employees
Have employer perceptions of welfare and welfare provisions they are prepared to offer changed over recent years?
Personnel management had an early pre-occupation with welfare - counselling, occupational health etc. This remained a background concern throughout the hay-day of personnel practice and hot-bed industrial relations in UK throughout the 1960's, 70's and 80's. Today with modern HRM, investors-in people ideas and health/stress pressures on the individual a re-surgence may be seen.
Yet many personnel/HRM practitioners do not wish to be seen as linked too closely with the "soft, social worker" brush of welfare. Perhaps welfare-oriented managers are not tough enough. HRM's position at the sharp end of the business may become confused!
What issues arise with such a paradox?
- Traditional welfare services
- Welfare Relationships and a Normative Framework
- Laissez-faire or a proactive policy?
- Models of Welfare
- Scope for "New" Welfare - Where do we go from here?
Welfare and the Benefits Package
Welfare services are "soft" elements in a benefits package. They are loyalty and membership incentives to staff. Some enjoy some of them. Many take them for granted - they are there. They are instances of what Herzberg might call "hygiene factors". There is little measurable evidence that providing welfare services adds much to staff motivation and performance.An employer might therefore provide welfare services as a genuine, caring element in the employer-employee relationship. It is depreciatory to call this paternalistic. But questions do arise when we consider the firm in a market economy.
How far should a business organisation involve itself:
- in the out-of-work affairs of its employees?
- in providing benefits and services already provided by the state. perhaps they are not provided by the state. if not the benefits tie the employees tightly to the firm.
The employment relationship is structured remuneration systems, promotion schemes, appraisal and communication policies. Welfare systems are but one supportive component If welfare is to be seen as a proactive and dynamic area of HRM, then against this backdrop welfare in the second millenimum must take account of
- new forms of work and work situations: home and tele-working, the growth of temporary and part-time work
- emphasis on monitoring individual performance.
Developed and maintained by Chris Jarvis