Industrial relations experts have urged HR professionals to rebuild their industrial relations skills and invest in long-term relationships with trade unions.
During a panel discussion at this week’s CIPD Festival of Work, Nita Clarke, director of the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA) and a former employee engagement adviser to David Cameron’s government, said that HR professionals needed to “understand the legitimate role of trade unions and the employee voice” and should not be scared of it.
“The problem is that there has been a loss of institutional memory in dealing with trade unions,” said Clarke, adding that rebuilding industrial relations skills is “not just up to HR, but also trade unions”.
Industrial relations
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She said there needed to be a focus on rebuilding trust between employees, employers and trade unions when the next government is formed.
“This country cannot afford a growth in industrial action,” she said.
“We’re in a really bad place at the moment and it can’t be ‘business as usual’.”
Peter Cheese, CIPD chief executive, said HR professionals should encourage and train managers to listen to employees.
“People should have a voice, and we should be listening to it,” he said, agreeing that employers’ understanding of the role of trade unions has “atrophied” over recent decades when industrial relations have been relatively stable.
Mike Clancy, general secretary of the Prospect union, said that it was only in 2018 that the UK experienced the lowest number of strike days in history.
He hoped that there would be an industrial relations “reset” with a new government this summer, and that employers and unions would “rediscover the ways of negotiating and working together”.
Clancy agreed that employers needed to “invest in long-term, reciprocal relationships” with trade unions.
“We shouldn’t have the P&Os and Twitters of this world undermining good employers,” he said.
Clancy considered organisational design to be the biggest problem affecting the world of work today, adding that he wanted trade unions to “talk more about it and talk about flexibility for the whole economy”.
He said that trade union representatives could be an asset to organisations, as when given the appropriate investment they can be “the best agents for change”.
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