Staying competitive and profitable as the global race powers ahead with new entrants joining daily is the number one survival priority for British businesses and companies, just as providing better public services in the face of massive spending restraints is for public sector organisations. Of course, these are not new pressures, but no one should underestimate the speed with which market and consumer demand is changing and the disorientating effect this is having on businesses and services.
Constantly innovating to anticipate demand, and improving productivity and performance, is the key to success for organisations across the economy. But, under pressure from the quarterly results treadmill, too often leaders take the short-term ‘solution’ of slashing costs, usually in the form of making people redundant, ‘reducing headcount’ in Orwell-speak, rather than thinking more strategically about partnering with employees to step up performance, improve efficiency, deliver better to customers and develop new products to meet new demands.
Trade unions have a vital role to play encouraging organisations to adopt the second approach. But to do that successfully and to have a voice and input that is respected and heeded at the highest levels, unions do have to acknowledge the unprecedented demands that living in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world are placing on leaders and managers and on organisations.
In other words, trade unions have to be part of the solution to successfully meeting these pressures. That means finding ways of working jointly at a senior level to shape strategic responses; it means helping the workforce to gain new skills, and to work more flexibly; it means working together with managers to problem solve and to help employees to understand, cope with the effects of, and get the best out of the modern world.
In recent years unions have a proud record in working with organisations who have adopted the second approach. The history of the revival of the United Kingdom’s car industry and the massive inflows of investment and consequent job creation is based on a series of agreements between unions and management to secure continuous improvement techniques that have led to Toyota, Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover products at the top of the consumer wishlist, and to the UK having the most productive car plants in the world. Indeed, JLR’s recent investment in new plant in the west Midlands was secured by the strength of its partnership relationship with Unite. BAE Systems’ success in reducing the unit cost of the F35 fighter jet was predicated on a ground breaking agreement on skills enhancement for the workforce secured with its union, and similar examples of partnership working to deliver improved productivity can be found in the sectors where Usdaw, Community and Prospect, among others, organise. CWU too is its seizing the opportunity of a new ownership structure in the Royal Mail to bring knowledge of operational realities in the business to ensure its success.
In the public sector trade unions have worked closely with local authorities in reconfiguring services to minimise the impact of spending cuts on communities. In the NHS the Social Partnership Forum has enabled a series of groundbreaking agreements over the years on issues such as skills and grading which have helped to transformed patient care on the frontline. And specialist health unions have made significant contributions to developing new forms of service improvements: a recent IPA report on the work of the Royal College of Midwives detailed innovations and improvements developed and delivered on the ground by members. Our report on successful employee engagement approaches which deliver excellent patient outcomes, Meeting the Challenge, spelled out in detail how intrinsic to successful hospital care an engaged relationship at every level of the hospital between unions and managers is.
Of course it remains a key responsibility for trade unions to ensure that the proceeds of success are fairly shared with the workforce – or at least that any pain is fairly shared – as well as pointing out the egregious effects of the bonus culture and executive pay at a time when many people at work are struggling to make ends meet, and raising concerns about the damaging consequences for some workers of zero-hours contracts and the impact of contracting-out and casualisation.
But in my view it is also why unions should welcome with open arms the increasing importance that many companies and organisations across the economy are placing on really developing and delivering employee engagement approaches.
We know that for engagement to be more than just a tick-box survey it has to include a strong strategic narrative and purpose for the organisation that gives meaning to people’s work, managers who know how to treat people as individuals, with jobs designed so that people can bring their whole selves to their work, and which enable individual growth, organisational integrity where the values on the wall are reflected in day-to-day behaviours and inappropriate behaviours are called out, and above all open, respected, informed and listened to employee voice, able and willing to speak opening about all aspects of the organisation. And we know that individual employee wellbeing is an essential underpinning for effective engagement. All of these are core to the trade union mission, and indeed bring the mission to life for the 21st century at a time when union traction is weakening.
But too many organisations exhibit few or none of these characteristics. What an opportunity for trade unions therefore to take up the advocacy role for an engaged workplace culture; it is good for individual employees, good for organisations, good for the country – and vital, surely, for the future of unions themselves.
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Nita Clarke is director of the IPA
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