A HUMAN resource professional should ensure relationships are maintained between employees, trade unions and the employer when discussing redundancy actions, says Munro Leys partner Jon Apted.
While speaking at the BSP Life 2019 Fiji Human Resources Institute convention yesterday, he explained that having a tripartite relationship was vital to discussing business transformations that could lead to redundancy of workers.
“My observation is success with change from an HR point of view always depend on relationships,” he said.
“It is your ability as an HR professional to manage the change and manage the relationships.
“The relationships that you need to manage are tripartite. You are the conduit between your CEO or CFO who would want to change the business for financial or productivity reasons and you have to be there to make sure that it has to be done.
“The main thing is getting the buy in and the co-operation.
“The successful HR managers have been the ones with the emotional intelligence and the ones who have been able to build the trust both with the employees and their unions and also those who understand the workers’ needs and abilities the best.
“You’ve got to come up with flexible solutions and look at your resources.
“Just because you are going to be making some changes and reorganise does not mean that some of the workers are going to go. “You have to try your best to save some jobs.
“When you do that, the unions are going to trust you more because they see that you tried to save some jobs.”
The BSP Life FHRI convention ends today.
