Functions of Labor Relations Manager

Functions of Labor Relation Managers

Introduction

The most essential asset for an organization is its workforce. Therefore to survive in the market successfully firms need to hire employees that are creative and innovative, they have to be competent which means they must have skills, knowledge, attitude and behavior that will improve work performance. Managing Human resource effectively is crucial for maintaining higher productivity and accomplishing organizational goals. Labor relations managers assist in bridging the gap between the workers and the management, they ensure that rights of employees are protected and equality is maintained between the labors. To remain competent firms need to motivate their workforce, through offering them incentives not only in monetary terms but also by providing them other fringe benefits that is pleasant and friendly work environment, sense of accomplishment and other motivating factors (Putten, McLendon & Peterson, 1997).

Labor relations officers/ managers are also referred to as industrial relations specialists. Their responsibility is to provide support to managers and supervisors in contract administration grievances, maintaining discipline and performance management. The foremost purpose of labor relations manager is to advance a respectful and harmonious working relation. Labor relations managers collaborate with managers in human resource department to deal with all aspects of personnel policy. Results of the interview that was conducted to further enhance the knowledge about the functions and duties performed by the labor relations managers will be discussed in the following sections (Lewin, Kaufman & Gollan, 2011).

Discussion

Labor relations managers are involved in the job of forming labor related policies. They are responsible for forming labor related policies that will minimize the disputes amongst human resource management and the workforce; they are assigned with the duty to cater the needs of labor and act as an arbitrator to solve disputes if any arise. They are obliged to negotiate collective bargaining agreements and handle complaints that may arise as a result of disputes with unionized employees. Labor relation managers have to be able to deal and tackle employee related issues, and require having the ability to understand people and their behavior (Holley, Jennings & Wolters, 2011).

Strong interpersonal and communication skills are required to be able to work as a labor relations manager, since their main responsibility is to interact with others. They need to know factors other than money that could be used to reward and motivate employees, and act as a driving force to accomplish their tasks. Labor relations managers need to determine the needs of labors, as each workforce has unique needs (Putten, McLendon & Peterson, 1997). They need to know various negotiating styles to be implemented in different situations and should have the knowledge about, which would be the most effective way of negotiating style for the particular situation or dispute. There could not be simply one solution to all the problems hence to deal with different situations managers need to adopt different negotiating styles. Labor relations managers are involved in dealing with blue-collar workforce and therefore they are required to deal with unions ...