The Employee Relations Practice

At totus, we believe that establishing a trust based and productive relationship with employees is a pre–condition to performance and engagement.

Given the turbulence and transience in Organisations as well as the ever changing nature of the employment contract, the relationship between employees and Organisations is becoming ever so fragile. Employers are pushing for less regulation through laws, less standardization of the employment relationship and a greater focus on the workplace as the centre of gravity for defining and managing the relationship. Even the Government is under pressure to view this relationship from a much more strategic perspective – in terms of promoting workplace cooperation, flexibility, discretionary effort, productivity and ultimately competitiveness.

This change in thinking is leading to concerns about the balance in the relationship on both sides. Issues of right, fair employment practices, compliance to law on one side and employment integrity, productivity on the other side are becoming important.

It is evident that the old IR framework, developed at a time when services were less important and the nation was a lot more insular is inappropriate to meet the today’s business and employee demands, especially in the emerging sectors like IT/ITES, Retail, Infrastructure and so on where huge additional employment is occurring.

totus consulting’s new ER Practice is in response to this need for a more contemporary and strategic approach to Employee Relations.

Our Employee Relations Practice will provide strategic ER consulting support through a variety of interventions including education, advice and bespoke solutions.

Here are the specific offerings of our ER Practice:

• Strategic ER Audit
  
  ER issues and risks are seldom apparent. After brewing for a while, they tend to take dysfunctional turns. To help our clients assess their risk and exposure from an ER perspective and also gauge the state of health of their ER processes and practices totus can under take a comprehensive and strategic ER audit covering areas such as strategic compliance, climate and the fairness and effectiveness of various workforce practices and processes.

• Education
  
  HR professionals and People Managers play a critical role in the maintenance of healthy employee relations in organisations. totus can design and run workshops to promote effective employee relations for both HR professionals and people managers covering key areas like awareness and knowledge of the labour legislation to:

1. Manage business legally

2. Manage discipline proactively

3. Manage grievance effective

4. Manage employee Communication in change situations and so on.

• Employee Sensing support
  
  For organisation large and small, morale and climate are quite often impacted not so much by large issues like career development and learning opportunities but by ever day moments of truth, basic hygiene issues and issues of fair treatment by the manager or by the organisation. This has been our recurrent experience in many of our engagements.
  
  totus has demonstrated competence in using the power of qualitative research to understand the ER climate in organisations. This can provide organisations with valuable insights to build people programs for improving employee morale and build a healthy ER climate.
  
  Some of our other practice offerings are:
  

  • Socio economic surveys to help start-up Organisations to evolve their Employee Relations blue print.

  • Helping Organisations decide on their staffing mix strategies, keeping in mind legal and employee relations implications.

  • Designing and implementing workforce transformation programs.

  • Designing and implementing frameworks and programs to ensure fair employment practices including workforce involvement, grievance redressal, diversity, discipline and so on.