Securing employees’ rights

When people ask me to suggest themes for human resource conferences that they are planning to organise and I recommend such themes as “employee rights”, “know your labour laws” and so on, they frown and tell me that such themes are unattractive and irrelevant. They finally settle for much “cooler” topics such as “winning the war for talent”, “building high performance organisations”, “talent engagement strategies for the future” and so on.

Even as I see more and more business and HR leaders engaged in debating such esoteric themes, I have this strange feeling that we are missing out on the “basics”. One of the “basics” that concern me is the current level of respect that organisations seem to demonstrate for their employees’ rights. There are two things that concern me:

Organisations are doing more and more to assert their employer rights and secure the contractual obligations of employees through a greater number of stringent rules. (Bonds, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, non-compete agreements, variable pay clauses and other specific conditions of employment including mobility, termination, and so on.)

On the other hand, organisations are not able to guarantee many of the basics that employees are entitled to by law or employment terms, either because of the exigencies of business or bad front-line leadership or just inefficient administration. This assertion of rights on one side and lack of fulfilment on the other is certain to cause dissatisfaction and eventual distrust among employees. While the exercise of employer rights is legitimate and even justifiable, it also places a greater responsibility on these organisations to deliver on the basic rights of their employees.

Employee rights that need attention

Hours of work: From years, governing the hours of work has been an unending battle. It only seems to have worsened today. Many managers are unable to honour the work hours stipulated by law. In trying to inspire employees to “go beyond the call of duty” many have made it a rule that employees go far beyond the call of duty every day.

Right to take time off: While employees are entitled to time off as per law, many organisations do not take efforts to ensure that employees are able to avail themselves of this. While some employees struggle to take a day off every we ek, some others struggle to get their paid annual leave.

Right to a harassment and discrimination free workplace: With the increase in the number of women employees, organisations need to sensitise their supervisors and managers about potential sexual harassment issues. Similarly, managers n eed to ensure that they do not practice any form of discrimination or micro inequality (small wrong doings).

Right to a fair performance review: With so much at stake around the performance review, there is significant pressure on managers and HR to ensure that the appraisal process is seen as fair. The current situation is far from satisfact ory. In fact, performance reviews are the greatest source of employee unhappiness today.

Right to redress of grievances: Every aggrieved employee expects that he will be heard and his grievance will be redressed. This means that the employee must know the redress process and the process must actually work. The grievance co uld be relating to poor infrastructure, rude supervisory behaviour, incorrect pay, and so on.

Securing employee rights

In my assessment, lot more needs to be done to protect the rights of employees. There always seem to be reasons for not being able to do so — business pressures, manpower shortages, customer pressures and bad managers. Thanks to a buoyant labour market and high mobility, a lot of these issues are getting resolved through attrition. What is also helping is the fact that most Indians are not “rights oriented” and still believe and expect that their organisations will take care of them. If we do not do enough, we may lose this trust before long. Employees are likely to become cynical about organisations and their espoused values. Employees are also likely to become more and more litigation minded. I see the need for three urgent actions:

Ensure that all HR professionals are aware of the laws that are meant to protect employee rights. It is frightening to see that over 95 per cent of today’s young HR professionals are completely ignorant about labour laws.

HR professionals need to install systems of audit that give them regular feedback about the efficacy of their processes. For example, it would be important for the HR head to know how many of his employees did not get a day off for six days of work done, in the past quarter. Similarly, it would be important for the HR head to know how many employees worked consistently long hours, had disagreements with their performance ratings and so on. ER metrics should be given as much importance as HR metrics.

HR leaders must also take the effort and courage to advocate on behalf of employees and escalate issues to the highest levels if things don’t improve. HR must act as the spokesperson and de facto representative of employees.

I must clarify that most organisations of today do want to provide their employees with a great work environment. In fact, many go well beyond compliance and excel in many areas. I do not think there is a lack of intent. Organisations however seem to underestimate the effort required to implement what they or the law promises. As in business, the problem is not the lack of a great strategy. The problem is around execution and HR can do a lot to get this right.

Ganesh Chella