IRI’s programs are designed to enhance and strengthen the employer-employee relationship in an environment that encourages job satisfaction, growth and loyalty. In every organization, people drive results. A successful organization promotes a direct relationship with employees, a flexible workplace and an efficient and productive culture. Effective employee relations equip organizations not only to anticipate workplace problems, but also to address them effectively and avoid them in the future. In unionized workplaces, your ability to manage your workforce and sustain competitive costs and work rules depends on your ability to conduct effective labor negotiations and craft contracts that serve the best interests of the organization and its employees. IRI can help your team:
Whether you work with labor unions that represent your employees or simply want to ensure that workers have a strong voice in your operations, IRI will help you develop an engaged workforce.
A high-performing organization makes the best use of its human resources, contracts and procedures whether in a union or independent workplace. We help clients equip supervisors and structure work systems and policies to operate effectively under labor contracts by understanding the rights, responsibilities, constraints and opportunities in those contracts. Properly constructed, labor contracts should give managers wide latitude in assigning work, communicating with employees and maintaining a positive work environment. But much depends on your ability to administer contracts efficiently and effectively. The tactical administration of contracts is even more important in those organizations:
IRI’s contract administration services help organizations optimize productivity to the full extent permitted by collective bargaining agreements, and avoid grievances and unfair labor practices, which put a tremendous strain on an organization's resources and negatively affect employee morale.
Whether it's unions attempting to organize employees, or activists with a specific agenda, a corporate campaign can be destructive to your business and demoralizing to your employees.
A corporate campaign is a long-term, coordinated, multi-faceted initiative by a union or other antagonist to gain leverage or organize a company. The goal is to attack an organization's reputation and undermine public confidence and stakeholder relationships to the point that management yields to union demands or risks the company's financial well-being.
Common corporate campaign tactics include:
IRI’s comprehensive corporate campaign vulnerability assessments offer an extensive analysis of your strengths, weaknesses and threats, and provide expert counsel on the best methods to avoid negative publicity campaigns, manage your reputation and engage your employees and community allies in promoting your organization. Click here for more information about the vulnerability assessment process.
Corporate Campaign Vulnerability Assessments product sheet
There is no perfect contract, no labor agreement that can prevent differences in interpretation, grievances and disputes. One key role of strategic contract administration is to structure a process by which disputes are managed fairly, efficiently and promptly.
Based on the unique structure of your workforce and collective bargaining agreements, our consultants can help you identify contract areas and situations most vulnerable to dispute, as well as explore alternative dispute resolution procedures that minimize work disruptions and expensive arbitration or litigation.
Dispute resolution procedures are also important in non-union workplaces, where a mechanism that gives employees a fair hearing and a voice in workplace disputes will go far to ensure positive workplace relations.
Organizations must compete for skilled employees and win their loyalty every day. The right employee training, development and education at the right time provides a meaningful return for employers in terms of increased productivity, knowledge, loyalty and retention.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of people in the workforce ages 25 to 34 is projected to decline by 2.7 million by 2015. To meet the challenge, employers must create the kind of workplace that attracts and keeps valued employees. Employee education and training is one element that will help you get there. We guide clients through the best practices in new-hire training and orientation, leadership development, teamwork and participation in employee advisory groups.
IRI’s employee education programs and modules help employees develop and grow the skills they need, while you build a high-performance workforce that is both nimble and adaptable to meet the needs of evolving markets competitive pressures.
Frequent and accurate assessments of employee opinions and satisfaction are critical to maintaining a healthy workplace and minimizing labor disruptions.
Our best-in-class workplace diagnostic tools have helped hundreds of organizations make measurable improvements by identifying and ranking issues that affect employee performance, morale and productivity.
Unlike typical survey methodologies that rank responders’ comments on a simple scale, IRI employee surveys and focus groups provide you the ability to not only identify issues that drive employee satisfaction, but also identify why those issues have surfaced and how embedded they are in the culture.
As part of our survey and assessment process, we also help clients with key issues relating to communicating results to managers and employees, to help employers get the maximum value and impact from the information they’ve gleaned.
Working in tandem with your legal counsel, IRI consultants conduct proprietary training programs and techniques to help you build a corps of managers, supervisors and organizational leaders who understand the complexities of labor law and ensure your organization is in compliance.
Labor Law Compliance product sheet
Many companies successfully maintain positive, productive employee relations in a unionized workforce by promoting a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of management and labor in making the organization and its employees as effective and successful as possible.
IRI offers customized, interactive courses that help supervisors understand the key elements of union contracts and apply best practices to your organization. This training includes a comprehensive review of the legal rights of management and unions, and provides guidelines for effective contract administration.
IRI's training not only helps reinforce the value of building strong employee relationships, but also improves supervisory skills and commitment to:
Supervising under a collective bargaining agreement poses challenges unique to unionized workplaces. To manage effectively, supervisors must understand their rights and responsibilities in their work with represented employees.
Union business and procedures add a significant layer of complexity and challenge to the workplace, with the added costs and burdens of collective bargaining, contract administration, grievances and potential work actions. Therefore, the key to best-practice management is the ability to maintain a clear focus on organizational performance.
Unions routinely train stewards to leverage work rules and legal processes to aggressively represent their members. Your goal is to make sure that supervisors are similarly equipped with a full understanding of the contracts, and the considerations that will allow you to maximize organizational performance and maintain positive employee relations. Targeted training helps managers to not only be more effective in their jobs, but also enlists them as proponents and advocates of the company’s vision and strategic goals.
In addition, supervisors in unionized workplaces must have a baseline knowledge of the National Labor Relations Act and the “Do’s & Don’ts” of managing in a union environment in order to ensure full compliance with labor laws and avoid grievances and unfair labor practices.
Our training and workshops focus on real-world workplace issues, including:
With the right approach, collective bargaining can be a genuine opportunity for an organization to address industry challenges, competitive threats and operational goals.
Because of the operational and financial importance of negotiating an effective contract, we believe that bargaining should command the attention of not only an organization’s employee relations or human resources departments, but the senior leadership and executive teams as well.
Moreover, in an era of fast and easy communications and skilled union communicators, it is increasingly likely that the issues that arise at the bargaining table and the rhetoric that accompanies negotiations will travel far beyond the walls of your company and into the public domain. This means that the tone and tenor of your labor relations has a direct and potentially significant impact on your reputation.
IRI Consultants works with clients to establish effective negotiating strategies and improve employee relations. Our work helps clients craft a multi-pronged approach to negotiations with a focus on
In modern-day contract negotiations, both sides often “bargain over how to bargain,” craft complex communications protocols, and involve mediators and facilitators.
But for every negotiation that begins with a commitment to interest-based bargaining and other collaborative approaches, many others deteriorate into an adversarial exchange. In an era in which most unions compete for members, some seek to promote their cause by using contract negotiations as a platform. Union leaders increasingly are skilled and strategic in making use of the media and allies at other union shops in order to “make an example” of employers during contract talks, and to promote agendas that are often far broader than the contract issues at hand.
Our approach relies on research, training and the development of an effective labor relations team to direct the bargaining process. We guide clients through creating negotiations strategies that support organizational goals and helping them explore the costs, timing and possible outcomes of different approaches.
Preparation and training are the most critical keys to establishing effective employee relations. Our negotiations services will guide your efforts to:
Also key to this process is helping clients educate their workforce and outside constituencies on business realities, in order to help them understand the company’s challenges and objectives in crafting a contract that will serve the best interest of the organization and its employees.
Finally, clients have access to IRI’s extensive database and library of collective bargaining agreements and union backgrounders, as well as our research service that provides custom reports on union leadership and finances, contracts, negotiations history and NLRB filings.
Through our library, clients also have access to exclusive reports detailing recent bargaining trends, settlements, organizing efforts, alliances and insider information that's valuable to organizations preparing for contract negotiations or facing a corporate campaign.
Some unions call it “economic warfare.” The description is fitting for organizations facing the threat of a strike or work slowdown.
The best deterrent is prevention – something negotiations planning and prevention can make possible. Even the potential risk of a work action makes contingency planning advisable.
Effective bargaining must include a component of business literacy so that negotiating teams and stakeholders are provided credible information about the competitive landscape and operational challenges facing their industry and organization. This effort helps establish at the outset the business factors and constraints on meeting union demands that could be impossible to meet.
But effective negotiations also require that the company is prepared to defend its operational needs and win any “economic warfare” launched by the union.
Work actions are among the most powerful leverage that unions have in contract negotiations, and the decision to strike often is based on the union’s assessment of whether a strike is necessary to achieve its negotiating goals.
At risk in the event of work stoppage: the company’s image in the community and the real threat of economic harm. Contingency planning provides a road map and tools for the company to manage operational issues, including interactions with suppliers and customers.
Strike preparation and planning includes making provisions for: