The Employment Relationship

A Psychological Perspective

Peter Herriot

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135430863
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Employment Relationship presents a controversial perspective on an area hitherto dominated by industrial relation experts and radical sociological theorists. Exploring some of the metaphors commonly used to describe the employment relationship, Peter Herriot argues that it is often their dark rather than their bright side which best expresses how employees really feel. Human resources sometimes feel like human discards! The main culprits in this situation, he suggests, are the top managers who fail to treat employment as a relationship and employees as individuals. He concludes that management rhetoric must be replaced by real dialogue and points to three issues where this is most crucial: employee compliance, contractual inequalities and the need for organisational change. The Employment Relationship will make essential reading for all managers and occupational psychologists. It will also be of interest to students of work psychology, human resource management or organisational behaviour.

Part 1
Mixed metaphors

Chapter 1

Family and Feud

Care in the family

On 23 August 1998, the London Observer columnist, Melanie Phillips, wrote a valedictory piece. She explained how she had gradually come to realise that the liberal consensus represented by that great newspaper was actually, in her view, deeply authoritarian and contrary to the interests of those whose wellbeing she most desired: the poor and the vulnerable. Clearly feeling that this represented a radical move which established her own independence, she concluded her column as follows: ‘The Guardian and the Observer have been to me like my extended family. After 21 years, though, it’s finally time to leave home.’¹

We use the Family metaphor to enrich our understanding of so many areas of our lives that it is hardly surprising that we apply it to the employment relationship. Those twin areas of maximum emotive potential, politics and religion, are replete with family members. Politics, for example, provides us with numerous dictators calling themselves the father of their nation; the mother country, that fantasy beloved of expatriates; brothers and sisters in the unions struggling for workers’ rights; the sisterhood of feminists or the Daughters of the American Revolution; and so on. And as for religion, we have God the Father and God the Son, mother church or mother earth, the brotherhood of saints or the brotherhood of man.

So Family is a well-practised metaphor in all sorts of arenas. But it also has a great historical resonance in the history of business. This history is replete in the USA and the UK with family owners who believed that they should consider their companies as extensions of their own families. Indeed, some of the founding families have gracefully retired from the scene and from the parental role altogether. In China and Italy, on the other hand, family dynasties survive and flourish and are the mainstay of the economy.

The central belief of many of these founding families was that it was their duty to care for the wellbeing of their employees. They did not do so because it was good for their business, but because it was simply the right thing to do. And surely care is the central feature of Family: the fundamental purpose of that threatened institution is to care for children so that they can develop in infancy and childhood in as secure an environment as possible; and then negotiate adolescence to become independent and adult people. They will as a result develop a degree of trust in their parents, and believe that they have their wellbeing at heart. Parents will enhance this trust by demonstrating reciprocal trust in their growing children to act sensibly, honestly, etc.

If and when we use the Family analogy to describe the employment relationship, then we are surely referring primarily to this fundamental duty of continued care by the employer, leading to trust and confidence that employees will be supported and enjoy a consequent feeling of security. We may merely refer to ‘a family atmosphere’ or ‘feeling like one of the family’, but ultimately we are talking about care and support.

Care at a premium

Now all this sounds very old-fashioned indeed, at least in Western postindustrial societies. Victorian philanthropists are from another era (although we do not seem to have jettisoned quite so easily the equally Victorian Samuel Smiles and his distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor). It may be a long time since we ourselves thought or spoke in such terms. But the Family metaphor for the employment relationship is still alive and well and in everyday usage. Here are two heartwarming contemporary examples:

My field service manager has been unstinting in his help to me personally. He has been like a father in many ways. My own dad died while I was still at school. My problem is that I am very shy, lack confidence, and at one time would have thought it impossible to do my job of going into factories, hospitals, offices, etc. to repair their vending machines. I just could not have faced going into strange environments, dealing with people I had not met before, even talking to you like this would have been an embarrassment. F***** said he understood the problem and would help me with it. He came out with me in the early days, we went into jobs together and I saw how he coped with receptionists, secretaries, porters, etc…Without that help I would have been a good mechanic stuck in the workshops. I would never have had the use of a company car or gone to such interesting places. I have substantially conquered my shyness and blushing. Two years ago I would have said it was impossible for me to do what I am able to do today. The organisation in the person of F***** has made this possible.²

The organisation I work for is ********, the major leisure group that is probably the largest hotel operator in the UK. I would say that the one thing it does that is above general employment conditions in any organisation (let alone the catering industry) is the way it recognises long and loyal service. Our first recognition comes at five years, when the employee is given a small cocktail party in their honour, a certificate, and a small presentation. After 10 years, etc…At 15 years, etc…At 20 years it is two weeks at any hotel, and a weekend away every year thereafter. It really makes you feel important and appreciated. The wives become totally committed to the organisation. My wife wouldn’t let me leave even supposing I wanted to! The group has a nil turnover of management grade staff. It becomes like a large extended family.³

These are definitely exceptions, we may tell ourselves, and may not match our own organisations. There may be mutual care and support amongst our immediate colleagues, but most of us would hesitate to construe the management role as that of parent, or employees as family. Yet, as we ponder the recent past and the uncertain future, managers might reasonably be asked for some parental-style care and support.

That organisational change is a constant, rather than a passage between periods of stability, is now commonly stated. But what is often ignored are the transitions which these changes at the organisational level force upon individuals’ working lives.⁴ They may be thrust into a much more responsible job after a merger, but be unsure whether they have the experience and the confidence to carry it off. In the interests of flexibility they may be expected to work part-time or on shifts; or they may be asked to broaden their range of skills, with the result that they can no longer keep up to date in their real expertise. Or they may simply be told that they are surplus to requirements and made redundant.

Such transitions are profoundly important to employees. In the case of redundancy, their very livelihood may be at stake. In all of them, fundamental elements of their identity are involved: their self-esteem in the promotion, their professional identity in the job enlargement, their role as wage earner supporting any dependants in the case of redundancy. They need support and care from their employer, when they are preparing for such transitions, when they encounter them, and when they are adapting to them.⁵

Enhanced trust

Support and care through their children’s transitions are a parental duty. All parents will recall the perils of negotiating together the first tentative steps into adolescence. As far as employers are concerned, support and care are also good business, for the following reasons. First, if transitions are becoming more and more frequent, then a decrease in the time taken to get up to speed in the new role will become a major source of competitive advantage. More important, however, care and support, consistently and reliably given result in employee trust in the employer and in feelings of security, just as they do in the childparent relationship.

These latter consequences are worth exploring further. Trust is the fundamental glue cementing any relationship; employees need to have a degree of confidence that management will reciprocate before they are willing to act on their behalf. Trust based on regular support from the employer has been termed knowledge-based trust.⁶ It is based on the belief that if they have supported us regularly in the past through our transitions, they are likely to do so this time round. As a consequence, employees may be willing to embrace organisational changes of which previously they would have been deeply suspicious and afraid.

Indeed, once we feel we can trust the other party on the basis of our experience of their reliability, a deeper form of trust may develop. We may come to understand more fully what the other’s wants and needs are, so that we can effectively act on their behalf and identify with them. We know what really matters to them, and as a consequence it really matters to us too. The Family metaphor is irresistible here, as many of us recall the pride with which we returned home to find that the children had dealt with an emergency in just the same way as we would have done. If this level of identification-based trust exists in our organisation, then employees are willing to believe that top management has their wellbeing as one of their concerns when they are planning the next change. Moreover, employees may embrace the change because they want the same outcomes as top management.⁷

Yet the sequence is important. Only when employees have come to be confident in management’s support and care will they develop a knowledgebased trust; they know they can rely on them for support when they need it. The further development of identification-based trust is likely to depend upon the prior establishment of such reliance. This level of identification with an employer therefore has to be earned over a long prior period of reliable care and support. The easy assumption that employees will identify with the company and recognise and act upon the supposed imperative for change is thus facile and dangerous if care and support have not been the norm. Trust is not the next snake-oil to follow Business Process Reengineering. It is the cement which makes any relationship viable; and it takes time to solidify.

Other benefits of caring

However, the immediate benefits of care and support are considerable, as well as those of the trust and security which regular care and support finally engender. Research indicates that if members of six different occupations perceived that they were valued and cared about, they were more likely to be conscientious in their duties, involved in the organisation, and willing to innovate without reward. In a second study in a manufacturing organisation, employees who perceived they were supported showed a greater affective commitment to the organisation, believed that good performance would be rewarded, and were more willing to make constructive suggestions for improving the manufacturing process.⁸ Prior experiences of development and promotion were amongst the antecedents of the perception of support discovered by another research project, while its consequences included organisational citizenship behaviour, affective commitment to the organisation, and intention to stay.⁹

To put some flesh on to these dry bones of research, here is the beneficial outcome of the support for the shy and blushing mechanic whom we met earlier:

I really try to give the company a good day’s work, and to be a good ambassador for them when dealing with the clients. I keep the car immaculate, and always try and look smart and efficient. Where I do a lot more than many other mechanics is that I accept calls right up to normal business closing time. This means that I can sometimes have long drives home in my private time. Others insist that their last call is near home, otherwise it must be delayed to the next day. I must be more productive than some of the others.¹⁰

An increased feeling of security, the other outcome of regular care and support, also has its benefits. Organisations which have given assurances that there will be no compulsory redundancies, and have stuck to their word, have reaped the benefits in continuously improving motivation and morale. But there is a more specific benefit of security, which is especially important at the present juncture. It is the benefit of increased innovation. Only when employees feel secure enough about their jobs and about their value to the organisation are they likely to take the risks that are necessary if innovation is to occur. For then they are confident that they will be supported through any mistakes which they may make.¹¹

So the outcomes of the most fundamental feature of the family relationship, parental care and support, seem to be beneficial to both parties to the employment relationship. As the psychoanalysts have argued, parents can provide a ‘holding relationship’ within which children can both feel secure but also become independent. But what happens when the family starts to feel the stresses and strains? What happens when the flip side becomes a possibility? Just as real families can over- or under-react to external pressures, so the employment relationship can threaten to flip to its savage reverse side: revenge and feud.

After all, the trends and pressures are all too real. Today’s parental relationships have often become serial monogamy: a succession of exclusive relationships between adults. The children often have no say in the matter. They have to get used to new ‘parents’ who are not their natural ones. It takes time, effort, and goodwill to develop such new relationships, as is attested by the 16 Mixed metaphors age-old myth of the cruel stepmother. This development in the current state of the family carries over to the employment relationship. For there too, relationships are now seldom for life. Employees have a series of organisations as parents, and often have little say in who their new parents are (as in ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Mixed metaphors
• Introduction to Parts 2 and 3
• Part 2 Relationship psychology
• Part 3 Employment dialogues
• Index