Solution

Guidance Document 2200 words

IMPORTANT NOTE: At Associate Level Referencing is mandatory – you must provide a reference where you have drawn from a secondary source; Harvard referencing is preferable.

All written reports, including PowerPoint presentation notes, must include an appropriate level of referencing

Section 1

A review of emerging development to inform approaches to employee voice and engagement. (AC 1.1) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Employees voice can be defined as the chance granted to employees for expressing themselves. According to CIPD (2022) this is to express on their views, opinions, suggestions and note challenges encountered. The outcome of this is an appropriate decision being made. Employee voice is broad and prioritise on different avenues to support organisation. As part of the employee voice, people practice professionals ought to develop policies, put in place initiatives aligned with culture of organisation and job roles.
The employee engagement development entail;
Employee Representatives– Being a recent trend, this is characterised by employees directly represented to the management of their organisations b the representatives (Meardi et al., 2021). While this is a common trend in Western countries, also, in Saudi Arabia, there is an increased transition towards engagement of representative committees particularly for employers with more than 101 staff. In MNGHA, this is being implemented where there are employee representatives who pass their grievances and issues to the management.
Direct Participation– This is noted to be characterised by upto 60% of the employees assuming a feeling of disengagement in their employment roles. According to Abildgaard et al. (2020), for the identified group, approximately 50% at the end leave their entities. In this regard, direct participation is core to improve process of making decisions in an entity. Considering operations by MNGHA organisation, employees have the freedom and right of demanding for a process of being informed and consulted in critical decisions being made in the organisation. To conclude, direct participation and employees representatives are being instrumental in initiating a paradigm shift on employee voice hence promoting the scope of their engagement. This is particularly in the decision making which are instrumental and core for the organisations success in their sector of operations. The need to make critical decisions, remain committed and increase overall performance is regarded as the priority. According to Leonardi and Gottardi (2019), this create an appropriate platform for influencing the employees commitment to the organisation.

An explanation and evaluation covering the differences between employee involvement and employee participation and how it builds relationships. (AC 1.2) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Employees Involvement– This is defined as initiating appropriate structures and also systems to offer a chance for employees to air their views on work issues. This is identified in CIPD (2022a) to entail putting in place appropriate views in order to solve all issues, communicate directly and representative participation of the different unions.
Considering the practice in MNGHA, they ensure that the implement committees in every department which involve employees. This is to ensure they facilitate the link of the employees and their management to improve work conditions and environment (Schwarz et al., 2021). This is achieved while equally ensuring improved relations of various engaged stakeholders. Further, to colleagues and managers, improved relationship ensure critical decisions which impact on their wellbeing is actively made. This is with the increased involvement setting a scene of feeling appreciated and engaged which lead to improved performance. There are instances where the employees involvement can be counter productive. For instance, when a trend is initiated where employees are involved in raising their views on all matters, when they are not involved, they develop negative views of the organisation. For example, during COVID-19 pandemic, there is an instance MNGHA was forced to close one of their subsidiary in Riyadh. Due to urgency of the matter, the employees were not involved. They developed negative perception about the organisation which lead to resistance negatively affecting reputation of MNGHA.
Employee Participation– The primary difference with involvement is that participation lead to employees taking full control of their assigned roles and business sector. According to Personnel Today (2020), this is by participating in the form of quality circles, directly participating, work councils, joint project groups, semi-autonomous group working and employee representation. In Saudi Arabia context, there are clubs for gaming initiated to guarantee the employees with an opportunity of taking part in their organisation operations. However, for the success of this process, it can exclude those who are non-interested with the gaming process. The outcome of this is that the employees participation would be distracted and not involved in making decisions which are core for the organisation. This program is initiated in the organisation to make sure they capitalise on the opportunity presented to share their ideas in different areas and operations in the sector of operations. The varying engagements elicit an improved relationship with the employees colleagues, management teams and organisation management. Further, the participation often can be unsuccessful since the management or the organisation makes the final decision. The scope of participation is only offering their input and not taking holistic control of the process of decisions. Often, employees could feel that their input was not fully considered when it does not go their way. Considering the issues affecting Evergreen Education International, an example of employee participation include membership to a committee. According to CIPD (2022a), works committees/councils developed under the 1947 Industrial Disputes Act enhance the articulation of employees issues at a local level. In particular, they are mandated to pursue a discussion of the work conditions and amenities including sanitation, water supply, medical services and others. Hence, for Evergreen Education International, by implementing the work committees they would be used to build better communication amongst the employees and employers hence lowering the identified misunderstanding and conflicts. The disadvantage of this is that it is only effective when there is a genuine view amongst the engaged parties and where all individuals are appreciating the value of good relations in workplace. Also, unless managers offer sufficient resources to fulfil roles tasked to the works committee, they would be ineffective and fail to achieve intended role (Personnel Today, 2020).

An assessment of a range of employee voice tools and approaches to drive employee engagement. (1.3) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Surveys Today, considering the increased scope of technology growth including social media platforms and innovativeness, surveys are increasingly being used. Employee voice surveys are identified as a process adopted for quantitative data of employee voice. As evidenced in Liang and Yeh (2019), the appropriateness of this tool is the capacity of being applied in a large entities. In MNGHA case, these lead to 90% of an increase in productivity. There is a need for offering management and admin teams with the data for evaluating employees issues quantitatively hence increased engagement. The strengths of surveys include the ability of targeted audience/respondents having to major on usability of quantitative data. Also, the surveys are used in giving the users with opportunities for sourcing sufficient data and information for guiding them in active practice. The importance of this is managing potential bias or interfere with administrative functions (Mazzei et al., 2019). The drawbacks include inaccuracies in an event the respondents are hesitant to provide true information and data. Also, the fear of reprisal limit how the respondents are willing to take part in the surveys.
Town Hall Meetings This employee voice tool which is applied to engage the different employees in different meetings (Jasim et al., 2021). The effectiveness of use of the town hall meetings is to source appropriate voice and hence play a core role in entities practices. This is the case in MNGHA organisation where approximately 2.5 months, there are townhall meetings required for reviewing organisations in short and long-term goals. The incurred challenges are prioritised and strategies put in place for managing issues in place. The advantages of town hall meetings is sharing core information process. Further, the employees capitalise on the need to question various participants for boosting the engagement scope. The drawbacks of this entail the need to filter the shared information and data. Also, it could compromise with ethics of the organisation when personal data is shared to third parties in the meetings.
Employee Forums Employee forums represent a practice which is adopted by the employees for a purpose of discussing and pursuing initiatives intended to resolve challenges with collaborative working. According to Fiedler et al. (2021), the best practice in MNGHA is appropriately positioned to pursue employee forums for sharing ideas and to question on administrative functions. Considering the advantages of employee forums, less costs and time are used to implement it. Further, they lack essential expertise knowledge for success in their operations. The drawbacks entail contributing to ineffective relationship by management teams and staff. The employee forums also contribute to different issues on personalised inclusion and biasness. The gossips similarly prevail and resentments which have an implication on the engagement level of quality (Small Business, 2022).

A critical evaluation of the interrelationships between employee voice and organisational performance (AC 1.4) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

In the modern business environment, an embrace of a high employee voice lead to an increased organisation performance. According to Badru et al. (2022), in organisations with a good employee voice, they are noted to leverage on an increased trust level, motivated and achieving a high value. Further, according to Mazzei et al. (2019), in an event the different employee voice channels work holistically, good relationships are initiated with employees and eventually improving the entire organisation performance. For example, in MNGHA where their employee voice is significantly high, their performance is high in terms of provision of quality healthcare services. The strengths of using employee voice on organisation performance is that all stakeholders are actively engaged to voice their idea, highlight on existing opinions and their input. Another strength of employee voice on performance is the ability to inform resourcing strategies and performance-based rewards being provided to rewards. In regard to weaknesses, employee voice can be counter-productive when the management fail in acting on the presented feedback. According to Taylor (2019), often, despite of an in-depth feedback being offered by employees, employers often fail to implement them hence counterproductive. This is since sourcing for feedback and failing to act on them could be worse than asking for a feedback in the first place. To explain employee voice relationship to organisational performance, the examples which can be evaluated include;
Open Forums/Meetings– This is defined in Badru et al. (2022) as a practice of pursuing discussions on new strategies to be used by an organisation or proposal made. For MNGHA for example, this is done every week with annual surveys used to identify areas of employees voice implementation. The strengths of this approach entail improving the entire engagement. The process of engagement ensure performance of employees is harnessed. The drawbacks of this entail costly and a lot of time used to implement. It would be negative/inappropriate when Jungherr et al. (2020) as unauthorised individuals participating and as such affecting how authentic/valid it is. ~~Training and Development~~– As evidenced in Meardi et al. (2021), by appropriately pursuing training and development approaches, there is a possibility of identifying weaknesses in employees performance. This positively impact the employees performance as custom-made L&D initiatives provided. The strengths of this entail improving the capacity of engaging groups of high-level qualified employees and management readiness of functions implementation. Also, through an effective L&D as part of employee voice, employees are always prepared for implementing their functions. The negatives of the process entail a lot of time being used in its implementation as all employees must be engaged with a lot of resources demanded.
Employee Representatives– This approach of employee voice influences organisation performance by facilitating employees to influence decisions and control the manner in which jobs are executed (CIPD, 2022). For the strengths of this method, Evergreen International employees would benefit from the employees influencing decisions and work processes. In building relationship, this method also assist employers, management, employees to communicate, consult and negotiate effectively with each other. This is with employees being encouraged to voice their views in a frank and free manner. Nevertheless, for weaknesses, even if the employees representatives are involved, it is the discretion of managers to determine if the decisions are adopted or not. Also, this approach has an immense managerial influence on the employee representatives leading to the voice of employees being significantly stifled (Meardi et al., 2021). In conclusion, the examples provided for employee voice offer guidance on the benefits accrued by employees when they feel their interests are prioritised and are heard. This is at the same time coming up with a good team with high-level happiness, motivation, performers and increased engagement. However, unless the managers are genuine in handling the employee voice and address all these concerns holistically, employee voice cannot have any implication on organisation performance. Primarily, for organisations embracing high employee voice, their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are positive. The rationale of this is employees assumes a feel of high-level trust, motivation and value. For example, employee voice can include employees voicing their opinions and giving suggestions in different areas. This is identified as having a positive impact on performance increase. As evidenced in Badru et al. (2022), this is since trust-based relations are initiated amongst the different stakeholders. In MNGHA, every quarter, they pursue meetings intended for improving their services delivery quality. This is by appropriate positioning in interactions for voicing their ideas, opinions and input. The data which is obtained in this process is used to inform resourcing approaches and rewards to be offered to employees. Another example is where trade union bodies and non-union representatives are engaged. Since KSA does not accept trade unions, employees forums are used to obtain quantitative data pertaining to their performance. Through this undertaking, all weak areas are identified. The strengths of this employee voice example include ability to take part in collective bargaining process. This is at the same time putting in place appropriate management practices core for integrating the views of staff. The negative of the process entail lacking clear description of how the identified data is obtained as multiple players possess varying interests. In summary, the examples provided for employee voice offer guidance on the benefits accrued by employees when they feel their interests are prioritised and are heard. This is at the same time coming up with a good team with high-level happiness, motivation, performers and increased engagement. This lead to an increased organisation performance.

An explanation of the concept of better working lives and how this can be designed (AC1.5) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

Today, in business environment characterised by immense uncertainties, investing in better working lives need to be a priority for all organisations. Better working lives are identified as initiatives put in place by an entity to ensure that the employees find their work a safe haven or appropriate area (CIPD, 2022b). This is by being in a position of mitigating different negative implications which affect the employees as they are executing their job functions (Taylor, 2019). Further, considering the CIPD (2022c) findings, by pursuing better working lives, the engagement and voice of employees must be prioritised. This include engaging healthy employees, happy in their roles and fulfilment hence commitment in their roles. Considering MNGHA case, they pursue better working lives with employees being involved in executing their roles holistically and pursuing discretionary behaviour. In order to initiate better working lives, the best practice would entail; Total rewards provision– The total or strategic rewards are provided to staff as a determinant of appreciated staff and facilitated to execute their functions. Considering MNGHA, as evidenced in CIPD (2022d), they provide their staff with total rewards. The outcome of this has been increasing their retention and performance in their assigned roles. Learning and development (L&D) opportunities– This is a practice where the employees are facilitated with chances and support to take part in the L&D opportunities. This is for ensuring that the organisation attract and retain good employees (Findlay et al., 2021). Also, collaboratively, the satisfaction is improved, morale harnessed, performances and profit acquired. This is what is pursued in MNGHA with consistent capitalise of aspects of L&D with employees appropriately positioned to pursue their roles.

Section 2

An explanation of the principles of legislation relating to unfair dismissal in respect of capability and misconduct issues. (AC 3.1) Short references should be added into your narrative below. Please remember to only list your long references in the Reference box provided at the end of this section.

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