How to work effectively with trade unions

The IPA led the way with the ground-breaking Towards Industrial Partnership project in 1992 and has been at the forefront of thinking since – more recently publishing The Practitioners Guide to Partnership Working.  Our research activity underpins the services we provide to organisations developing partnership working, whether taking the first steps on the journey or seeking to enhance existing ways of working.

Working closely with client organisations, the IPA team can:

• Help you to set up a partnership, or develop those that are already in place
• Provide a diagnostic – where are you now?
• Develop and test a road map for change     
• Design interventions such as vision workshops and training at all levels of the organisation looking at appropriate skills and behaviours
• Ensure that organisations are getting the most from their partnership
  

Contact Derek Luckhurst, training and development director for more information at [email protected] 
 

See what we did

Read about our work developing partnership working at Aintree University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust 

What they say - Guernsey Post Limited

Guernsey Post asked Nita to help the company extend their approach to partnership working with the CWU.  Based on a series of interviews, Nita presented her findings at a joint workshop where senior union representatives and managers agreed a way forward.

"We really appreciated the way Nita put together the workshop it was  stretching, lively and interesting for all concerned. It helped us to move our partnership approach on another step - a vital factor in meeting the continuing challenges for our people and our business". 

- Steve Rains, HR Director, Guernsey Post Limited

Partnership is built on principles and practices of shared commitment between the organisation and the people who work there.  This should produce the following business benefits:

• Change implemented with assistance rather than resistance
• Competitive edge for the organisation
• Dealing with issues before they become problems
• Less bureaucracy
• Fewer, if any, tribunal cases
• Higher levels of staff retention
• Greater ability to recruit high quality staff
• Low levels of absenteeism
• Less conflict
• Better decision making

For a trade union, all of these are benefits too. There are also some specific areas that a trade union working in partnership will benefit from:

• Opportunity to maintain or increase its influence on company strategy
• Opportunity to ensure that the impact of staff is considered in any decision
• Opportunity to increase membership levels
• Opportunity to develop the skills of the representatives to a much higher level
• Opportunity to become an equal stakeholder within the organisation

 These, if the union approaches partnership working in the right spirit, are benefits to the organisation as well.

It is accepted that partnership working may entail a change to deeply held beliefs. Clearly, a union must accept a need for flexible working, jettisoning demarcations and restrictive practices and understand that it is not acceptable to merely say “no”.  This makes the job of a union representative more demanding because they have to think about potential business impacts when requesting the maintenance or improvement to existing terms and conditions. It also requires an acceptance of the management’s right to manage and make the final decision.

This does not mean that a union representative has to agree with everything that is placed in front of him or her. The difference is that any objection should be supported by something more than ideology. If a challenge is made to a business decision, it should be made in such a way as to facilitate a meaningful discussion. Once a decision is made, however, the representative must have a clear understanding of why as it is vital that this is explained to the membership and the staff.

The requirement for change is often very similar for managers. Middle managers are usually cited as one of the main reasons why partnership working fails but this is often because they are not engaged in the process. It is natural to feel disenfranchised when this happens.  

Managers have no reason to feel threatened by partnership working. They have a right to manage and the final decision is theirs; the difference is that the business case is being made available to the union representatives openly, honestly and at the earliest stage possible.  A manager must be equipped with the skills to respond positively to challenges and should accept employees’ desire for information, representation and consultation before decisions are taken. 

Partnership working should help a manager achieve their objectives. Being able to run ideas past a union representative and thus gauge the potential response of the staff, can only help the decision making process. An idea might be modified to take account of this or it might not but, at the very least, the reaction to a decision is known.

All of this depends on how the managers and union representatives get on with each other and, more importantly, how much they trust each other. If managers take union representatives into their confidence by sharing ideas and information at the earliest stage, they have to know that this trust will not be breached. This is probably the most critical aspect of partnership working and presents as big a challenge to the trade union representative as it does to the manager. In a sense, the old method of industrial relations was relatively simple when both sides would try to “get one over” on the other by being secretive and bureaucratic. Openness and honesty, however, results in a big increase in responsibility for all of those involved in partnership working. This takes time to achieve.

A manager should eventually feel comfortable with bringing any issue to the attention of a union representative in the knowledge that any response would be clam and considered. In turn, the union representative should feel comfortable with bringing any issue to the attention of a manager in the knowledge that it will be considered seriously but not necessarily acted upon. All parties should communicate in a cordial manner without threats or a reversion back to “command and control” styles.