Thinking of establishing or revamping an employee forum in your business?

Jaluch has been delivering representative training for over 20 years, partnering with some amazing groups in an incredible variety of organisations and sectors. Yet, there are still many organisations that don’t yet have an employee forum or committee – and even those with forums are searching to find the right approach to maximise the forums impact.

But now is a great time to be establishing or revamping an employee forum … and many are doing just that.

What’s driving the set up of new employee forums?

Across the past 12 months we’ve been lucky enough to work with lots of brand new representative groups. The organisations we’ve worked with appear to have three major drivers for pushing forward with these initiatives:

1. Union legislation in the UK

Union legislation in the UK is changing and unions are pushing for recognition – an active effective forum can be a great alternative to union recognition and take some of the heat off employees pushing for union recognition.

2. Increased demand for communication and transparency

Employees are asking for more communication, transparency, and involvement. An employee forum creates the opportunity to deliver this, leading to better employee relations and engagement as well as improved communication – a win for everyone.

3. Government funding/public monies

Increasingly organisations are required to set up a forum if they are in receipt of government funding/public monies or in some cases, because they are delivering to large corporates or public sector organisations that expect or require a forum to be in place.

Which of these is currently your priority? For some of course it will be a combination of all three.

Training doesn’t just have to be for representatives…

What has been different (and good) these past 24 months is that we have been delivering a wider variety of training to support organisations that really want to make their group successful.

This has taken the form of coaching for those nominated or elected as the chair of the representatives and mini training sessions for those setting up, organising and chairing the groups i.e. HR, Ops managers, Senior teams and Trustees

It’s really valuable to share with those involved with representation, some of the materials we use when training reps and to have discussions about how to get great return on the time and financial investment being made. Many of today’s HR and business directors, trustees, ops managers etc. don’t have experience of being in or running a representative group so we’re delighted to share our knowledge with them.

Questions that often arise in these sessions relate to how to:

manage unrealistic expectations such as ‘allow us to be involved in decision making on salaries’.
discourage ‘pie in the sky’ ideas from staff such as ‘we want 5 extra weeks holidays’
build a relationship from the ‘back foot’ for example when employee relations or trust is low.
discuss challenging issues without sinking into conflict – this relates to how to have adult discussions free of endless blame and complaint with a focus instead of problem solving.
ensure topics discussed are meaningful and substantial, and how much to share
address this perpetual ‘us and them’ dynamic experienced by so many.

Is it possible for representative groups to be highly effective?

The answer is a simple ‘yes’.

Representative groups can be highly effective supporting both employees and the business but training is needed, support is valuable and above all a strong relationship built between HR/senior team and the representative group is crucial. The better the relationship the more likely that this will work.

It does take work and commitment though which is why it’s so critical to understand from the outset why you have a representative group, how much time and money you are investing in it, and what your return on investment should be ie the benefit to the organisation is when the group runs successfully. This is a business project and it needs to be managed like a mini business i.e. with focus and clarity of purpose and expected outcomes.

Are there any drivers for not setting up a representative forum right now?

You don’t have anyone with the right skills/experience/interest to organise and manage it right now – better to not do it at all than set up something you can already predict will not be successful.
There’s one ongoing issue or conflict in the business that will derail what you are trying to achieve – better to seek to address that issue first and then come back to setting up a forum when discussions will be more positive and balanced than they would be right now.
Your organisation won’t benefit from the extra communication layer due to small employee numbers or other things you have set up around communication and consultation – if things work well right now, don’t change them ‘just because’.

But for those who do have a representative forum or who are looking to reorganise an existing forum….

3 top tips when establishing or revamping an employee forum

Keep the group to a manageable size. Any group larger than 12 is going to be difficult to manage and organise. Better to have a smaller group (8-10 is often a good number) of effective reps than lots of ineffective reps due to difficulties in organising and managing them
Think about the ‘tone’. We come across reps who have been ‘babied’ and reps who have been treated like the ‘opposition’. A great tone is one which is collaborative, building relationships, having adult honest discussions.
Commercial understanding can be the difference between effective and ineffective. Whilst its not in the job spec, learning about the commercials within an organisation (finances, business realities and practicalities) is crucial if the group is to be effective. How can you slowly, month by month, build up their knowledge of how the organisation is run and financed to ensure that any suggestions/agenda items submitted are realistic and viable.

Whether it’s TUPE, redundancy, or just a desire to put something in place to ramp up communication, increase access to the senior team, address transparency concerns, our experience at Jaluch working with representative groups has been built across 25 years. You will be in safe hands.

Take a look at our employee representative training options, get in touch to talk things through, or expand your knowledge by having a read through some of our other employee representative articles (links below).

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Hampshire based Jaluch is a team of HR experts and training specialists who are committed to providing pragmatic, commercial solutions for organisations of all shapes and sizes. We’d love to hear from you, so call us on 01425 479888 or send us a message to find out how we can help.

Disclaimer: The information contained within this article is for general guidance only and represents our understanding of employment and associated law and employee relations issues as at the date of publication. Jaluch Limited, or any of its directors or employees, cannot be held responsible for any action or inaction taken in reliance upon the contents. Specific advice should be sought on all individual matters.

AUTHOR DETAILS

Helen Jamieson

Jaluch MD