Task 1 – Briefing paper to the Board of Directors
Case Study
You are the newly appointed people practice professional at REBU, an organisation operating globally within the gig economy. REBU offer users the facility to arrange and schedule transport using their mobile application software. Currently the organisation offers transportation and food delivery services across the globe.
Its main offices are based in Austin, however it has offices in 75 locations across the world with most being in the USA. Over the last 12 months, REBU has seen its profits rise by 54%, mainly in the food delivery sector.
One of the emerging trends is sustainability and moving to more electric transport with an objective to have zero-emissions within the next 10 years.
REBU have been successful, particularly in the last 12 months. However retention of staff is a problem, with turnover increasing by 5% every quarter.
During exit interviews, some of the key reasons stated for leaving are working conditions and wages. To achieve its aims and objectives REBU need to review the employment relationship to create better working lives which would result in less turnover and more successful organisational performance.
Preparation for Tasks:
· At the start of the assignment, you are encouraged to plan your assessment work with your assessor and, where appropriate, agree milestones so they can help you monitor your progress.
· Refer to the indicative content in the unit guide and support your evidence.
· Pay attention to how your evidence is presented. Remember, you are working in the people development team for this task.
· Ensure that the evidence generated for this assessment remains your own work.
You will also benefit from:
· Acting on formative feedback from your assessor.
· Reflecting on your own experiences of learning opportunities, training and continuing professional development.
· Taking advantage of the CIPD factsheets, reports and podcasts, and any other online material on these topics.
Task 1 – Briefing paper to the Board of Directors
You have been asked by the Board of Directors to produce a briefing paper which outlines how REBU can improve employee engagement.
The briefing paper comprises five separate sections, as outlined in the next slide.
introduction:
Your briefing paper must include a review of emerging developments to approaches to employee voice and engagement, and it must provide first three recommendations on how REBU can improve approaches to employee voice and engagement based on your review.
The recommendations must include clear and actionable justifications. You also need to provide a critical evaluation of the entire relationship between employee voice and organisational performance, focusing on high-performance work practices.
Next, you will provide an assessment of service suggestion schemes and team meetings as approaches that can be used to drive employee engagement. You will follow these by a discussion of the differences between employee involvement and employee participation and how this can be used to build effective employment relationships within REBU.
Lastly, you will have to provide a conclusion explaining the concept and design of better working lives so that REBU can promote good physical and mental health work practices.
Task 1, the briefing paper.
This is a reminder of the five sections the task covers. So your briefing paper must include a review of emerging developments to approaches to employee voice and engagement. It must include: three recommendations and how REBU can improve approaches to employee voice and engagement based on your review and three recommendations that must include clear and actionable justifications. A critical review of the interrelationship between employee voice and organisational performance, focusing on high-performance work practices.
An assessment of service suggestion schemes and team meetings as approaches that can be used to drive employee engagement, a discussion of the differences between employee involvement and employee participation, and how these can be used to build effective employment relationships within REBU. And lastly, a conclusion explaining the concept and design of better working lives so that REBU can promote good physical and mental health work practices.
Your briefing paper must include:
A review of emerging developments to approaches to employee voice and engagement and it must provide:
– Three recommendations on how REBU can improve approaches to employee voice and engagement based on your review. The recommendations must include clear and actionable justifications (1.1)- (230 word).
The first section of Task 1 relates to Assessment Criterion 1.1. Remember, the command verb is to review, which in this case requires you to make an assessment of the emergent developments to approaches to employee voice and engagement.
You should start this section with a definition of engagement and a definition of voice and a brief review of both concepts in the context of emerging developments, such as new ways of work, the gig economy, social media, and new technological advances. Informed by this review, you should think about three recommendations you would be making to REBU to improve employee voice and engagement. You could consider, for example, the use of social media to conduct engagement surveys, creating an induction process fit for gig workers, aligning your policies and procedures to flexible working.
Remember that REBU operates in the gig economy, so you need to take this context into consideration. I encourage you to conduct independent research on this topic as this is an evolving area of employee relations and there are plenty of new initiatives being implemented by organisations. Remember, the focus of this section is in the recommendations which need to be justified. That is, you need to explain the reason why your recommendation will improve engagement and voice and why you are recommending such initiative.
Actionable means that you need to explain how the recommendation will be implemented. Here, you could include some costs, time for implementation and the person responsible for the implementation, as well as any stakeholder that may be impacted or benefited by the intervention.
– A critical evaluation of the interrelationship between employee voice and organisational performance focusing on highperformance work practices (1.4)- (230 word).
The second section of Task 1 relates to Assessment Criteria 1.4, and asks you to critically evaluate the interrelationship between employee voice and organisational performance. Focus for a moment on the command verb, ‘to critically evaluate’. When you critically evaluate, you’re not only justifying the importance or value of something using supportive evidence, but you’re also offering your own judgement and assessment from different perspectives.
In essence, you’re making a reasoned argument for your case or position. To address this section then, you need to offer a critical evaluation that is justified with evidence and to offer your own judgement of the relationship between voice and performance, focusing on high-performance working practices.
You could address this section by explaining the relationship between employee voice and organisational performance, offering evidence to justify the importance of this relationship and offer your own personal assessment of it. The link to high-performance working practices can be made by adding a definition of high-performance working practices, explaining some examples of high performing working practices to illustrate.
High-Performance, working practices can be defined as a way of organising work in which employees participate in making decisions that have a real impact on their jobs and the broader organisation.
The aim of these practises is to achieve a high-performance culture, one in which the norms, values and human resources are combined to create an environment in which the achievement of high levels of performance is a way of life. So the role of voice here is really important to ensure that employees participate as much as possible in these types of decisions.
The CIPD has a really good source on big data, social media and high-performance working systems, which fit really well here, and also links to the emergent developments to approaches to employee voice and engagement. So I encourage you to explore these sources.
We have seen that when employees are given opportunities to participate in decision-making at work, they feel empowered and assume more ownership of their work.
– An assessment of surveys, suggestion schemes and team meetings as approaches that can be used drive employee engagement (1.3)- (230 word).
This section of Task 1 links to Assessment Criterion 1.3, and requires you to provide an assessment of three specific tools and approaches REBU can use to hear employee voice.
You need to focus only on surveys, suggestion schemes and team meetings. It is recommended that you provide the key features, two advantages and two disadvantages of each of these approaches and include a link to how they can be used to drive employee engagement. You can present this in a table with further narrative underneath or in three distinctive paragraphs to address features, advantages and disadvantages of each. Some of the advantages of surveys, for example, are that they reach the entire workforce at once, they can be anonymous. This may encourage employees to be candid with their answers.
They can be completely customised to the organisation’s needs, and can let employees feel heard, which can improve satisfaction. On the other hand, even when the surveys are done anonymously, employees are often still wary to complete them, for fear of reprisal over negative comments.
They may fear there is some hidden way their identity will be known, and this is especially a concern in small groups, where it may be easier to deduce who gave which answers.
Allowing employees to make suggestions to a suggestion scheme may increase motivation, letting employees have a sense of pride about the organisation when they’re given opportunities to participate directly in decisions or make suggestions. However, these suggestions repeatedly go unnoticed or employees rarely receive feedback about suggestions they enter into the scheme. They may become resentful and lose motivation. Regular teem meetings are a great opportunity for a two-way conversation. They can be spontaneous and easy to organise. Here, senior leaders engage with groups of staff about changes and developments in the organisation and invite them to ask questions, express concerns, share their ideas, ask for volunteers to be involved in further thinking and discussion.
Some disadvantages may be that there is a risk that remote teams will be excluded. Sometimes meetings have strict agendas and purposes that leave little to no breathing room for new ideas. Some people will feel intimidated or may not be willing to speak up in public for fear of being judged due to their ideas or the way they speak. Or they may have a fear of public speaking. So their voices are not being heard.
– A discussion of the differences between employee involvement and employee participation and how these can be used to build effective employment relationships within REBU (AC1.2)- (230 word).
To address Assessment Criteria 1.2, you will need to provide a discussion around the differences between employee involvement and employee participation and then explain how this can be used to build effective employment relationships within organisations.
For the first part of this section, the command verb is to differentiate. So the focus is on the differences between employee involvement and employee participation. Your discussion needs to include a definition of involvement and a definition of participation. In a nutshell, employee involvement is all about the opportunities given to the employees to help make decisions.
This means that workers have an impact on the decision-making process that affect their workplace. On the other hand, employee participation refers to the business activities that employees take part in together to achieve a common goal, where each employee is expected to participate and generate ideas. All members contribute to the project.
You will then identify and explain at least two differences between these concepts. You could include, for example, that employee participation and employee involvement differ if that employee participation refers to the actual business activities that employees perform, whereas involvement is about the level of input in decision making that employees have regarding which business activities they perform.
Employee participation fosters a team approach in which a group of workers completes a project using their diverse skill set to achieve a common goal. Employee involvement, however, is all about the direct connection between workers and management, to foster improved communication and greater empowerment in how decisions that affect the workplace are made.
Both approaches can establish a strong sense of commitment to a common goal and therefore improve relationships. In the second part of this section, you need to explain how involvement and participation can be used to build effective employment relationships with the organisation, linking this to REBU. Remember that REBU operates within the gig economy. So this should be your context.
To address the section you could answer the questions: how can the involvement and participation of REBU employees contribute to the relationship between them and REBU?
What are the benefits to REBU and what are the benefits to the employees? Remember that embracing employee participation and employee involvement can produce a workforce that’s motivated and employees who have greater job satisfaction because they feel as if they are an integral part of the company, helping with retention, continuity of service and productivity. A careful balance of participation and involvement can also ensure that your employees complete projects on time with greater efficiency.
– A conclusion explaining the concept and design of better working lives in order that REBU to promote good physical and mental health work practices (1.5)- (230 word).
For assessment criteria 1.5, you are required to write a conclusion to your briefing paper, explaining the concept of better working lives and how they are designed. And ultimately, what role has REBU got in promoting good physical and mental health work and practices that inevitably will improve working lives? Before we attempt this section, I invite you to revisit the case study. Remember that you were appointed to improve working conditions and wages at REBU, and to achieve its aims and objectives REBU need to review the employment relationship to create better working lives, which would result in less turnover and more successful organisational performance.
Everything you have discussed so far in the briefing paper leads to the achievement of these objectives. So how can REBU design better working lives for their employees? Let’s deconstruct this part of the activity then.
You should start by explaining the concept of better working lives. You may want to inform your explanation with a CIPD work index report. But in a nutshell, the concept of better working lives lies in the working conditions offered by the employer (REBU in this case) to the employees.
These not only link to pay, benefits, management style, promotions and learning opportunities, as we have explored throughout the unit so far and the briefing paper you just prepared. It is also about allowing employees to express their opinions, to listen to and act on their concerns and ideas, to involve them and allow them to participate in organisational decisions, mainly those which impact the work and also to the meaningful work.
Some resources
1.1 https://www.gallup.com/workplace/265823/why-engage-gig-workers.aspx
1.4 https://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/content/news/employee-voice-is-a-key-to-a-successful-business-says-nita-Clarke
HPWP https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/big-data-social-media-hpws_2015_tcm18-15586.pdf
1.3 https://www.talkfreely.com/blog/employee-voice
1.2 https://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-employee-participation-employee-involvement-13013.html
1.5 7 dimensions of job quality & CIPD view on good work -> https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/work/trends/goodwork#gref
