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Managing Human Element at Work

Notes 7.4.5 Quality of Working Life Programmes

Quality of Work Life (QWL) programmes aim at combating worker alienation, integrating
workers and encouraging worker involvement in the enterprise. They also aim at increasing
worker motivation and instilling a sense of responsibility as well as at changing work
organization so as to reduce costs and increase flexibility. The model QWL agreement was
the one entered into between General Motors and the United Auto Workers’ Union in 1973,
and many other enterprises followed suit. “Empirical studies which have sought to determine
the effectiveness of the quality of working life programmes have found positive effects of
such programmes on reducing absenteeism, grievances, quits, and on increasing job
satisfaction, and health and safety practices.” Quality of work-life programmes and autonomous
work groups, which emerged in the USA during the 1970s and 1980s, initially concentrated
on improving the workplace environment and motivating workers, and subsequently on
enhancing productivity and quality. It has been indicate that “unless worker participation
programmes address the basic economic needs of employers as well as enhancing the
economic security and job satisfaction of the employees, they are destined to occupy
comparatively marginal status.”
7.4.6 Training

The importance of human resources development in dispute prevention and settlement is
often overlooked. Many workplace problems and issues are the result of unsatisfactory
supervisory management and the lack of awareness on the part of employees about the
workings of the enterprise. Here again, Japanese practices in the larger enterprises are
instructive, though this is not to suggest that well managed enterprises elsewhere do not
act on the basis that front line supervisors are often a key to workplace industrial relations.
Well managed enterprises see supervisors as critical to labour relations because it is they
who interact most often with employees, are the first to identify problems, and it is their
attitudes towards employees which condition the latter’s views about the management.
Supervisory development is therefore an important aspect of developing sound labour
relations at the enterprise level.

Equally important in Japan is the investment in training and educating of employees. Career
development opportunities afforded to employees usually commence with orientation and
induction programmes for new recruits. Skills development through on-the-job and off-the-
job training (with subsidies for fees payable to external institutions), coupled with extensive
job rotation, produce multi-skilled employees who are acquainted with how the company as
a whole functions. Three important consequences flow from this. First, team work becomes
the norm, and employees are able to support each other (because of their skills profile and
job experience through rotation). Second, it is easier to find career development opportunities
within the firm. Consequently employees tend to look to the internal labour market rather
than to the external labour market for their advancement. Third, employees are more amenable
than otherwise to look for long term gains rather than short term ones. The net result is that
employees are more likely to identify with the goals of the company, thus reducing the areas
of potential conflict. When these practices are coupled with collective bargaining and consultation
procedures, the result is a greater potential for cooperation, joint activity and mutual
understanding. In fact, without human resources development it is doubtful whether establishing
communication channels would be likely to have the desired result.

7.5 Some Current Industrial Relations Issues

Employers are now compelled to view industrial relations and human resource management
from a strategic perspective; in other words, not only from the traditional viewpoint of
negotiating terms and conditions of employment and performing a personnel and welfare

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