Analyzing Employee Benefits Issues

Employee Benefits Issues Though most people usually have satisfactory relationships with their employers, a significant percentage of employees often have some sort of complaint or grievance against their employers. A grievance is defined as a feeling of discontent, while a complaint, though used interchangeably with a grievance, refers to a less deep-rooted grievance. When an employee has a grievance, the normal procedure is to seek some sort of remediation of the issue or issues from the management about the problem he or she has.

However, the reasons of reported grievances can be either real or fabicated. For example, a real grievance may be caused by a wage cut or an increase in working hours, while a false or imaginary grievance may appear when an employer decides to closely monitor his staff when he or she feels that that particular employee is not performing optimally.

If the employer does not communicate his intention effectively with this particular exercise, the employee under scrutiny might infer that the employer is overbearing or that he or she is being unfairly targeted. Such a grievance would not be real since it is based on imaginary assumptions and perceptions (Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices, 2013). Reasons for Employee Grievances A grievance must always be on issues that are work-related or issues that are covered under the employer-employee relationship.

Any other issue non-employment issue cannot be considered as genuine grievance (Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices, 2013). The majority of grievances and complaints are usually related to salaries and benefits issues. Grievances related to pay and benefits might include: the need for more pay; the eligibility requirements for pay increases; harmonization of pay within an organization or between organizations operating in the same industry; and the inclusion or exclusion of certain pay benefits. Another common workplace grievance is the issue of workloads.

There are many cases of people working for long hours without break or any extra pay. In other places, companies have been known to fire employees and to redistribute the work previously done by those employees to other employees. Such cases often lead to dissatisfied employees or frustrated with the work they are doing. The work environment is another common source of grievance.

Despite government legislations and institutional regulations, some places of work still have environments that are unclean, unsafe, and not conducive for the kind of work being done there. Lastly, an employee can have a complaint against unfair labor practices by either his or her employer or his union. An unfair labor practice could include discrimination based on race or sex or use of one's power to obtain cooperation unfairly (usually coercively) (Study.com, 2003-2016).

Implementation of Collective Bargaining and Arbitration According to West's Encyclopedia of American Law (2005), collective bargaining is the act of negotiations between an employer and a workers union in order to settle an employment related issue between the two parties. The main objective of entering into collective bargaining negotiations is to reach a CBA (collective bargaining agreement). A CBA normally encompasses the pay, benefits, hours and other employment related issues agreed upon by the two parties.

Since a CBA is not usually expected to capture all employment issues between the parties involved, it is normally assumed that already existing laws; past practices; oral agreements and other customs are components of the CBA. Collective bargaining allows employers and employees to agree on a wide variety of issues, some of which might have been the causes of grievances.

However, existence of certain state and federal laws limit the topics which can be agreed upon in a CBA; an employer and a workers union cannot agree upon a CBA that infringes on other state or federal laws. For instance, they cannot agree to not hire people from a certain race. A CBA can also not be used to waive an obligation or a right that a worker would otherwise enjoy without the existence of such an agreement. Moreover, a CBA is not fully voluntary, quite often.

At times either of the parties might utilize other approaches such as strikes, picketing and/or lockouts to force a party to come to the negotiations table. Finally, the collective bargaining agreement is almost exclusively regulated by the U.S. government labor law, which sets out is the matters to be discussed, the timing and the repercussions of using non-recommended bargaining tactics (West's Encyclopedia of American Law, 2005). The federal law on collective bargaining sets out several requirements.

One is that an employer does not have the power to refuse bargaining over certain topics with a workers' union, provided that the employment-related issue has a majority support among the workers. Such topics are referred to as mandatory subjects. The two parties must also negotiate in good faith until such a time that they reach a deadlock. When a CBA is being implemented, an employer cannot unilaterally change a part of the CBA that was a mandatory subject in the CBA.

However, if both parties have reached an agreement, the employer is allowed to implement changes if such changes have been offered beforehand to the worker's representative for consideration (West's Encyclopedia of American Law, 2005). The Role of the Risk Manager The work of risk managers is to offer advice to their companies regarding ways of handling potential risks that threaten the revenues or existence of an organization. Simply put, they identify threats, evaluate them, draft plans to avoid them, or to reduce their impact.

Risk managers not only handle risks posed to the company, but also risks posed to a company's workers, its clients, assets, and other interests identified by the company's stakeholders. Risk managers might work in different sectors of the organization or specialize in handling certain types of risks (Halder, 2014).

According to Halder (2014), the specific duties and responsibilities, that a risk manager is supposed to handle is determined by: the industry in which he or she is working; the degree of specialization of that particular position; and the organizational level in which he or she is working.

However, general tasks handled by risk managers include: risk identification; planning / drafting a risk management procedure; risk evaluation (assessing and estimating the costs, environmental, legal and other requirements necessary to reduce or avoid a threat); assessing a company's prior handling of risks; quantifying the level of risk a company is prepared to accept; risk reporting to relevant stakeholders; purchasing insurances; implementing occupational health and safety measures; making continuity plans in case a risk is unavoidable; checking compliance with standards and legislations; and building risk awareness in an organization.

Employee Health Interventions There are different types of workplace health programs. The common factor between them is their objective; i.e. to improve and sustain workers health by dealing with an individual risk factor; alcoholism; fitness level; or weight issues. There are several ways types of health interventions, namely; health risk evaluations; the establishment of fitness centers; provision of self-help resources; organizing wellness seminars; and provision of counseling services.

Such health interventions are usually cost-effective ways to help boost employee health and morale, while limiting the cost of health care benefits that have to be covered by a business. By improving its workers health, an organization is also in turn reducing the money lost due to low productivity or absenteeism. Employees engaged in wellness activity at the workplace also have higher job satisfaction levels which will normally leads to higher productivity (Harris & Strauss, 2016). Normally, medical costs for workers are normally higher for workers facing multiple health risks.