According to United States Bureau of Labor Statistics,16.3 million wage and salary workers were represented by a union in 2016. Another study shows that nearly 30% of Canadian workers belong to unions. This includes nurses, teachers, journalists, drivers and professional athletes, as well as the more traditionally unionized occupations such as retail store clerks, manufacturing workers, miners, electricians and other construction trades workers.
In unionized environments, Labor management is a critical aspect of organizational policies and procedures. These policies and procedures are maintained in the form of a contractual agreement -Collective Bargaining Agreements between an employer and the Labor Union governing wages, hours, and working conditions for employees. These policies can be enforced against both the employer and the union for failure to comply with its terms.
The labor relations management requires extensive investigations, meetings between all parties, arbitrations, and resolutions.In large organizations, employee complaints and individual grievances are initially handled at the divisional level. In many cases, the management team doesn’t get the information until the final steps/policy violation. This time lag and lack of transparency cause several problems that impact the overall health & compliance of the organization. The issue can escalate into a bigger problem or a public scandal before management is the notified.In addition, the maintenance of Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA) results in extremely complex search due to paper-based CBA articles.
Some of the key issues are:
Traceability: Being able to trace a grievance throughout its lifecycle starting from the complaint, step1, step2, step3 etc.
Standardization: Another challenge identified is the lack of standardization during the data capturing process of complaint and grievances.
Lack of Reporting: Being able to conduct an organizational level review of all grievances, complaints, and steps in real time.
In order to solve these challenges, grievance management for individual/group/policy as well as the arbitration processes, employee complaints and disability compensation (WSIB/WCB/OSHA) require an integrated end-to-end solution with automated workflow, documentation, and reporting.
Sodales Solutions solves this problem with the “Labor Relations” HCM extensions. The Labor Relations solution helps organizations to keep track of their grievance process at all steps using a guided workflow with full visibility into all the steps with details. The management and unions can attach documents, videos, audio and search articles across any CBA. Using role-based SAP Fiori UX guidelines, the solution utilizes SAP standard tools, configurations, and SuccessFactors APIs. The solution is also integrated with our Health and Safety SuccessFactors extension for WSIB/OSHA reporting. The integration and standardization capabilities of the solution have helped several organizations transform their processes.
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Interested in learning more? I would love to set up a personalized demonstration and initial consultation for you. Please contact me at purva.r@sodalessolutions.com
