Language

Don’t ‘Phub’ Your Way into Grievances

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Many of you may not have heard the term “phubbing” or “being phubbed,” but you probably have done it to someone else, or experienced it first-hand.

In today’s workplace, we need new words to explain our interaction with technology. Phubbing is the combination of being snubbed by someone who is using their smartphone to ignore you. And it’s no surprise this social behaviour is affecting our workplace relationships.

Why should a HR professional who works in a unionized environment care about this concept of phubbing? Well, the main reason is it erodes trust, and whenever you erode trust in a unionized environment, you get more grievances.

More grievances make it harder to maintain positive labour relations in the workplace. Phubbing can very easily damage trust and employee engagement, and now research from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business is shining a light on this issue.

How do supervisors destroy trust, by violating the psychological conditions that breed trust and lead to employee engagement? Here are the results of the research:

  • 76 per cent of those surveyed showed a lack of trust in a supervisor who phubbed them
  • 75 per cent showed decreases in psychological meaningfulness, psychological availability, and psychological safety with phubbing

All of this will reduce employee engagement. HR needs to be aware of phubbing and how it affects its organizational cultural. HR must take the lead role in organizations by understanding the vital importance of face-to-face relationships in the workplace and put measures and practices in place to decrease opportunities to phub and to increase opportunities to have meaningful conversations.

Read more at about phubbing here.

Discussion questions:

  • What are five things HR can do to decrease the incidents of phubbing?
  • What are five things HR can do to formally increase the incidents of meaningful conversations between supervisors and employees?

Words, words, words….

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Dictionary page - definition of language
Source: Benoit Daoust/Shutterstock

Picture a common scene taking place in a unionized workplace in Canada.  In this scene, we see the organization’s HR Practitioner trying to figure out what, exactly, certain phrases within a Collective Agreement mean.  When the HR Practitioner asks the union representative for clarification of the item, she receives one perspective.  When she asks a supervisor for clarification on the same item, she receives a completely different response.

Then, we see the HR Practitioner with a bit of a headache trying to make sense of it all as the following questions appear in front of her:

  • How can one simple sentence mean two totally different things?
  • Why don’t Collective Agreements use clear and unequivocal language that makes sense to everyone who is bound by its meaning?
  • Who writes these agreements anyway?

This is the good, the bad, and the ugly reality of Collective Agreement language and administration.  Living with the management of a Collective Agreement means that the language can and will be interpreted in two (or more) completely different ways, depending on the situational point of view.

We see this in a recent decision by a Federal tribunal.  In this case, the tribunal upheld a grievance for an employee in one fact-based situation but dismissed a similar grievance for a second employee in a different fact-based situation.  Both employees had filed grievances regarding the same language provisions within their respective Collective Agreement.  Both employees were penalized for coming in late to work due to circumstances, allegedly, outside of their control.

Click here to Read the Article.

A few things come to mind as a result of this case.

First, from the Tribunal’s perspective, the way language was interpreted and applied brought the element of reasonableness into consideration, for both the employer and the employee in each circumstance.

Second, the ability of the employee to control their individual environments and make their own decisions was also a significant consideration in each case.

Most importantly, we must consider the fact that the language in most Collective Agreements is written through a process of negotiation, where every word comes at a price.  The words themselves may be used as a bargaining chip to achieve something else during the collective bargaining process.  All too often, the language that gets written into a Collective Agreement is produced in the middle of the night by union and employer representatives who are both exhausted and focused on reaching a settlement.  Wordsmithing to get certain phrases just right is not something that the parties want to do when the deal is close to being done.

As a result, the implementation  and management of the Collective Agreement takes on interesting twists as it gets brought to life by all of the parties involved.

When the curtain falls on this workplace drama, we see the HR practitioner taking the time to consider multiple elements as she proceeds with the task of interpreting the Collective Agreement, in a fair and reasonable manner.

End scene.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Which employee grievance do you agree with the most? Why?
  2. As an HR practitioner, what will you do to ensure a consistent approach to the application of language in a Collective Agreement that is fair to everyone?
  3. How would you re-write the Collective Agreement language used in the article so that it would have less chance for misinterpretation from an employer perspective?

Learning the Rules and Language of Labour Relations

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The world of Labour Relations (LR) can often be an intimidating place for Human Resources (HR) Professionals.  The intimidation stems from many HR Professionals not yet being exposed to the process nor the language of LR.

The Government of New Brunswick has provided a great overview of what they call Industrial Relations (IR). You will see, in Canada, IR and LR are used synonymously to represent a unionized workplace.

It takes a novice HR Professional through the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about LR such as:

  • Certification process
  • Collective agreements
  • Grievances and arbitration
  • The role of the provincial labour boards

Click here to read the full resource.

Of course this is a brief review, but it is a great starting point.

Once an HR Professional has learned the basics of the LR process they can turn their attention to the Language of LR.  Luckily the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) has developed another excellent resource.

Click here to read the CUPE Glossary of LR terms. 

All HR Professionals should familiarize themselves with the basic process and the terms of LR.  This is a fantastic starting point in understanding the complex world of LR.

Discussion Questions

  1. Why would knowing LR terms be beneficial to a new HR Professional?
  2. If you had to give a 5 minute presentation on the LR terms where would you start?
  3. What terms would you prioritize?