Workplace Cooperation

Labour Relations in Nepal are still in transition and passing through various ups and downs.  There is still a lack of mutual trust and understanding with an increase in disputes and conflicts among the social actors. Labour Relations and social dialogue at present are often perceived as unstable and frequently disturbed.

Conflicts and disputes are inevitable at the workplace. But  what can be done to manage conflicts and disputes fairly and to improve the Labour Relations? Workplace Cooperation can establish appropiate enterprise arrangements between the keyplayers at the workplace and may be one of the solutions.

Workplace Cooperation seeks to prevent disputes by taking greater responsibility of both employer/management and employees/workers sides without intervention of the government and focuses on how to improve the relations at enterprise level.

Workplace Cooperation can bring significant advantages to employer/management and employees/workers. It can especially increase productivity and improve enterprise competitiveness, can prevent conflicts and disputes from the early beginning before they escalate into major disputes and can improve working conditions and improve the working environment. Workplace cooperation can also improve the employees/workers motivation and can create employees/workers identification with the daily work and last not least can build up a good and stable relationship among the social actors.

Workplace Cooperation can be arranged in every business without great efforts. There is no prescribed model how to implement it, it’s normally an informal and flexible process, which is controlled by the actors themselves.

So the obvious question is, how to start?

The social actors should first bring the interest and willingness to improve the labour relations and social dialogue among themselves, to share information accordingly, the ability to communicate effectively and to find suitable ways for both sides how to solve problems fairly at the very early stage.

Second the employer/management and employees/worker have to identify the problems and difficulties in the workforce before they think about what can be done to solve this problems.  Improvements can be achieved  effectively by information giving, information sharing, consultation and joint decision making.

Proper information sharing and information giving can be done through developing and establishing internal workplace rules. This should be done in cooperation with employer/management and workers/employees. Additional to this a grievance procedure can avoid disputes, conflicts and misunderstandings in a very early stage before they escalate into larger conflicts.

The establishment and operation of internal workplace rules and an internal workplace grievance procedure to handle grievances at enterprise level are two elements of a dispute prevention strategy and it’s also a very good starting point for workplace cooperation.

FNCCI has developed a training package on workplace cooperation.  Employers who are interested can contact FNCCI Employers’ Council for further information. Website www.fncci.org/employers  or via email [email protected]

Roman Awick
Labour and Industrial Relations Expert
FNCCI Employers’ Council