Performance Evaluation, Labor Relations, and Conflict Resolution in the Workplace

Posted on Dec 8, 2024 in Social sciences

Performance Evaluation

The Effective Evaluator

• Conceives performance evaluation as a key factor leading to:
  • Achieving goals with the commitment and contribution of their subordinates.
  • Maintaining communication with their subordinates.
  • Supporting principles of equity between people in the relationship between performance and rewards.
  • Encouraging personal and professional development of their supervisees.
  • Providing the primary motivational element of work: *Recognition and enhancement of the individual contribution*.
• Reflects knowledge of performance objectives and priorities, clearly conveying the standards evaluated. Controls the subjectivity of the evaluation, focusing on results and observable behaviors.
• Continuously evaluates performance; the formal interview (annual, semiannual, quarterly, etc.) is a reflection of the feedback maintained during the period.
• Maintains written records and a history of reliable performance evaluated during the period.
• Is organized to plan and organize the stages of evaluation and manage background files.
• Creates an environment for analyzing the performance and the interview with the appraisee (quiet, uninterrupted, and at a suitable time).
• Poses significant, clear, and verifiable objectives.
• Gives the opportunity to subordinates to self-assess their performance as a way to motivate and to engage in behavior analysis and results.
• Concludes by highlighting strengths and good performance.
• Is anxious and aims to support the assessment. Focuses on observable behaviors and results.

Labor Relations

Labor relations are an element of essential importance for any country, not only because they define the quality of interactions between employers and workers but mainly because they also define the quality of a society.

Taking the concept of labor relations to a more technical and restricted sense, it encompasses many other dimensions, such as fundamental issues for the working world like wages, types of contracts, working hours, pensions, compensation for productivity, product quality, and strength training. It also includes the behavior of labor markets, jobs, labor discipline, hygiene, health, and environmental work, the welfare measure, information sharing, as well as the behavior of the players: unions and businesses.

Last but not least, an important dimension of industrial relations is the crystallization of labor legislation, that is, a set of duties and rights protected by legislation that should maintain fairness and balance between the actors.

These latter concepts have two basic features for social legislation to have legitimacy, that is, with a membership based on the knowledge and consent of those who have to exercise it and not just as an external imposition secured with measures of strength or power.

Moreover, the existence of a type and a labor relations is not confirmed without affecting our political concepts, economic, social, and cultural actors. To name just a few features, the relations between employers and workers can be, in varying degrees, authoritarian or participatory; they may have a predominantly technocratic approach or include social dimensions.

They may be modern, that is, based on national instruments and rules, or traditional methods based on ideologies or prejudices. They may be appropriate when developing the economy and society to present some dysfunction in that development. They may show different levels of efficiency in economic and social achievements; they may also have different degrees of legitimacy according to the interests of readers.

Whatever the characterization, it is important that labor relations are primarily a social phenomenon, and as such, the actors and their behaviors are an essential element in the definition. It would be wrong to conceptualize labor relations as a result of economic or structural mechanics, although, of course, the economy and the structural dimension are constituent parts thereof.

New Labor Culture

Good faith and loyalty between the parties are indispensable principles for the appropriate development of industrial relations.

The employer must have the best performance of workers, allowing them to increase productivity, competitiveness, and add value that will benefit the company, its workforce, and society in general.

Workers must take responsibility at work to preserve the assets of the company, to respect all their fellow workers and management personnel, and maintain an attitude of dialogue with all members of the company.

Rules

Employees must:

• Prioritize respect and good treatment of workers.
• Provide a salary paid in accordance with the law.
• Provide adequate training.
• Fulfill their social security obligations.
• Ensure efficient management of resources.

Trade unions and employers should:

• Adhere to the right conduct.
• Ensure the improvement and protection of the interests and partners.
• Maintain an attitude of dialogue and respect.
• Access requirements and benefits that meet the normal requirements at the head of the family in the natural, social, and cultural order.

Objectives

• Encourage the parties to revalue human labor by giving it the dignity it deserves as a means of meeting the material, social, and cultural rights of workers and their families.
• Encourage the creation of jobs and preserve existing ones through the rational use of available resources and generation in the company of the greatest foresight and adaptation.
• Provide fair compensation levels to foster the development of productivity and competitiveness, rewarding effort, both individual and group, within the company.
• Promote training of workers and employers as an ongoing process and system throughout their working lives.
• Strengthen dialogue and consultation as appropriate methods for the relationship between parties to develop in an atmosphere of harmony.

Conflict

Conflict refers to a situation where a person is motivated to take two or more activities that are mutually exclusive.

Conflict arises when behavioral responses required to meet one motivation are not compatible with those required to satisfy others.

Conflict is the result of the exercise of power within the organizational process.

Conflict is part of the normal state of the organization.

Conflict is partly inevitable and partly avoidable, an endemic form of disease of the social body.

It also attempts to present a positive vision of the role of conflict, telling us to adapt and adjust the relationships and social groups. In functionalist terms, conflict is one of the ways by which society maintains and recovers its balance.

Alain Touraine says conflict is worth as much or more as it is conceived as an almost biological component of the human species to explain their progress.

Taxonomy of Conflicts

Distinguishes three types of conflicts:

• When a person is torn between two objectives of positive valence (attraction-attraction).
• When a person is subject to one positive and one negative valence at a time (attraction-repulsion).
• When a person vacillates between two targets of negative valence (repulsion-repulsion).

Example:

• A child who must choose between two equally desirable desserts.
• A child who must perform an unpleasant task to get a reward.
• A child who must perform a task under threat of unpleasant punishment.

Social conflict can be defined as a struggle over values or claims to status, power, and scarce resources in which the objectives of the participants are not only to obtain the desired values but also to neutralize, injure, or eliminate their rivals. It may develop between individuals or between groups, and rival coalitions can be built into the structures, roles, organizational attitudes, and stereotypes, or arise from a shortage of resources. It can be explicit or covert; whatever the reason or the form it takes, its source is a real divergence of perceived interest.

Conflicts between groups and the interests they represent are permanent features of social life, an important element in social interaction. Far from being always a negative factor that separates, they may contain groups and communities and strengthen relationships.

It is useful to distinguish between a realistic and a non-realistic conflict. The first clash arises when men have aspirations and expectations of earnings; participants see it as a means of achieving specific objectives, a means that could be abandoned if others are found to be more effective. The second is far from the first because aggressive revenue comes from seeking expression, whatever the purpose; it does not allow functional alternative media and does not have to achieve a specific result but rather to release aggressive impulses.

Conflicts

Parties involved: Individuals, groups, and organizations.

Field of conflict: Each part or the complete set of possible relevant social systems. Here we consider the alternative conditions to which the conflict could move. Impact the gain or loss of the parties involved.

Dynamics of conflict: Each party will adjust its own position to a new one that it believes is consistent with the opponent’s. Importantly, the conflict can move within an organization, that is, the parties may lead others as they engage in the conflict.

Management, control, or conflict resolution: Many conflicts are resolved by a simple peace of one party, that is, it withdraws or reverses, but conflicts can also be resolved by a third party.

The Consequences of Conflict

The solution is also known by the name of the sequel, a useful concept because the solution of the conflict is brought to a condition of full settlement.

Changes in the environment and changing conditions in the organization lead to new conflicts between the same parties or others. Power and conflict are important models of the state organization.

Conflicts need to be resolved enough to allow the necessary coordination to implement a desired course of action.

• Give
• Raids
• Commitment
• Confrontation
• Coercion

The aim of a creative solution is to solve conflicts or problems that allow both parties to achieve their goals. The basic goal is a focus on win-win rather than win-lose; however, this criterion is quite common in our competitive society.