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Partnership at work: a survey

Summary

Our survey of 50 organisations' approaches to partnership at work finds that partnership is widespread, and considered successful in terms of obtaining both increased employee commitment and bottom-line improvements. Key findings include:

  • most (46 out of 50) organisations adopt a variety of approaches to employee relations; 47 sometimes or always use a traditional approach; 44 sometimes or always use partnership; 27 sometimes or always adopt power sharing; and 19 use an adversarial stance from time to time;

  • the 40 unionised and 10 non-union organisations surveyed adopt broadly similar approaches to employee relations, although a higher proportion of unionised than non-union organisations adopts power sharing, defined as involving employees in both day-to-day and strategic decision-making;

  • 33% of survey respondents have radically changed their approach to employee relations, and 62% have changed it to some extent;

  • most unionised organisations have employee representation bodies, which they often use as a means of effecting a partnership approach.