CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1. Background of the Study

The most crucial asset of any organisation is the employee.  This is because no organization can survive without a committed dedicated and competent employee. The effectiveness or otherwise of an organisation rests on the performance, commitment, and satisfaction of its employees. Since every organisation desires to survive and succeed, there is need to ensure a strong and positive relationship between the employees and the organisation, with a view to influencing and persuading them towards fulfilling the tasks and goals of the organisation (Manzoor, 2012).

To achieve this, some organisations have adopted some strategies towards increasing the satisfaction and relationship with the employees.  This finds expression in the concept of employee relations and its influence on organisational effectiveness.

Employee relations is concerned with maintaining employer-employee relationship that contributes to satisfactory productivity, motivation and morale of employees.  It is essentially concerned with preventing and resolving problems arising out of or affecting work situations.

It thus presents management with veritable tools on how to correct poor performance in view of its ability to enhance effective communication between management and employees and among employees.  This implies that for an organisation to perform effectively, employees must be comfortable with the organisation and with themselves. There must be good rapport and cordial relationship as employees work in close coordination toward a common goal and objective.

Management must promote healthy employee’s relations at workplace to extract the best from the employees.  People feel responsible and motivated to work with satisfaction if they feel secured and valued.  There must be cooperation, teamwork, effective communication, needs fulfillment of management desires to get the best out of employment.

Organisational effectiveness could involve the process of getting desired outcome within defined resources (Manzoor, 2012). According to Mohammad (2011), organisational effectiveness is the notion of how effectual an organisation is accomplishing the result its aims to generate. Organisational effectiveness plays a significant role in accelerating organisational development (Bulent, 2009). As Matthew, Grawhich and Barber (2009) puts it, organisational effectiveness is the net satisfaction of all constituents in the process of gathering and transforming inputs into outputs in an efficient way. In this case, organisation utilizes its resources including the employees to fulfill its objectives without depleting them and placing undue pressure on the employees and the society (Mary, 1996).

Research says reward has great influence on employee, satisfaction and this directly influences their performance (Kalimullah, 2010).  Management uses rewards as management tool, with a view to enhancing employee performance and behaviour subsequently improves organisational effectiveness. Thus, businesses use pay, promotion, bonuses and other types of financial rewards to motivate and encourage high level of performances among employees (Reena, 2009). However, Adeyinka (2007) suggest that to use salaries as a motivator effectively, managers need to consider salary structures including importance organisation attaches to the job, payment according to performance, personal allowances, fringe benefits and pension.

Nevertheless, employees need more than financial rewards. They need recognition, association, satisfaction, involvement in the decision-making process, empowerment, and trust, inspiration, communication and job safety. This explains why employee relations is necessary in organisation such as Industrial and General Insurance (IGI), Eket, seeking to improve its organisational effectiveness.

1.2    Statement of the Problem

Although some organisations claim to have been engaging in public relations practice yet, one aspect of public relations that tends to lack in most organisations is employee relations. This is evident in the spate of industrial disputes in some companies. However, it is not yet known whether Industrial and General Insurance (IGI), Eket, has given priority to employee relations in its management.  The question now is; to what extent has Industrial and General Insurance (IGI), Eket, applied employee relations strategies to achieve organisational effectiveness?

1.3    Objectives of the Study

          The study has the following objectives:

To determine whether employee relations has been accorded priority in Industrial and General Insurance (IGI), Eket.

To find out employee relations strategies in Industrial and General Insurance (IGI), Eket.

To determine the effect of employee relations on employee job performance in IGI, Eket.

To examine the extent to which employee relations strategies have been applied in Industrial and General Insurance (IGI), Eket.

To ascertainthe effect of employee relations strategies in organisational effectiveness in Industrial and General Insurance (IGI), Eket.