In the National Labor Relations Act, “…once a collective-bargaining representative has been designated or selected by its employees, it is illegal for an employer to bargain with individual employees, with a group of employees, or with another employee representative.” Without union presence, you negotiate with your employer everyday (You are your own voice).  The self negotiations may include to alter a schedule for a doctors appointment or to leave early or come in late for child care.  In the union environment, there is no such thing as favors or altering schedules.  Not only is it illegal in the NLRA, but it is also common sense and union rules.

What happens when management grants just one employee a favor and then the second employee asks for the same thing and management says declines that second employee? Not everyone can be granted the same favor and the business cannot operate as such.  That employee who was denied the “favor” will file a grievance.  During the grievance, management will make a decision that they cannot possibly give the same favor to everyone in the unit, so the grievance is denied and the original employee loses their right to the favor.  And this is acceptable to the union.  Remember, what is good for one is good for all in the union contract. 

Any union presence decreases job flexibility for the employees and hence the company. Again, to be clear, a union official will not be standing outside the door of your employment exclaiming it is a violation of the NLRA or the contract. Rather, the issue is when another employees request the same favor. Union presence decreases the amount of flexibility a management team can have for their own employees. Just another obstacle and more interference by the union in a work place.

“In the new workplace, with its emphasis on flexibility, teams and a strong customer orientation, this crucial set of emotional competencies is becoming increasingly essential for excellence in every job in every part of the world.”Daniel Goleman

Top 10 Reasons Employee Engagement Survey on a one to one basis work

How confident are you that your employees are happy and are going to stay with your company for the long-term? One of the best ways to find out is by conducting an employee satisfaction survey on a regular basis. These surveys can provide a wealth of insights and information about your employees’ perspectives that you might not be otherwise able to identify, even in face-to-face meetings.

Here are the top ten reasons to conduct an employee satisfaction survey:

#1: Gives Employees a Voice
Giving employees a chance to voice their opinions and provide feedback through an online employee satisfaction survey can help you glean some information you might not otherwise be able to get during a performance review or meeting.

#2: Opens Up Lines of Communication
Encouraging employees to participate in the process of improving their workplace environment opens up lines of communication. This can make them feel more empowered, regardless of their position with the company.

#3: Creates a Non-Threatening Work Environment
When you encourage employees to speak up and share their likes and dislikes about their positions, the office space, and anything else affecting their roles with the company, you create a non-threatening work environment. This helps employees feel more positive about their standing within the organization.

#4: Maintains Privacy
Having a third party employee satisfaction survey intake process can make it easier for employees to voice their concerns while remaining anonymous. If you are looking for some data and trends about the state of your organization, employees sit with us and speak openly feeling protected that their answers are confidential.

#5: Opportunity to Learn About Working Conditions from an Insider
Even though management within your organization may be working hard to create ideal working conditions for your employees, you won’t really know whether your efforts are working until you get unbiased feedback from your workers.

#6: Provides Insights for Restructuring Benefits Programs
Learning what types of benefits employees appreciate — and the types of benefits they would like to have — can help you restructure your employee compensation package to retain existing employees and attract more long-term employees.

#7: Can Increase Employee Loyalty
Employee retention is an important part of running a successful organization. You may be able to increase employee loyalty by engaging employees in meetings where they can contribute to the organization through the employee satisfaction survey.

#8: Identify Motivational Factors
Your employees may be driven by a number of different factors such as compensation and benefits, recognition, and/or career advancement opportunities. You can identify what the primary drivers are within your organization.

#9: Review a Detailed Analysis
Conducting employee satisfaction surveys means we can extrapolate certain data points and recognize trends or patterns. This can give you a better idea of your employees’ perspectives as a whole as well as use the ensuing in-depth reports and data for future employee training programs as well as hone in on specifics to improve internal operations.

#10: Increase Trust within the Organization
Letting employees know that you have a policy of conducting employee satisfaction surveys regularly can increase trust and confidence with management. Employees will appreciate that management is open to listening to their concerns and may be eager to share more valuable feedback regularly.

The level of confidentiality with our company engaging the employees will encourage the employees to be more open and honest in their responses. Even the suspicion that their responses to a survey question might be connected back to them personally can dramatically affect the data retrieved from the survey in a number of negative ways. If employees are overly concerned with how managers will react to their feelings and observations about the company, this can inhibit their volunteering valuable and helpful insights — information that could foster needed changes. This would be counterproductive, and ultimately make the employee engagement survey considerably less valuable. The last thing you need is an employee engagement survey that is nothing but overly positive comments or thinly veiled self-congratulatory statements on past achievements

By having a Laboradvisors perform the employee engagement survey, you can take full advantage of their many years of experience gained by conducting professionally construed surveys. We also utilize our skills to tailor a survey to your company’s specific goals and requirements. This will allow you to target the survey to suit your needs to ensure you get the desired information. Moreover, preparing an employee engagement survey in house requires time and that could otherwise be deployed towards more direct profit generating activities.

In summary, utilizing Laboradvisors and with our experience, we have more employee participation, we find out many more details that are unbiased and our report time with results and recommendations is much faster.

Enacted in 1935, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) gives employees the right to engage to be unionized or not be unionized. When the law was enacted, Congress empowered an independent agency called the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce the law.  One of the cornerstones of the Act are what are referred to as employees’ Section 7 Rights.
These rights apply to nearly every employee working for an employer in the private-sector (except for airlines and railroads) that has two or more employees and engages in interstate commerce. More importantly, Section 7 Rights apply to both unionized and union-free employees. In other words, even union-free employees have rights under the law.

What Section 7 Rights of the NLRA means for employees is fairly simple:

• Employees have the right to self organization without a union;
• Employees have the right to form their own labor organization (union, association, or counsel), without a third-party union;
• Employees have the right to bargain with their employer through representatives of their own choosing (even without a third-party union);
• Employees have the right to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection without a third-party union.
• Employees have a right not to join the union.

Download your copy of the Basic Guide to the NLRA here: https://www.nlrb.gov/sites/default/files/attachments/basic-page/node-3024/basicguide.pdf

As leaders and experts in the field, the CSAV360 team conducts training of the NLRA for manaegment and all employees so that their rights are known. In many instances, knowledge of these rights are essential to all employees.

April 2019: More labor union conflicts in the hospitality and fast food industry. More activity in states not well known for union organizing. For example, petitions in North Dakota and Montana. Florida still being targeted heavily and campaigns in Domino’s and Burgerville are shaking the fast food industry. We predicted this 3 years ago by following the social media, advertising and the ULP filing from the unions. 

Healthcare is a steady pattern and the amount of SALT related activities in different states is becoming more pronounced. Of course we area tracking with our inside tactics. Wins without consultants are scarce if any. Wins with consultants depends who the consultants are. 

As leaders in labor relations our team is committed to winning for the client. In contrast to other labor consultants, we can produce the names and references of clients where we have won. The cost of education and employee engagement is minimal compared to a third party or union conflict.

“While competition worries about us, we only worry about our clients. Sometimes being the leader in the field brings adversity which we embrace and keep moving forward.”
Keith Peraino

Employees’ should be regularly surveyed about their managers with specific questions. The questions fall into three general categories: nurturing growth in others, operating excellence, and emotional intelligence, all intended to discern the strength of a manager.

Here are some questions in which employees rate their leaders:

• “I would recommend my manager to others”: If the employee states “no”, it means as a leader you must win employees’ heads and hearts.
• “My manager assigns stretch opportunities to help me develop my career” : This requires you to care about your employees’ careers as much as you care about your own. Find out what they aspire to (what they actually want, not just what they’re supposed to want), discuss what realistically has to happen to get them there, and then leverage your network to help make things happen for them.
• “My manager communicates clear goals”:  These goals should meet the three C’s rule: common, compelling, and cooperative.
• “My manager regularly gives me actionable feedback”:  Ensure the feedback is specific and sincere (if it comes from the heart, it sticks in the mind). Be calibrating, letting them know that their feedback is “not unusual at this point” or that it means “you’re off track at this point.” Don’t overstate or understate the impact of the outcome you are praising or pushing on. The truth is nothing is more appreciated by employees than leaders who do this well.  
• “My manager provides the autonomy I need to do my job (doesn’t micromanage)”:  Manage by objective, give decision space and room for the empowered to operate without interference and oversight.
• “My manager consistently shows consideration for me as a person”:  People need to know you care before they care about what you know.
• “My manager keeps the team focused on priorities, even when it’s difficult”:  The easy thing is to do everything. Nothing burns out an organization faster than a leader treating everything as a priority and choices as something left for someone else. 
• “My manager makes tough decisions effectively”:  Indecision is paralyzing to an organization. It creates doubt, uncertainty, lack of focus, and even resentment. Multiple options can linger, sapping an organization’s energy and killing a sense of completion. Timelines stretch while costs skyrocket.  
• “My manager shares relevant information from his or her boss(es)”:  Information should flow downhill.. Managers who withhold information to boost their own sense of control and power will soon be met with an organization that feels out of control and powerless.
• “My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about my career development in the past six months”:  Think of how you’d feel if you knew you were working for someone who viewed ”self” as your career champion.
• “My manager has the expertise required to effectively manage me”:  Stay worthy of leadership by investing in your own continued learning and personal growth that feeds your specific area of expertise required.
• “The actions of my manager show he or she values my perspective (even if different from his or hers)”:  Everyone wants to know they are heard, to feel valued and valuable. There are no exceptions.
• “My manager effectively collaborates across boundaries”:  Utilize all resources.

One of the best legacies you can leave with your team is to be “that leader.” That leader who cared enough their employees to talk straight and with humility to address specific behaviors that are getting in their way.