Analysis of the organisation and its context as the basis for the development of rewards and the employment relationship.

The main project is a group report. At one level this report will detail the creation of a new reward system for a simulated organisation, but it’s not just about what you decided to do, it’s about how and why you decided. We are interested in how you negotiated the complexities and conflicts of rewards and the employment relationship. You will present this as a long group report, which draws upon the activities and feedback from the workshops.

There will also be a smaller, individual reflective report to consider what you have learned from your engagement with the module.

As a group of either union or management negotiators, students must submit a report of around 10,000 words that includes their recommendations for the development of employee rewards and employment relations in this organisation.  Students must also include explicit reflection upon the process through which these decisions were reached.  Some of these reflections will represent the consensus views of the group as a whole, whilst others will reflect the views of the ‘management’ and ‘union’ arms of the group as appropriate.  As a summary, students must include:

• Analysis of the organisation and its context as the basis for the development of rewards and the employment relationship.
• Identification of the respective interests and objectives of management and union.  Identification of the implications of such for conflict and/or cooperation.
• Consideration of how these interests/objectives and the organisational context find expression in specific reward practices and strategies.  Students are required to develop a coherent reward strategy, comprising strategic reward objectives along with consistent strategic reward policies concerning alignment, competitiveness, and contributions (Milkovich and Newman, 2008).
• Discussion of the bargaining processes that were utilised in order for agreement to be achieved.
• Analysis of each of these aspects of reward development both from a technical viewpoint and from the interest-based perspective of the respective employment relations actors.

The wide-ranging nature of the activities provides sufficient scope for students’ diverse learning styles to be accommodated.