Introduction
In a fast growing and incessantly transforming hospitality industry, the role of human resource management cannot be overstated. Fundamentally, HRM functions to increase the performance of the organizations from a variety of organizational spheres such human relations. Human resource management, in its basic form, manages people with an aim of not only making the business competitive but also successful. Effective management of people with a view to ameliorating the chances of organizational success requires human resources managers to keep abreast with all the issues that affect the employees within and without the organization. An increasingly large body of research continue to emphasize that organizational success depends on the interpersonal relationship among the workers. Interpersonal relationship is the core of employee relations. In particular, employee relations, sometimes known as industrial relations, is a multidisciplinary sector that deals with all the aspects of employee relationship. Employee relations, as a multidisciplinary filed, is primarily concerned with social justice achieved by fair and just dispensation of employment and human resource management practices. Employee relations covers such issues that both concern the human resource managers and the workers at the workplace. Some of the issues include management strategies, workplace reforms, new technology and skill development, workplace bargaining, and union-management co-operation among others. Human resource management and employee relations strike a balance and interrelate to perform such tasks as negotiation of employee contracts and conditions, dispute resolution, work design, ensuring employee wellbeing, performance management and reward systems, and training and development. The possibility of a balance implies the existence of a unique interrelationship between the two concepts. Ideally, HRM plays a major role in employee relations and has great impacts on the same. Given the importance of the interrelationship between these two concepts in organizational performance, a great body of research continue to delve into the impacts of HRM on employee relations. It is on such backdrop that this study will be set.
Research Focus
Rationale and purpose of the Study
Arguably, failure or success of an organization is directly proportional to how best an organization manages the relations among its staff. A cordial relationship among the employees as well as between the employees and the management team is necessary for an undisputed prosperity in the organization. The existing body of research focusing on this scope of study shows numerous inadequacies and gaps in explaining the relationship between human resource management and employee relations, as well as the impacts of the former on the latter. On that note, they are a weak point of reference for future research. However, the few that attempt to venture into this scope of study only focus on one aspect of employee relations, for example, employee turnover or employee wellbeing. There is need for a study that lucidly elucidates the effects of human resource management on employee relations as a concept; that is, encompasses all the major spheres of employee relations (conflict resolution, employee wellbeing, job satisfaction, and employee turnover). The purpose of this study, therefore, will be to examine the effects of human resource management on employee relations as a concept. In that manner, it will provide a strong foundation and a variety of information from which future research will refer as a means of shaping their research activities. This study will be conducted around the primary research question: How does human resource management affect employee relations in the hospitality industry? However, as a means of building on the primary research question, the following research questions will be explored:
i. What are the functions of human resource management in an organization?
ii. What is the relationship between human resource management and employee relations