My 5 top tips on what HR leaders can do when faced with wide spread staff strike within the health and care sector.

William

Shakespeare's Richard III

starts with the first two lines

"Now is the winter of our discontent”

If Shakespeare was here with us he may say 2023 is the year of discontent, as here in the UK we are facing widespread strike actions. Focusing on the NHS health and care sector we have witnessed an unprecedented level of strike action taken by junior doctors nurses, paramedics, and various other employees from other sectors have caused widespread issues for the service users. In this piece, I hope to share my top 5 tips on what the HR leadership team can do when faced with an employee strike actions.

Rayhan Abdullah Zakaria, Chartered MCIPD, FHEA, FRSA, AIHSM, MBAM, Doctoral researcher at Chester Business School

Understand the context behind staff strike actions

Within the NHS and the wider care sector, the top three generic strike reasons are to do with pay & benefit, staffing level, privatisation and outsourcing. These are long-standing and complex issues and the leadership team must focus on understanding these issues. Looking at it holistically and going beyond just the cause but also look at the wider narrative, the philosophy, emotion, views and values which are all intrinsically connected within the deeper fabric of these strike actions.

Listen and communicate with employees

The leaders need to understand the employee's grievances and the best way to do this is to start communicating with them by listening and understanding their concerns, feelings, views, experiences, and unique stories. There needs to be open and honest communication with employees and with the wider stakeholders. Everything at this stage must be documented with deep supporting commentary.

Focus on the underlying issues

Leaders need to understand that grievances don't manifest suddenly out of thin air. Generally speaking, there are complex underlying issues which come together to become a negative energy within the workforce. Here leaders must be able to dig deeper such as the ongoing pay, staffing and privatisation/ outsourcing issues. Here leaders may need to re-evaluate the pay, and staffing policies and look at the wider framework of operation, and experiences, from different stakeholder perspectives.

Negotiate or involve a mediator

Leaders need to see the unions in a positive light as they are the collective voice of the disenfranchised employees. There needs to be a voice of cooperation and not competition when negotiating with the unions. At the same time, this notion of cooperation needs to be embraced by all the stakeholders to move forward. Research has shown that cooperative labour management is often better than adversarial labour relationships. The bottom line is that the leaders should consider the wider stakeholders' demands and make reasonable counteroffers. If it helps the leaders could involve mediators to facilitate negotiations and resolve disputes.

Fulfil all legal obligations

Leaders must pay attention to all the legal obligations, For example when dealing with pay and benefit-related disputes it is a must that leaders full fill all labour laws, minimum wage laws, collective bargaining agreements etc. Be aware of what legal requirements employers must meet, followed by what is being demanded by the unions and what can be offered without having any major negative effect on the end service users and the wider stakeholders. It is always a good practice to look at disputes holistically rather than looking at them in a silo mentality.

Final thought

Organisations can be a social systems as it depends on the type of lens an organization is viewed from. As leaders, we need to balance the reality and the expectation. We need to be connected to the real world and be aware of the wider local, national, and global narrative of employer and employee relationships. We need to be fair, and honest and know that healthcare organisations are there to not only meet targets but also to create value within the wider community, which is difficult to quantify. Leaders need to have empathy and the same goes for the unions because without empathy, fairness, transparency and honesty a winter of discontent could soon become a year of discontent.