[AISWorld] next lecture 22nd June: Employee Relations in the twenty-first century

Thu Jun 16 07:00:21 EDT 2011

London Venue: 

Marylebone Road. (Opp. Baker Street Station, and Mme Tussauds)

Time: 6.15pm - 8.00pm including questions. Cost: Free.  Coffee and biscuits provided. All welcome! Especially PG students.

Directions from Security

To ensure a place, register as soon as possible with: coakese at westminster.ac.uk <mailto:coakese at westminster.ac.uk>   

Past lectures on www.bcs.org/sociotechnical <http://www.bcs.org/sociotechnical>  and updates on the group's activities

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June 22nd

Willy Coupar 

Director: Bayswater Institute

Room: CG72

Employee Relations in the twenty-first century

-       Will it be Employee Engagement or a role for TUs?

-       Employee Relations continues to be a major theme in many workplaces across the UK. Despite the steady fall in trade union membership, and the reduction in the number of disputes, flashpoints such as the recent BA strike remind us that workplace conflict is still with us.

-       Unions continue to play a major role, especially in the public sector. The threat of thousands of job cuts in that sector will create an atmosphere of uncertainty and further conflict seems likely.

In the private sector the role of unions is now increasingly concentrated in a limited and declining number of industries. A clear north/south divide is emerging as well.

More employee relations issues, individual or collective  are being resolved by recourse to law. This is a major change which shows no sign of slowing down.  

Unlike the Thatcher government, the new administration shows few signs of having an ideologically driven agenda for the workplace. 

Instead employee engagement is being widely advocated as a breakthrough in how organisations are managed, a source of measureable competitive advantage for organisations,whilst taking staff along on a journey which promises to improve their lives at work.

Governments are strongly committed to the idea. A major report " The McLeod review" sets out key engagement principles and offers a list of practical steps and case studies. The new government has recommitted and asked for further work to be done on the topic.

At the same time a great deal of work is now being done in the research community to test how effective employee engagement actually is. Researchers are also seeking to validate the tools being used to  measure engagement in practice.  Both the research and practitioner communities are divided. Is Employee Engagement nothing more than "old wine in new bottles". What does this mean for the future of employee relations and for the role of unions? How should researchers and practitioners interested in the field react? 

This seminar sets out to identify answers to some of these questions.

William Coupar became the Director of the Bayswater Institute in 2009.  He was director of the IPA from 1997-2008 and led its Partnership Company initiative. In 1999 he was asked by government to chair the Partnership Fund. From 2000 - 2007 he was a member of the ACAS Council He was lead project manager for the UKWON consortium which delivering multi-million pound projects for the European Social Fund. 

After university he joined the transport industry working with five companies before joining Chesterfield Transport as its managing director, where, in 1990, he led an employee buy out .

He has worked with many organisations helping them work through change management and workplace issues in a mentoring or analytical role. He has worked with the NHS, government agencies, in the voluntary sector and leading unions. At European level he has worked with EWCs, with the Commission and with social partners in Brussels. 

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13th Year!

Oct 12th 

Room tba

"Questioning Technology: A panel led discussion"

Panel topics:

1.       What is Technology? 

This presentation explores whether technology is embedded in devices or whether there are alternative perspectives

Dr Roy Woodhead, Transformation & Integrated Services, HP

2.       Which comes first, Science or Technology?

This presentation questions the assumption that scientific knowledge has primacy over technological knowledge and whether a different view could offer new approaches to the development of new capabilities 

Katie Walsh, IT Consultant, HP

3.       What is our relationship with Technology? 

This presentation builds on the previous ones and explores the relationship between people and technology and questions some of the assumptions many people hold

Dr Kamaran Fathulla, International Academy, University of Essex

4.       Open discussion

 Each presenter will take around 10 minutes to put forward views that will stimulate a rich discussion. 

Dr Roy Woodhead, HP

Roy currently works for HP Transformation & Integration Services (TIS) and has a diverse background spanning construction, consulting on some of the world's largest oil and gas investments, working with IT scientist in HP's R&D labs and socio-technical approaches to process improvement. He was a Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University for over ten years and engaged with Action Research methods to achieve large scale innovation.  Roy holds a PhD in complex group decision making related to major Capital Investment projects from the University of Leeds, and a First Class BSc (Hons) degree from Sheffield City Polytechnic. He is currently managing a large scale transformation within the Service Transition lifecycle stage on the largest IT infrastructure project in Europe.

Katie Walsh, HP

Katie has over 13 years IT experience gained from numerous IT projects across a diverse spectrum of industry areas within the public and private sectors. She currently works for HP Enterprise Services as a Consultant focusing on Service Management. Her experience encompasses software development, requirement elicitation and documentation, reporting and basic project management skills, as well as developing good working relationships.

Katie's education and experience is primarily focussed within technical environments and she has focussed on gaining the hybrid skills that enable her to understand both the technical and business aspects within IT. She holds a BSc (Hons) 2:1 and Master degree. Additionally, Katie recognises the importance of industry standard qualifications and holds an ISEB Diploma in Business Analysis and ITIL V3 foundation certification. She is self motivated in her work, education and career development aspirations.

Dr Kamaran Fathulla, University of Essex

Kamaran Fathulla is a computing/electronic lecturer at the International Academy, The University of Essex. Kamaran obtained his Master's degree in User Interface Design from Liverpool John Moore University and his PhD from the University of Salford.  Kamaran's research work underpinned in the Multi Aspectual philosophical work of the Dutch philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. Kamaran's main research work is in diagrams and their uses in everyday life. He also explores ways in which Multi Aspectual thinking can be applied to other domains of interest. Kamaran is also the Editor of a newly established electronic journal called IJMAP, International Journal of Multi Aspectual Practice, http://chimera69.essex.ac.uk/IJMAP <http://chimera69.essex.ac.uk/IJMAP> 

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Elayne Coakes (Dr)
Senior Lecturer in BIMO,WBS
x3338

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