Vice President of Goldfields Ghana Limited, Mr Francis Eduku has charged employers to carefully vary written contracts with employees to avoid repercussions from psychological contracts they have with employees amid the Covid 19 pandemic.
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, institutions in their quest to stay afloat are looking for cost containment and business efficient strategies due to the ravaging effects of the pandemic.
This has resulted in the carrying out of several measures including furloughs, pay cuts and in worst situations laying off staff. As a result, contributing to economic hardship in the country.
Speaking during the 4th School of Business UCC webinar on the topic, Coronavirus pandemic implications for workplace reforms and employees’ wellbeing Mr Eduku believes any inconsiderate steps taken by employers could disengage the performance of employees going forward.
“The written contract when breached can be enforced through the law court but the psychological contract when breached cannot be enforced at the law court but it could be enforced through employee disengagement, low morale or deviant workplace behaviour.”
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He noted that invariably organizations are looking for ways to vary the written contract that has been signed to vary some of the benefits and reduce labour. However, forgetting that two contracts are signed with employees one written and the other unwritten which is the psychological contract.
Looking at the attractive packages that are placed in job advertisement they tend to initiate employee interest right from pre-employment these things contractually much as the written contracts, psychologically have implicit obligations and expectations from both parties.
Adding that “more often, when we are dealing with issues of this nature like this pandemic we focus more on the tangibles and ignore the intangibles, but the intangibles are the game changers because the psychological contracts drive the discretionary behaviour and organizational citizenship behaviour.”
Mr Francis Eduku is of the view that employees have the key to interventions which organizations can adopt, to revitalize the psychological contract. He, therefore, advised that organizations survey the impact of the Covid 19 on their employees to perceive context-specific strategies to revitalize psychological contracts.
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Suggesting some best practices employers could adopt, he said: ” We need to practice reverse leadership. More often than not the organizational leaders think they have all the solutions. They always go by top-down approach leadership, they need to step back and lead from behind and tap into the knowledge of lower employees to revamp the employee value propositions.”
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He added that “they should ask questions on what attracted employees to join the institution and what can be done to re-energize them and also stay connected and communicate with employees.”
On the same platform, the Executive Director of the Institute of Human Resource Management Practitioners (IHRMP), Dr Ebenezer Ofori Agbettor advised employers to maintain transparency with their employees especially in terms of finances.
“If the organization feels that indeed they are not in the position to pay the current rate of salaries then they will have to negotiate the kind of reduction in salaries with the staff and make every financial data known to the employees so that they will know that there is no hunky punky business going on.”
Source: Joseph Kobina Amuah / ATL FM NEWS
