Labor and Employment Policy
ORC’s consultants have more than 150 years of collective labor relations experience and bring a broad perspective on tying labor relations to business goals. This expertise is particularly valuable given the scarcity of seasoned practitioners throughout current management ranks. The relative inexperience of labor relations staff has left many organizations without expert counsel in an area with enormous impact on costs and productivity.
ORC can provide you with specialized support on a range of labor and employment issues that may affect your organization’s global effectiveness. Our region-specific expertise in North American and European labor matters helps our clients to develop appropriate initiatives and strategies to meet business goals and maintain employee engagement.
We help management build a mutually productive and profitable relationship with unions, in which the focus is on growing the business together. Getting unions to understand that cooperating with management is to their advantage is a prime goal of ORC’s labor consulting practice.
Employee Relations Strategies
Learn to recognize and manage emerging labor issues
ORC assists companies in recognizing and managing employee and union issues as they emerge to help our clients avoid surprises wherever they operate in the world. In addition to helping develop employee relations policies, practices, and strategies, we analyze company-specific issues and train company leaders and HR staffs in the relevant industry sector and global union strategies.
ORC designs and implements workforce audits to help management understand employee attitudes and concerns. We find that employees welcome the involvement of an impartial third party and are more candid in their feedback. ORC briefs company managers on relevant international employee relations developments, such as International Framework Agreements with global union federations.
Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy
Addressing the workplace dimension
If your company is embarking on or developing its corporate social responsibility strategy, it is likely that workplace issues will arise. ORC can assist you in understanding the external drivers for addressing workplace matters in your strategy and their potential to affect your company’s business and corporate reputation. ORC can help you to develop corporate social responsibility strategies with far-reaching workplace and employment objectives, and will assist you in their implementation. ORC can counsel you on signing on to third-party employment codes, especially when pressured by diverse stakeholders.
Employee empowerment through legislation in Europe and the United States has given management an entirely new and different challenge. HR and line managers must rise to the task of managing through a maze of legal mandates at national and transnational levels. ORC is a recognized source of expertise in transnational employee consultation rights.
Industrial Relations and Employment Policy
Updating your labor relations strategy in the United States
Many companies have a labor relations strategy that developed in response to a union’s successful organizing effort and then evolved over time into a workable truce—the product of circumstances rather than a thoughtful decision-making process. In some cases, management’s actions are out of sync with the stated strategy, or have become the de facto strategy. ORC Worldwide is a forerunner in the field of industrial relations and employment policy, and can help to assess your managers’ and the union’s perceptions of your current employment policy strategy, and evaluate that strategy—or develop a more effective one—to support your business objectives. ORC also can help to communicate and implement the desired strategy with your management team, and facilitate its implementation with the union.
European Works Councils
Efffective negotiations, legal compliance, strategy implementation
From our experience working with multinationals in all aspects of handling their arrangements with European Works Councils (EWCs), we can offer guidance from negotiations to day-to-day interactions with your EWC. We assist companies with all stages of negotiating, renegotiating, and managing their EWC arrangements. ORC can help your company determine its strategy for addressing the legal requirements, think through the possible business effects, support you in implementing your EWC strategy, and address post-merger implications for EWC and related employee relations issues.
