Employee-Management Teams (EMT’s):
Creating Partnerships between Labor and Management

"Things are far too bad, and too far down the road, to be pessimistic!" This section focuses on establishing a new "management structure" within organizations to symbolically and practically include labor in key decisions of the organization. John calls them Employee-Management Teams (EMT’s).

Conflict happens! Polarized viewpoints occur! Our organizations are frequently like the Hatfields and McCoy’s. The sources of conflict are many, including conflicting interests, goals, affiliations, values, and cultures. Conflict also often due to organizational members’ unwillingness to let go of the past. These are tough nuts to break! Many organizations feel it’s too difficult to address it, or feel we don’t have the time to address the situation. In reality, organizations cannot afford not to address it!

John’s assistance to organizations often addresses this conflict between management and non-management. Helping organizations manage change requires the capacity to get agreement and buy-in on key policy choices, operational improvements, and strategic change efforts. There are a variety of methods to "walk the talk" in truly creating partnerships between management and non-management, and to develop alignment, reduce conflict, and build partnerships. Among these include:

1. Employee-Management Teams (EMT’s)
2. 360 degree Feedback
3. Whole-System Conferences, on nearly any topic at all (strategic planning, operations improvements, organization values, etc.)
4. Employee Suggestions for Operations Improvements

This section focuses on establishing a new "management structure" within organizations to symbolically and practically include labor in key decisions of the organization.

Employee-Management Teams (EMT's)

Employee-Management Teams (EMT’s) are a unique and powerful mechanism for creating excellence, promoting a participative management culture and sustaining a true partnership between management and labor.

The EMT ’s mission is to establish a democratic infrastructure that makes participative management and empowerment a reality. Participative management occurs when management chooses to share power with labor for the successful achievement of the organization’s mission, and when labor takes responsibility for accepting the sharing of power. The work environment can be improved with increased involvement of labor in decision-making.

An EMT can be involved in nearly all decisions. Examples of issues they may participate in include: Budget review and oversight; developing the strategic plan and organization values, overseeing change efforts, class and comp studies. The list is endless. Sometimes they’re involved in meet and confer issues, and sometimes they’re not.

Specific goals of EMT’s typically include the following:

• Establish a true partnership between management and labor.
• Encourage top-down and bottom-up initiatives to create positive change.
• Improve organization communication.
• Provide a forum to review employee suggestions for individual, departmental and organizational improvement.
• Build trust within the organization
• Improve business practices against benchmarks
• Develop methods of employee recognition
• Champion improvement in organization efficiency and productivity
• Promote a customer-driven organization
• Monitor progress of key change efforts underway in the organization

Specific Roles of the EMT Consultant

John has assisted many organizations in establishing Employee-Management Team (EMT). The role of the EMT consultant is to provide organization development consulting assistance to the EMT to help them achieve their mission and goals. As an organization development practitioner, John will help EMT’s collaboratively manage the culture of the organization and implement changes to enhance the effectiveness of the organization & the well-being of its members through planned interventions in the organization’s human processes, structures, systems, strategies and leadership.

John assists EMT’s during and in between the meetings. He utilizes effective meeting design and facilitation, off-line meetings, one-on-one coaching, and training to further develop these competencies. Periodic formal and informal assessment of the team is also a best practice that will be used. The following is a list of the competencies that John brings to the group to assist the team in developing them:

1. Group Dynamics: John helps people and organizations develop effective human relations and meeting management skills to ensure productive and effective interpersonal and team interactions. This is often done through establishing positive team norms and values, one-on-one coaching and process consulting. John has taught Group Dynamics at UCSD for the past five years.
2. Consensus Based Decision-making: This is the norm of an EMT. John teaches the group the skills of consensus decision-making, and helps the team become expert in these skills.
3. Problem-solving: John assists the team to continue utilizing collaborative problem-solving and consensus decision-making techniques for better decisions and for a stronger team and team culture.
4. Conflict Resolution: John assists the team and its members to continue to develop mastery of appropriate conflict management skills for the given situation, with a bias toward collaborative conflict management style.
5. Valuing Differences: Everyone is exactly the same and completely different. This paradox creates conflict and creativity in organizations. A goal for all teams is to move beyond tolerating differences to valuing and embracing and encourage diversity and building upon the strengths of individual members. This is done through process consulting, effective facilitation of meetings, coaching members off-line, and creating a norm on the team and in the workplace of valuing differences.

Specific Roles of the EMT Consultant

1. Design and facilitation of the EMT business meetings, and training of EIT members in meeting design and facilitation.
2. Assist with the use of effective problem-solving & decision-making tools in the course of facilitating the meetings.
3. Provide assistance to the EMT in enhancing their labor-management partnership and working together in accordance with their Code of Trust and their Principles of Collaborative Teams.
4. Assess the EMT member’s needs for team skills training and provide such training as needed.
5. Coach members of management and labor to increase their effectiveness on the EMT and in the organization.
6. Conduct team building as required.
7. Serve as an advisor to EMT subcommittees.
8. Serve as a sounding board for oral and written communication, decisions that might impact success, and living the principles.
9. Assist with conflict resolution.
10. Provide resources for labor-management partnering (articles, benchmarks, learning opportunities, etc.).
11. Assist the EMT in monitoring their progress.

Principles of Collaborative Teams

There are a number of core principles of collaborative teams that serve as the guiding values and the foundation of an EMT’s charter. The principles help guide the EMT’s mission, and the EMT consultant’s behaviors and roles. These values will be the basis for assessing the effectiveness of the team and individual EMT members. The EMT should periodically revisit these principles and have dialogue of what they mean and the degree to which the team and the organization are achieving them. The following principles are important for the EMT to successfully establish and manage the partnership:

• Equality: This principle comes to life through the EMT’s and District decision-making style and EMT labor-management membership mix. The organization’s commitment is to strive for a level playing field in meetings and throughout the organization.
• Empowerment: This principle calls for an empowering environment in the organization, in which supervisors and managers delegate responsibility and authority and holding themselves and their staff accountable. Employees are encouraged to accept and/or request responsibility and authority, and to be open to being held accountable.
• Stewardship: This principle calls for service to the EMT and to the organization, and a commitment to the good of the organization over individual gain or the interests of a particular department or interest group.
• Representation: EMT members have the responsibility to accurately communicate with their constituencies. Members are to represent the views of their constituents and promote and support EMT actions with their constituency groups.