The Employment Relationship

What does employee relations mean?

Employee relations definition states “any industrial relationship between the organization and
its workers or employees, concerning physical, emotional, contractual, and practical efforts by
the employer to maintain a positive relationship with its employees.”

Employee relations is a term used to describe relations between employers and employees.

ER or employee relations in Human resources are a function commonly dealing with

improving employee morale and solving workplace issues. This revolves around generating
satisfactory output and gaining productivity through building a healthy work ambiance. Now
the question arises “How can HR improve employee relations?”

A Human resource manager must be well-versed with the company’s policies and has the
right to take disciplinary actions. The manager cannot compromise on work productivity and
disciplines, however, must try all possible practices to build a healthy employee relation. A
fully-staffed Human resource management department has an employee relation manager
who knows how HR can improve employee relations.

Employee relation is important because HR strategy and organizational success largely

depend on the company’s workforce and its productivity.

The main goal of every employee relations strategy is to improve relationships and
collaboration in the workplace.

Good leadership is ranked as one of the most important factors that attracts new candidates
and keeps existing employees. In that sense, employee relations often focuses on helping line
managers truly connect with their employees.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF EMPLOYEE RELATIONS?

Simply , employee relations are strategically created a positive atmosphere for the employees
with the hope to keep them loyal and more engaged at work. Most organizations employ a
dedicated employee relations manager who plays the role of an advisor, mediator, and
compensator to employee issues.

Essentially, the role of employee relations manager is to elude better relationships between
management by working on certain policies, developing mutual respect, trust, and marinating
transparency.

What are examples of Employee Relations?

Understanding employee relations is crucial for the company’s human resource management.
Employee relations gone wrong may cost a bad reputation and dismantling a company
despite gaining monetary success. Here are a few employee relations examples that may act
as a guide to understand the significance;

› EMPLOYEE RELATIONS PROGRAM EXAMPLES

• Lack of training on basic people management competencies
• Lack of building a feedback mechanism to help employees provide to their managers
• Not setting an attendance goal, track group attendance, post-completion stats, and reward
the best performing group
• All-day gossiping
• Neglecting communication with management
• Appearing alcoholic or drug problem that affects work progress
• Lack in accepting constructive criticism

› EMPLOYEE RELATIONS ISSUES EXAMPLE

• Watching sexually explicit material on the company intranet
• Getting into disputes with co-workers
• Issues with personal hygiene
• Violating safety rules
• Lack of communication with managers
• Insufficient problem-solving skils
• Late for meetings or unreachable
• Lack of discipline and work-desire
• Creating a gender-discriminatory ambiance

› EMPLOYEE RELATIONS STRATEGY EXAMPLES

• Involving team members
• Workplace bullying affects employee performance
• Declining or ignoring employees’ pay raise request. This affects overall work performance
and demotivates employees
• Poor handling of issues like cultural differences, unfair treatment, and mishandling and not
procuring to individual personalities and needs
• Substandard policies and partiality towards an individual employee or a group

What do employee relations professionals do?

Every organization is aware of the example of employee relations issues. Additionally, each
employee wants to feel great, secured, and homely in the workplace. Overall productivity,
performance, and a positive work environment are the result of smart work strategy. HR
management has to work hard to build strategies for better work ambiance. Employee
relations scenarios are critical, but here are a few methods that will help the professionals in
evaluating their employee relations strategy.

How to improve employee relations?

› PROMOTE COMMUNICATION
Communication breaks all barriers. Although this is known to all, yet some organizations tend
to overlook this key factor. Establishing better communication is the foundation of employee
relations. The management has to find out ways to interact with its team members, work
labors, and union leaders. Convey important notices, crucial updates about the company’s
development, share the organization’s vision and develop bonding with the employees. The
relationship must be in such a way that no one is afraid to speak or ask any questions with the
management.

› RECOGNIZE, APPRECIATE, REWARD

Valuing employees and appreciating them solves 80% of employee relations issues. Show
your employees that you care and give them opportunities. A smart HR professional knows
that celebrating co-workers and appreciating them is the best solution for handling employee
relations issues. Having a small weekly team-celebration, regular encouragement, public
recognition are the keys to building strong employee bonding. Employees feel good when
their achievements are discussed, clapped on, and talked about in the team meetings.

› TREAT EVERYONE EQUALLY. STOP BEING PARTIAL

Partiality is one of the major employee relations examples. If you want to build strong bonding
with your employees then treat everyone equally and don’t play favorites. Staffs give their best
when they hear equally appreciating comments. Creating a partiality-free work environment
truly enables the employees to participate and thrive to work hard in giving out their best
performance.

› TRAIN, INVEST, OFFER CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Office staffs, industry workers, and your team members are the elementary part of your
business. Investing in them, for example holding learning and training programs, employee
skill upgradation program, peer monitoring, employee wellness programs, and many more.
Depending on the size and type of business, the options here are endless; what matters is
treating your staff well and helps them develop themselves. Hiring a peer coach or
establishing an L&D department for the team enables a 360-degree performance revolution
among them.

› TRUST AND SHARE THE COMPANY’S VISION

Trust your people! What can a company do without its employees? Expectation, reliance, and
trust are three strong pillars of a successful business. When you convey your expectations
and your vision with your staff, trust them. Try managing your team through weekly discussion
meetings, graphing out work processes, and help them head towards goals. When your
employees understand what is expected of them, and that they can approach you whenever
needed, then let them be.

› MAKE THEM FEEL VALUED

It doesn’t take much to say a simple “thank you” or compliment someone. When you focus on
your employees’ achievement rather than criticizing their flaws, it reflects your concern
towards them. Taking corrective actions and focusing their strengths helps in making them
feel valued. This also helps the staff in working with a renewed sense of responsibility towards
the company.

7 Reasons Why Employee Relations Are Important

Companies with good employee relationships enjoy many benefits. In general, it is easier for
them to engage, motivate, understand and keep their employees.

Here are just a few benefits of building a positive employee relations workplace.

1. Employee engagement
According to research about employee engagement, 90% of leaders understand how
important employee engagement is. However, only 50% of them know how to address this
issue.

Here, employee relations play a crucial role. It has been proven that companies with better
employee communications have much higher rates of employee engagement.

Here few tips to improve employee communications to drive better employee engagement
include:
A. Share, review and update employee expectations.
B. Encourage open communication to identify obstacles and issues.
C. Don’t neglect consistent feedback and recognition.
D. Encourage discussion and sharing of thoughts.

2. Employee Satisfaction
Employee engagement is often related to employee satisfaction. Less engaged employees
are less satisfied. Poor employee relations can be one of the main causes for that.

Moreover, 65% of US employees say that communications by their employer impacts job
satisfaction. 45% of them say that their employer does not do a good job communicating with
employees.

3. Employee productivity
Employee satisfaction and engagement boost employee productivity. Companies with well
structured employee relations enjoy higher productivity, revenues and profits. Moreover,
organizations with highly engaged employees have an average 3-year revenue growth that is
2.3 times greater than companies with less engaged teams.

If your employees know exactly what their goals are and if you give them constant feedback
on their work, they will work harder towards achieving their goals.

4. Employee retention
High employee turnover is one of the biggest problems companies face today. The cost of an
employee leaving is significant. Therefore, many employees try to avoid that expense.

Employee retention can be improved in many ways. Employee relations is one of them.
Employees who feel like they don’t know what is going on in the company feel frustrated and
isolated. As a result, they feel insecure and often consider new job opportunities.

5. Employee advocacy
Employee advocacy is a benefit many companies are trying to achieve. The ability to reach
employees’ connections and use your company’s social capital to its full potential can have a
big impact on the company’s visibility, brand awareness and productivity.

In order to achieve employee advocacy, employers have to be ready to improve employee

relations. They need to keep employees in the loop and share important content them.

6. Employee experience
Similar to employee satisfaction, good employee experience is one of the biggest proofs of a
healthy workplace culture.

To deliver a good employee experience, employers need to be ready to improve the way they
communicate with employees. Open and transparent communication helps employees feel
involved which often leads to higher employee engagement.

In contrast, poor employee communications lead to insecurity, lack of engagement and

honesty in the workplace.

7. Employee empowerment
Millenials and younger generations want to be involved in many aspects of a business. They
want to have a certain level of decision-making power.

This is called employee empowerment. It involves giving employees responsibility and

autonomy to manage their own work and make decisions to achieve their own goals.

In order to empower your employees, you need to have a good employee relations and
communications strategy.

For employees to feel empowered, they need to understand clearly what your company’s
mission and vision are. Also, they have to be able to understand how their work contributes to
the overall business success.

Trust is crucial for successful employee empowerment. Managers who trust their employees
and communicate company’s strategy and goals regularly, often have no problems giving
more power to their employees.

What is the employee relations process?

The employee relation process is the steps followed by the management after mutually
agreeing upon the employee union. Employee relations process steps help in regulating how
management handles the employment process, issues, and industrial relations with its staff.

The main employee relations process flowchart involves the following three steps;

› CONCILIATION
Dispute resolution is of course the main objective of any HR management. The aim is to
collectively bargain with the employees and preferably reach a satisfactory agreement by both
parties. Conciliation is one of the most important parts of the employee relations process that
helps in reconciliation between both the parties-employer and employee. The management
either appoints a third party as Conciliators or chooses to solve the issues by themselves.
This process aids in building a bridge through mutual compromise.

› ARBITRATION
Arbitration is defined as the last resort for reaching a settlement when disputes cannot be
solved in any other way. This process is carried out by appointing an arbitrator who legally
solves issues prevailing between employer and the employees by bringing them to consent on
a final verdict.

› MEDIATION
Mediation is making recommendations to the employer and the staff union. Here, the
employer is free to agree upon any suggestion or reject the same. Mediation means the
employer retains full control of the situation and may choose to opt for an informal employee
relations process over legal suggestions.

Apart from the above stated formal employee relations process, the HR manager may choose
certain informal processes as well. The role of employee’s relation manager is significant. The
issues prevailing in the company gives an insight into negative behaviours procuring in the
workplace. The management has to closely monitor and document the issues to provide
effective measures in sorting them out.

Here are the fundamental employee relation process steps that help to measure the
effectiveness of the solutions;

› CAUSES OF ISSUES
Finding the cause of each issue is the initial goal of a manager. The employer has to find out
the reasons behind issues, whether the problem was addressed before? This helps in finding
out behavioral changes among employees, a lack of leadership action, and measure the
transparency of communication. Resurfacing the cause may help in hitting the main issue and
establishing correct employment process solutions.

› PROCESS
Thorough notes, documentation, and process need to be charted to solve employee relations
issues. The process involves trying out various formal measures to solve issues- conciliation,
arbitration, and mediation. Reviewing an issue through mutual agreement may be one of the
best measures to consider.

› LEGAL RESOURCE
When the process lacks mutual agreement, legal resources may be the final step to solve
employee issues. The employee and the employer may choose to take legal advice if they
feel that the complaints are not handled properly. Employees who provide friendly work
ambiance and let the employees feel heard and valued may typically solve problems without
getting involved legally.

› OUTCOME
When the issues and complaints are closed, it is understood that employee relations have
developed positively. When the staff members are satisfied with the process, the effective
outcome depicts re-joining to work. However, if the employees are unsatisfied and dispute
prevails, they may choose to resign. Whatever the cause may be, the employer must try to
keep its subordinates content and handle them smartly.
What are the types of employee relations?

As a business owner, the employer holds responsibility for advising, educating, and
supporting employees and develops healthy, interactive relations with them. It not only
encourages productivity but also enhances morale. The common types of employee relations
issues revolving in and around the company are as follows;

› CORRECTIVE ACTION
When the employee is served with verbal warning or documentation, this is known as
corrective action. Irrespective of the person, the warning is issued against the misconduct of
citing companies' policies and rules.

› SUPPORTIVE ACTION
Another enhanced type of employee relations is taking supporting action towards employees
facing personal issues outside the workplace. This type of relation is developed through
regular communication and having an open-door policy. Encouraging workers to discuss their
problems which directly affect their work quality may help in building better employee
relations. Adjusting work timings, scheduling tasks, making referrals for useful resources
helps in developing supportive employee relations.

› RULE AND POLICY INTERPRETATION

When you hire new staff, it is important to make them aware of the company’s policies and
build a healthy relationship. The association in its initial stage immunes trust and eliminates
further chances of discrepancies. Encourage employees to follow rules, and stop them from
violating the policies. Interpreting specific company guidelines procures is causing further
workplace discrimination and advancing employee relations scenario.