How you deal with your staff can make or break your business - they are one of your most important assets. Treat them badly and you’ll experience an exodus of talented employees. Treat them well however, and you will be rewarded with hard-working, productive staff who enjoy their work and value their employer.
In short, happy employees are productive employees.
Yet you’d be surprised at how many businesses still overlook their staff, treating them as numbers rather than human beings, concentrating only on cost and efficiency and ultimately paying the price.
So, what exactly are employee relations?
Employee relations have replaced the term industrial relations and cover much more than just the collective relationships between employer and workforce. Whereas once it was focused on the influence of trade unions and collective workforce rights, there has been a shift towards individual workplace rights as trade union membership has declined.
Employee relations can include working conditions or pay and benefits – the traditional things associated with trade unions and collective workplace rights. But it can also include work life balance, rewards and recognition.
The key thing is managing those relations well. Whether you’re a business owner or a line manager in a business, fostering positive relations will improve business performance.
Managing employee relations
Writing a transparent employee relations policy is a great place to start. This should include your company ethos, rules as well as procedures for addressing any employee-related problems. But the way you deal with the workforce as a whole and with individual employees will differ.
Individual relationships
As trade unions have declined the focus is now much more on individual relations with employees. Engaging with your employees is vital if you want to make sure they stay happy and productive. Motivation, job satisfaction, work flow, shared purpose and work effort are some of the areas you need to consider. But needs vary greatly from employee to employee depending on gender, age, job type etc. so you need to ask them directly and communicate with them.
Remember the last job you did that you loved? Did you enjoy it because you were made to feel important, because you were a valued part of a team or because you knew your work made a real difference to the success of a company? By communicating with your employees, you will get a sense of what they want and how best to make them feel like you once did.
Collective relationships
No one likes liars and you will seriously damage your company credibility if you’re not open and honest with your workforce. Yes, trade union membership has declined but they still exist and your workers may be members, depending on your industry. And even if your staff aren’t affiliated to a trade union, how you treat them collectively and communicate with them is still just as important.
As you would with individual employees, ensuring there is effective two-way communication between you and the workforce is vital, especially if changes could affect jobs, hours or pay. Communication needs to involve listening and dialogue rather than simply dishing out information. Being proactive, focussing on positive behaviours and encouraging problem-solving can all help to build positive relationships, leaving your company with a great employer image rather than a poor one.
The value of employee relations in small businesses
Do not underestimate the power of the workforce voice. You might think managing employee relations isn’t relevant to you if you run a small business but you couldn’t be more wrong. No matter how big or little your company is, building good relations and engaging staff will be vital to your business success.
Disengaged staff can be particularly crippling for small businesses because you don’t have many staff to rely upon and you can’t afford to take a big productivity hit. If one becomes disgruntled, you can very quickly end up with all of them unhappy and a serious issue with your workforce. Engaging with staff early on also lays the groundwork for good practice as your company grows.
Make your employees feel valued rather than just mere workers in your business, talk to them, keep them informed and engage them in their work - you’ll build a positive atmosphere in which people want to work, rather than one where they’re constantly scanning the job ads, looking for a role where some does care about them.
References
- Rowley,C.,& Harry,W.,2011 Managing people globally,Pages 247-326
- Leat,M.,2007 Exploring Employee Relations(Second Edition),Pages 309-348
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MniDX7CcGt8
Dear Yasas
ReplyDeletethis is very interesting area in Human resource Management. In your article you have broadly covered all the areas of employee relation in an interesting manner. In present working environments we see many loop holes in employee relation which is a the major factor of a unsuccessful business. In an organization all working levels have direct and indirect relation with next or lower level. However main handling of employee relation is a job of a Management. As far as the employee relation is maintained in a satisfactory level no need to panic about organization. because every thing is perfectly look after by the employees. However if the situation is in other way organization will not survive for a long time.
Hence Employers should pay ultra care on employee relation to operate the organization in a smooth manner.