Main Concerns of Employee Relations & Benefits to Organizations


What is “Employee Relations”?

Employee Relations refer to an organization’s practices to establish, foster and maintain healthy and favorable relationships between the employer and employees. Main aims of employee relations are, strengthen the connections between employer and employees by addressing difficulties and conflicts in the working environment, concerning on employee satisfaction, and also contributing to increase performance of the organization (Calvello, 2021).

There are two main hierarchies in Employee Relations as Vertical Employee Relations & Horizontal Employee Relations. Vertical ER refer to the connections between employees and their superiors where Horizontal ER refer to the relationships between same level employees (Crail, 2023)

 

Employee Relations & Human Resources Management

Employee relations entail enhancing the employee experience while offering employees professional and emotional support. Human resources concentrate on hiring new employees, administering payroll, compensation & benefits, and collaborating with internal policies. Employee relations is an important division within the Human Resources (Calvello, 2021).

 

Concerns of Employee Relations

Under the employee relations umbrella, there are many responsibilities and many areas are focused. Following are some of major concerns in the scope of ER.

1. Reviewing of Employee Performance: This opens new opportunities for employees and allows to rectify/fix issues with current work roles. Also, this provides opportunity to communicate any issues and conflicts facing in performing the work (Crail, 2023).

2. Managing Misconduct of Employees: It is necessary to tackle a staff member's conduct when it negatively impacts the workplace. This covers both minor offences, such issue with punctuality, and significant transgressions, like harassment. Effective ER includes stringent guidelines for prohibited employee conduct since it harms the workplace culture, a confidential reporting process, and processes for looking into and ending it (Verlinden, n.d.).

3. Developing Organizational Communication Standards: Enhancing workplace communication while creating rules or promoting open discussions. This is related to both internal and external communications that take place on a more personal level (Crail, 2023).

4. Enhancing Employee Engagements: This is usually achieved by conducting and giving opportunities to have team building activities, promoting work-life balance, rewarding, providing career development opportunities. A positive work environment is great for productivity, and satisfied employees perform better compared to ones who are not satisfied (Crail, 2023).

5. Effective and Fair Management in Absenteeism & Consideration of Job Rotation: When tasks aren't completed due to staff absences, organization’s workflows are disrupted. Other employees will also be forced to give up crucial tasks to make up for it. A high level of absence might happen when workers feel underappreciated, are exhausted, or due to medical problems. An effective Employee Relations process looks into the causes of absenteeism and determines how to address them while managing the smooth workflows (Verlinden, n.d.).

6. Ensuring Health & Safety: Employee relations encourages consciousness of potential dangers, makes ensuring that training is adequate where it's needed, and creates emergency policies for the entire firm. Employees are also provided with insurance coverage (Crail, 2023).  

7. Efficient & Reliable Conflicts Management: The degree of general dissatisfaction increases with the number of participants in the dispute. Before a disagreement escalates and starts to have a detrimental impact on other employees and the organization, ER takes steps to resolve it (Crail, 2023).  

8. Focusing on Employee wellbeing: This is typically accomplished with employee support programs, flexible work schedules, paid mental health days, gym memberships, and other standards in the industry which values its employees' wellbeing. In order for workers to socialize to decompress and rely on one another for emotional support, it is important to foster strong relationships among them (Verlinden, n.d.).

 

Benefits of Strong Employee Relations Practices

Employees that are content with their jobs are more efficient and work harder. They give their fullest cooperation to the organization to promote products, further expansions, development of brand and all other ways. Researches have proven that better employee retention practices cause to reduce employee turnover (Picincu, 2018)

1. Increase Organizational Performance including Financial Performances: Satisfied employees are efficient workers and helps to grow business revenues and also cause to reduce costs of the organization (Greer, 2018).

2. Increasing Productivity: Having positive relationships with co-workers, superiors, managers and management encourage the employees to work efficiently. This supports to increase organizational performance and productivity (Picincu, 2018).

3. Low Employee Turnover: Employees who are cherished under better employee relations background are loyal and tend to retain in the organization (Greer, 2018).

4. Increases Employee Motivation: One of the main advantages of positive employee interactions is an increase in morale and motivation. Giving employees personalized feedback, letting them know their thoughts are valued, showing interest in their jobs, and offering developed working procedures and technology help to build a highly motivated and devoted workforce (Picincu, 2018).

5. Lesser Absenteeism: Employee absenteeism is frequently caused by work-related anxiety and conflicts, and positive workplace cultures always result in lower absenteeism (Picincu, 2018).

 

Conclusion

Any organization must prioritize employee interactions if it hopes to succeed over the long term. An employee relations department handles a variety of tasks, including reviewing employee performance, handling employee misconduct, setting communication standards, boosting employee engagement, guaranteeing health and safety, resolving conflicts, and taking employee wellbeing into account. Without a strong infrastructure for employee interactions, a business will find it difficult to manage any of these issues and may have adverse impacts on the operational and other activities. An organization can improve in many aspects of the corporate sector by having stronger employee relations practices.

 

References

Calvello, M. (2021) Employee relations: How to build strong bonds with your team. [Online]
Available from: https://www.g2.com/articles/employee-relations [Accessed 12 August 2023].

Crail, C. (2023) What is employee relations.[Online] Forbes. Available from: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/what-is-employee-relations/#10_examples_of_employee_relations_responsibilities_section [Accessed 12 August 2023].

Greer, J.(2018) The 7 top benefits of great labor relations. [Online] LinkedIn. Available from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-top-benefits-great-labor-relations-jason/ [Accessed 12 August 2023].

Picincu, A. (2018) Factors affecting work performance.[Online] Available at: https://bizfluent.com/info-8442664-factors-affecting-work-performance.html [Accessed 12 August 2023].

Verlinden, N. (n.d.) Employee relations: examples + 10 strategy tips.[Online] AIHR
Available from: https://www.aihr.com/blog/employee-relations/ [Accessed 12 August 2023].

Comments

  1. If a good relationship is maintained with clients and employees, the client will benefit the most. Therefore, it is always the responsibility of HRM to maintain a good relationship between employees and clients for the sake of organizational progress. It can be understood by reading the article.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Employee relation with HR makes a huge impact on achieving the vision of the organization. HR should maintain a positive attitude towards the needs and the wants of the employees while directing everyone towards the final goals of the company. This article provide the needed details for us to learn more on HR and employee bonds.

    ReplyDelete
  3. By prioritizing employee relations, organizations can create a culture that fosters productivity, satisfaction, and long-term success.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The importance of employee relations cannot be overstated. Good employee relations in a workplace result in satisfied employees, a positive working environment and increased performance.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It is given clearly understand to us regarding Employee relations concerns the building of positive relationships and interactions among employers and employees, and at a broader level helps foster a sense of community within an organization.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Managing employee relations in the workplace is indeed an important aspect of Human Resource Management (HRM). I think it is worth mentioning that in some industries and countries, labour unions are formed and involved to manage employee relations.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The goals of good employee relations include inspiring employee loyalty, increasing engagement, reducing turnover, and creating a positive company culture.

    ReplyDelete
  8. While the post highlights the benefits, a brief discussion on potential challenges or limitations that organizations might face while implementing and maintaining effective employee relations practices could provide a more balanced

    ReplyDelete

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