Employee relations refers to the relationship between employers and employees, and more specifically between managers and their team members.
Why Are Employee Relations Important?
Employee relations are one of the main factors influencing employee retention, satisfaction, engagement, and motivation. As such, many organizations dedicate resources to developing and maintaining positive relations with their employees.
Common benefits of positive employee relations include:
- Increasing productivity and work efficiency;
- Improving employee engagement;
- Reducing conflicts within the organization;
- Encouraging open communication;
- Reducing employee turnover;
- Strengthening employee experience.
Why Is Nurturing Positive Employee Relations Important?
Positive employee relations help solve and prevent problems and disputes between employees and managers. They also allow to better enforce policies to help ensure fairness for everyone in the workplace.
Certain companies hire employee relation managers to act as a liaison between employees and managers. Their role also includes creating or advising management on policies regarding fair compensation, benefits, work-life balance, flexible work hours, etc.
What Are Examples of Employee Relations Strategies?
Examples of employee relations strategies include:
- Promoting culture fit as a hiring criteria;
- Creating a robust onboarding process;
- Providing ongoing support for employees including learning programs, mentoring, and coaching;
- Creating and enforcing a clear misconduct policy;
- Resolving conflicts as soon as they arise;
- Monitoring and improving employee well-being by surveying employees about their workplace experience and needs.
