Employee Relations
Employee Relations
Maintaining a Happy & Satisfied Workforce
Your employees are the lifeblood of your organization. Without a strong and committed team, even the most successful businesses would quickly fail. Good employee relations are crucial so your employees can feel happy and comfortable in their positions. The challenge to management is the amount of time and energy necessary to address each of your employee’s issues quickly without your managers becoming overwhelmed.
Positive Employee Relations Enhance Engagement and Productivity
The relationship between managers and employees varies tremendously from one company to another. In some companies, it is built on mutual respect, a shared vision, and trust; in others, it is dominated by fear and a lack of transparency or a clear sense of direction. At all points along this spectrum, there are qualitative and quantitative consequences from how employees have been treated over time in any given organization. Organizations who consistently have employee problems are less likely to perform at peak performance, compared with employees working in a positive environment who are more engaged and productive. The more positive employees feel about their company, the more likely it is they will choose to remain and grow at the company.
Source: Gallup
How to Ensure Good Employee Relations
When trying to build good employee morale it is beneficial to have a program that is managed by highly-trained HR professionals. This employee relations program should periodically assess employee morale and address problems expediently to maintain a positive work experience for all employees. To successfully strengthen the relationship between employees and managers, companies need to treat all employees fairly. Incorporating the following recommendations can help build a positive work environment for your company:
- Establishing open communication and transparency
- Recognizing employees’ hard work and achievements
- Providing consistent feedback and constructive criticism
- Investing in the person, not just the worker
- Giving guidance without micromanaging
- Treating everyone fairly without favoritism
- Clearly communicating job roles and expectations
- Asking for and implementing input from employees
- Sharing a vision that employees can connect to
Clear and Consistent Communication is Essential
As you can see from the previous bullet list, many of these points revolve around the importance of clear and consistent communication between management and employees in your organization. This tone needs to be set from the top of your organization and frequently reinforced with lower levels of your leadership team. Companies led by leaders who are secretive or, worse yet, untruthful with their employees sow the seeds of dysfunction throughout their organization, creating an environment that fosters distrust, bureaucratic infighting and a variety of other issues that will damage your bottom line.
Although it can sometimes be difficult to be open and honest with your employees, particularly concerning various types of “bad news,” it is almost always the best policy for the long term. When you establish an environment characterized by open and honest communication, you build up positive cultural capital in your workforce that you can draw upon whenever difficult situations arise. If you partner with the team of experienced HR professionals at TPG HR Services, we can help you devise and implement a long-term strategic communications plan that will help you to build trust with your employees and “weather the storms” of any employee relations issue that may crop up within your business.
Effective Employee Relations are a Two-Way Street
In addition to clearly communicating with your employees on a consistent basis, companies with an effective employee relations strategy also make a commitment to regularly gathering their input and feedback. As an employer you need to have your finger on the pulse of your workforce including any potential problems that may be brewing between team members or between your staff and management. In order to do this, employees must feel comfortable approaching management with any issues or concern they may have. Having an open line of communication with your employees where they feel that their opinions are listened to and respected is a critical element of successful employee relations.
This is one area where working with an independent, outside partner like TPG HR Services can be very helpful. Our staff of highly-qualified HR professionals can serve as an open conduit to your employees’ thoughts and issues, enabling them to freely communicate their concerns without fear of being seen “complainers” or “trouble-makers” in the process. This provides a feedback loop that can help you address any potential employee relations problems before they grow into a crisis-type situation.
TPG HR Services USA provides comprehensive employee relations assistance to ensure that your workforce feels valued and performs at its best. We offer the personnel and knowledge to quickly resolve and manage all employee issues. In addition to retaining our own capable and qualified in-house counsel, our organization partners with leading, nationally recognized employment lawyers, Jackson Lewis.
We are Equipped to Quickly & Tactfully Handle a Wide Range of Employee Issues
- New Hire Orientation and Onboarding
- Benefit Negotiations and Administration
- Employee Relations Issues
- Performance Appraisals
- FLSA Exempt and Hourly Issues
- Policy and Procedure Assistance
- Employee Screening (Drug Testing and Background Checks)
Contact us to help improve your company employee relations. We can resolve employee problems quickly while recommending mutually beneficial outcomes.
