Ways to Improve Your Employee Relations as a Human Resources Manager

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In the modern business environment, maintaining healthy employee relations in an organization is a pre-requisite for organizational success. Creating an environment with good employee relations is required for high productivity and an employee’s personal satisfaction.

Why We Need HR

Most employee relations deal with avoiding and resolving issues concerning individuals that might come out of or influence the workplace. Effective employee relation depends upon a healthy and safe work environment. A focused human resources plan will enhance involvement and commitment of all employees. A plan with incentives for employee motivation, and an effective communication system in the organization can make all the difference in the organization’s success. Healthy and interactive employee relations department can lead to a more efficient, motivated and productive employees that most often leads to an increased sales performance as well as productivity in general.

The Human Relations department is in a constant battle against things that can ultimately destroy a company. These are threats like absenteeism, change in employee’s behavior, slow performance and personal grievances, are all forms of employee discontent that can undermine the company’s present and future. When the employees fail to meet management expectations in terms of standard performance and behavior, it means that either employees have not been encouraged sufficiently in investing emotionally in the company, or management expectations are too high.

Either way, it is Human relations job to identify the problem and possible correction. Management assures employees that problems have been identified and steps will be taken, so employee’s relationship to the company is enhanced. This ensures productivity meets managerial expectations.

What Makes the Machine Work

A commitment to identifying and correcting employee dissatisfaction is essential to good company relations. It has long been known that worker attitudes directly tie in to how managers relate to their employees. Studies have found that workplace attitudes in a specific location persist over time. One 2004 study by Bartel, Freeman, Ichniowski and Kleiner, suggested that newly hired workers adopted favorable or unfavorable attitudes exhibited by the branch before they arrived; and these attitudes affected profit.

New employees brought into a toxic environment turn negative quickly. In fact, previously happy new hires who were introduced into a negative workplace were later found to be infected by the bad attitudes around them. It becomes imperative to change those attitudes as soon as possible.

To improve employee and management relations in your workplace, you must accept the fact that you and other managers may be responsible for the seemingly bad attitudes around the office. Bad attitudes of employees can sometimes be discovered as the fruits of management’s attitude. Management does not have to be negative to breed negative results; simply not being involved with your employees can be sufficient reason for poor attitudes.

What Can Help

Incentives and paying extra attention to workers can help reverse these trends. Holding contests and supporting get together is a good idea. Giving employee bonuses for presenting new ideas for improving productivity and work conditions are opportunities for competitive camaraderie that can improve morale. Parties can lead to better employee interaction and management interaction. Having members of management out with the employees, to talk, to get an impression of working conditions and problems is an improvement. Anything that fosters company teamwork helps.

There is no short cut to improving employee relations. It takes work—from the sifting through resumes, to interviews, to hiring to training. Training is often the most overlooked and undervalued aspect of human relations. Manuals do not train, people do. As often as possible, use mentor employees who can show the ins and outs to new members, but ensure they have positive attitudes.

In employee relations, the golden rule is often overlooked. If you wouldn’t enjoy working in a certain situation, probabilities say that your employees won’t like it either. If you never interact, you will never know the problems on the “ground floor” and those problems will fester. The job of human relations is more than benefits paper shuffling. In its most effective form, it is the art and business of a company relating to human beings.