Employee relations, in simple words, means relationships between employees and employers that include cooperative, individual relationships and those between team members with their managers.
All aspects of all employer-employee relations are covered under the term ‘Employee relations’ or ER, inclusive of practical, contractual, emotional and physical relationships. The HR department is concerned with the importance of employee relations and manages the policies/ efforts of the company to ensure that such relationships are cordial and well-maintained because the employees are the driving force of a company and their well-being is crucial via ER programs and policies, for the company to grow and be efficient/ prosperous.
Here are some examples of good ER policies and measures under employer-employee relationships.
Employees may
These employee relations examples illustrate a range of HR issues that impinge on employee relationship management, emotional, contractual, practical and physical ER aspects and could be multi-dimensional issues that need to be sorted out appropriately and at once.
The 2 key principles of employee-relations strategy are
When a company fails to stand by its words or promises, the employee loses trust in the employer, and this may lead to several issues that affect their extra-role and in-role performances, their job satisfaction, sense of confidence and obligation, and intentions of staying employed by the organisation. Care should be taken to not oversell the company by HR because employee and labour relations involved may cause a breach of the ER contract due to incongruence and reneging of contract by employees who are critical characteristics of industrial relations.
Incongruence is best explained by this example of the HR executive saying that the company promotions frequently occur within three years, and the employees treat this as a promise. Whereas in reneging of contract, take the example of HR promising a promotion in 3 years and such action not followed through. In both cases, the employees will feel the employer has not stood by the ER contract.
To alleviate issues in ER relationships, here are some best practices and employee relations management tools that help manage employee-employer efforts and relations by the HR department.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of topics that a good policy on employee-relations always contains. Do refer to the ER policy of Deutsche Telekom, Nestlé, or  Brown University if in any doubt.
Employee-relations are crucial to the organisation’s growth and the environment in the workplace. It can break or make organisational performance. Common best practices followed by market leaders have been discussed above and can be adopted.Â
Are you interested in learning more about Analytics in Workforce Management? Take a look at our People Analytics and Digital HR program, in collaboration with IIM Indore. This is a 3-month long program with instructor-led sessions by IIM-I faculty.
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