Importance of Employee Relation and How Employee Relation Plan can be Implemented in an Organization?

What Does the Term ‘Employee Relation’ Mean?

Employees are the crucial asset of any organization and play a substantial role in the success of a business therefore the importance of employee relation is pertinent for the accomplishment of any organization. However, it depends upon the management that how they polish skills and encourages the potential of their employees. If the management of a business works on developing good relations and trust with their employee, the staff of the organization will also work hard and remain loyal to their employers. Nonetheless, the situation would be reversed if the relationship between employee and employer is not good.

It is rightly said that ‘happy employees are the most productive employees. Unfortunately, several businesses do not realize this fact and treat their employees as machines rather than human beings. They only focus their attention on the profit of the business and avoid the importance of employee relations. They do not realize the fact that such attitude, in the future, will make the business and its customers pay the price of this arrogance by management.

Developing and Maintaining Relationships with Employees

Importance of employee relation can be highlighted through the fact that businesses have proper strategies which help them in developing and maintaining friendly and trustworthy relations with their employees. They have separate strategies to create bonds with their employees collectively as well as individually. With various strategies, employers can win the trust of their employees. Some of these options are discussed below:

• An effective policy to deal with employees collectively: Employers can play their part to ensure employee satisfaction and gain their trust by devising transparent policies. The policies should be able to depict the ethics, rules, and values of the company. It should also provide clear instructions to deal with employee-related issues.
• Dealing with employees at the individual level: It is worth noticing that dealing with employees collectively and individually are both very different from each other. To gain employee trust at the individual level, the employer should put himself in the shoes of the employee and consider their job satisfaction, motivation, work effort, shared purpose and role as well as workflow and expectations.

While working out issues with employees at the individual level, it is also important to note that communication is the key to take practical steps keeping in view the importance of employee relations. The employer should focus on ensuring a safe environment that should be able to promote healthy conversations. There should be enough trust between employees and employers that they may discuss issues with each other and come out with win-win solutions.

Importance of Employee Relation in Organizations

Satisfied and happy employees hold the potential to take businesses to new heights of success. The importance of employee relationship exists due to several such reasons however, seven of these are discussed below which play a crucial role in the development of the healthy relationship between employee and employer:

1. Employee engagement: It can be defined as the extent to which the employees feel passionate about their jobs and workplaces. A research study shows that 90% of the leaders have the idea of how important employee engagement is however, only 50% of these employers actually know how it can be expressed. A few tips, discussed below, can help improve employee engagement.

• Review and update the employee engagement
• Promote open and honest communication to highlight issues
• Encourage continuous feedback and recognition
• Promote sharing of thoughts and feelings
• Encourage discussions

2. Employee satisfaction: Employee engagement also leads towards employee satisfaction. Employees that are more engaged tend to experience employee satisfaction at a higher level and vice versa.
3. Employee productivity: Similarly, employee engagement and employee satisfaction are both crucial for ensuring employee productivity. Increased employee productivity ensures increased profit and revenue to the business.
4. Employee retention: It has been observed that more employees are switching jobs these days. It happens when employees feel isolated and frustrated in the company. Fortunately, employee retentions can be ignored by adopting several ways, and developing good relations with employees is one such example. With enhanced mutual relations, employees shall feel satisfied and would not consider other opportunities. Therefore, realizing the importance of employee relations will also lead towards employee retention.
5. Employee advocacy: The contact and social circle of the employee can open new avenues of success to the organization. However, the connections of employees can only be reached if the employee has the feeling of ownership of the company. It can only be ensured if the management keeps their employees in the loop and share important content and details with them.
6. The employee experience: Employee experience is very similar to employee satisfaction in its context. Employee experience is mandatory to provide a healthy workplace. A better employee experience can be made sure by promoting transparent and open communication between management and employees.
7. Employee empowerment: The employees of business organizations want to own the company they work for. Also, they want to have a certain level of say in the decision-making process of the company. This refers to employee empowerment which requires the employees to be able to take their own decisions to achieve their goals as well as fulfill their responsibility in their own ways. A good communication strategy and employee relations are all that are required to provide employee empowerment.

How Employee Relation Plan can be Implemented in an Organization?

For implementing a workable employee relation strategy, a company primarily needs to devise a set of clear policies. Without clear policies, the company would not be able to take advantage of the importance of employee relations. These policies should be able to describe the rules and procedures in case any employee-related issues come to the surface in the organization. Few characteristics of good employee relation plans include:

• Clarify the mission and vision of the organization to employees
• Communicate the importance of employee’s jobs and responsibilities towards achieving the overall goal of the company
• Ensure frequent communications with employees
• Provide feedback to the employees
• Reward employees for their good work and performance

The above-mentioned points also form the 4 pillars of employee relations which are discussed below.

4 Pillars of Employee Relations:

These 4 pillars play a substantial role in enjoying the importance of employee relations.

1. Open Communication: Open communication plays a substantial role in ensuring a more professional work environment because it provides transparency. An open and transparent working environment also clarifies the employees about their responsibilities towards the organization.
2. Show Gratitude: In healthy professional environments, employers should show gratitude to their employees. For example, if employees complete their tasks on time, employers should encourage them. These small gestures can collectively make a huge impact.
3. Consistent Feedback: Consistent feedback is mandatory in healthy workplace environments. It is so because it will develop a feeling among employees that the employers are helping them grow as a person.
4. Invest in Employees: Employers should focus on things that make the employees happy. Employers should help employees in attaining success professionally as well as personally. Employers should provide opportunities to employees to work on side projects that are other than their professional experience which can help them live their life more meaningfully.

Things that Ruin Employee Relation

Similarly, several things can spoil the employee relation and resultantly, cause loss and damage to the business and completely reverse the importance of employee relation. They are discussed as follows:

• Favoritism: Favoritism leads to unhealthy environments. It is so because partial employers promote demoralization among other employees.
• Unclear attitude: Employers should provide clarity to their team regarding their professional roles and responsibilities. Employees should be clear about what is expected from them in their workspaces. If they shall not be clear about this, the unclarity will lead them to stress.
• Lack of communication: Employers need to ensure frequent communication with their employees. This communication will build trust among the management and the employees.
• Not explaining the vision: Employees should be clear that how their duty is relevant to the overall vision of the organization. Employees should feel that what they are doing is important towards achieving a bigger goal. Therefore, to bring about the passion of the employees; the employer should share their long-term vision with their team.

Conclusion

   The importance of employee relations is pertinent because it provides ways to ensure healthy work environments. It is the secret of successful businesses. Furthermore, all businesses should focus on developing employee relations with their teams which will later, help in the success of their business. Similarly, they should also refrain from things that can adversely impact employee relations.