IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYEE RELATIONS IN ACHIEVING THE COMPANY GOALS

IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYEE RELATIONS IN ACHIEVING THE COMPANY GOALS

What is Employee Relation?

Any organization needs human beings to work together to achieve the common goals of the organization. They are called employees who are considered as an important asset to the organization. The success or failure of the organization totally depends on the employees. When the employees work together as a single unit, it is easy to the organization to achieve the common goals. Therefore, the employees must share healthy rapport with each other.

According to Armstrong (2003), Employee relation consists of all those areas of Human Resource Management that deals with the employer directly and through collective agreements where trade unions are required. Furnham (1993) suggests that Employee Relations are concerned with the interaction between primary parties who pay for work and those who provide it in the labour market. (Employees and Employers), those acting as secondary parties on their behalf (Management or Management Organizations and Trade Unions) and those providing a third-party relation on employee matters.

In brief, the relationship between the employer and employee, or the relationship among the employees is considered as the Employee Relation in an organization. The relationship between the employer and the employee can be in formal and non-formal nature. In the contrary, the relationship among employees is totally based on their individual characteristics, emotions and values. The employees share some kind of close relationship with the fellow workers in the work place. Man, in nature does not prefer to be isolated. They need people to talk with and to share the happiness and sorrows. Therefore, it is of vital importance that people share a healthy rapport among each other in the work place. As the individuals shows much reluctance to make decisions alone, it is of much importance that they create relationship rich work environment.  Thus, they can have constant guidance and advice.

Importance of healthy Human Relations in an Organization

The organizations which practice a healthy Human Relations, treat employees as an asset not a burden. This very concept creates stress free working environment to the employees where they are motivated to strive through to achieve the common goals of the organization. This helps to promote mutual understanding and corporation not only among employees, but also between the employer and the employees. A healthy employee relation creates equitable, fair and transparent treatment for employees which helps to minimize the conflicts among the employees. And also, an effective communication system is established through the employee relations in the organization which helps to implement clear and fair policy in problem solving of the organization. Further the relationship among the employees makes the work easy for them as they share it among each other. This discourages the conflicts or issued among the employees and creates a happy and motivated work place. Thus, it helps to reduce the absenteeism.  All in all, a better employee relation plays a major role in staff motivation, employee satisfaction and employee retention in an organization.

Theories underlying Employee Relations

1.  The Unitary

This is based on the assumption that the organization should have an integrated group of people, a loyalty structure and common goals. The relations should be harmonious which means the employee and employer should work together to achieve the goals. This is a managerial ideology as it supports the interests of the management. The Unitary approach to Employee Relations is known as the “team” or one big happy family approach.

2.  Pluralist Theory

Organizations are made of individuals and groups with different interests, values and objectives; thus, various interests and objectives of one group are likely to conflict with others. (Lat 2001).  The pluralists accept the conflicts in groups.  The employees can be made of a range of groups with their own beliefs, values and interests. Negotiation and compromise will help to compromise with the various groups.  And also, collective bargaining is on of the solutions to these conflicts.  Further the collective bargaining is one of the functions of the Trade Unions.

3.  Marxist Theory

According to Karl Marx society is made up of two conflicting categories which are known as the Capitalist that refers to the employer and the second is the employee who sell their labour to the capitalist.  This is also known as “dialectic materialism”.  Here the employers are considered as b powerful (bourgeoisie) and the employees are weak. (proletariat)

Although the theories discuss the approaches to Healthy Employee Relations, there are many issues and challenges face by the Human Resource Management professionals, when it comes to the practical situations.  As Employee relations is a very complex and huge area, the HR Managers should investigate on how to improve the Employee Relations in their organizations.  The demographic changes, different value systems, different interests of individuals and different perceptions have contributed to the challenges in improving the healthy rapport among the employees of an organizations. Therefore, it is a vast responsibility of the management to carefully form, analyze and implement the policies which underpinned the Employee Relations.

How to Improve the Employee Relations in an Organization

It is important that the employees are comfortable with each other in an organization. Their working environment should be in close contacts with collaboration and corporation. The management should rethink about how to improve and maintain the Strong Employee Relation within the organization. The pioneer responsibility of the management in the current organizations is to understand the different groups within the organizations and integrate them with a good and reliable relationships where they understand, respect, tolerate and help each other to make their tasks easy and accurate. This helps the management to take the best out of each and every employee.  However, these endevours should not create negativity or enmity among the work force. Following are some suggestions to improve Employee Relations in an organization:

a.  Involve the Team Members

Identify the different talents and capabilities of the team members and involve them in tasks which they are more capable of completing. This strategy will make the employees feel that their skills and capabilities are identified by the management, which will motivate them to do their best in the assigned task. In a way this helps the employee to be recognized by the other team members which gives the employee an extra value. In this process the management must identify the real talent and the management should not be partial or biased in selecting the best talent.

b.  Encourage to share their work

The management of the organizations must always try to inculcate the importance of sharing work among the fellow workers and make the employees aware of how work become easy and comfortable when it shares among the members. This will again help the employee to understand that he is not alone inside the organization and he is heard and accepted by the fellow team members which gives him an overall satisfaction of his work.

c.  Assign Targets

The management must assign targets to each group as well the each and every member in liaison with the company common goals.  Give them the targets, and the rime frames to achieve them.  The targets should be clearly communicated among the employees.

d.  Effective Communication

The organization should have a system for effective communication with the employees.  The company policies must be clearly communicated with the employees

e.  Morning Assembly

Holding a morning assembly is one of a very easy way to establish a good relationship within an organization.  There the employer and the employee get together to perform some religious rituals, brief about day plans and this helps both sides to cheer up and start the day

e.  Arrange Events

The event like birthday parties, promotion parties will help to strengthen the bond in the work place. The relationships will be strengthening through sharing the personal achievements, events, happiness and sorrows with the fellow workers

How ever much the management tries to form and implement the strategies to maintain a healthy Employee Relation in an organization, it has become a huge challenge to the HR managers as they have to directly deal with human beings.  Man, by nature is subject to change and Human Resource Management is totally a deal with this changing creature.  Therefore, creating strong bonds and relationships have become a major issue to a present Human Resource Managers when it comes to the practical situations.  Some of the issues are as follows:

·          Conflict Management

Conflicts are everywhere and the work place is no exception.  The conflicts which can take place in an organization is mainly can be discussed as conflicts between employees or direct disagreement between employee and employer.  The HR Manager should have an effective way of managing these conflicts. Having the two parties communicate is more important to minimize the disputes among the employees.  The management should implement a system for effective communication between teams and insists that this is the way they must communicate if a conflict arises.  When it is a policy, it can be made employees feel that their issues are heard.

·       

                 Wage Issues

The wage issues are common in any organization.  The employees tend to dispute the number of hours or insists on Over Time. To avoid the conflicts the employees can be advised to maintain a self-service time keeping software and make sure that they are kept in the correct pay schedule

.

·          Safety in the Work Place

The management must give a top priority to maintain a safe and hygienic work place to the employee as it is a fundamental right of the employee.

·          Annual Leave Dispute

The policies of leave in an organization should be in lease with the state federal laws. The management should make aware the employees of the organization leave policy.  Implementing a leave management software will reduce the leave disputes.

CONCLUSION

A strong and healthy Employee relation helps the organizations to thrive towards the common goals.  Although there are theoretical approaches and plenty of literature about the topic, it is very difficult to adhere to them in practical situations as we have to completely deal with the human beings.  Their changing nature has become a big issue to the HR Managers to satisfy each and every individual employee.  However, it is the responsibility of the HR Managers to find more concrete solutions to these challenging issues and crate an Employment Relation rich work environment to the employees to achieve the ultimate goals of the organization.

 

 References

Anon., 1968. Royal Commissions on Industrial Relations, London: H M Stationary Office.

Armstrong, M., 2012. Hand book of Human Resource Management. s.l.:Kogan Page Publishers.

G, M. C., 1963. Editorial. British Journal of Industrial Revolution, p. 228.

Terance M Hurley, e., 2000. researchgate.net. [Online]
Available at: https://researchgate.net
[Accessed 2018].

Law Teacher. November 2013. Definition of Employee Relation. [online]. Available from: https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/employment-law/definition-of-employee-relation-employment-law-essay.php?vref=1 [Accessed 20 December 2018].