4 Factors That Damage Employee Relations
As an HR professional, you know good employee relations can affect the overall performance of the people in an organization. Done well, positive employee relations can increase the company’s total productivity and retention rate.
That’s not all. Excellent employee relations also promote better employee engagement among workers and management and improved job satisfaction. But there are times when things don’t go according to what you would expect. Conflicts in the workplace are inevitable because employees aren’t homogenous — they have different personalities and work together for the most part of a day, 40 hours a week. Hence, disputes are a very real occurrence.
In this article, we are going to discuss employee relations, their importance to your organization, the factors that affect them, and how you can maintain and improve them.
Employee Relations — The Definition
Before we dive deep into finding the factors that could negatively affect employee relations, let’s familiarize ourselves with the definition first.
Generally, employee relations cover the relationship between an employer with their employees and employees with their colleagues. According to Gartner, the term is referred to as “a sub-function or department that is usually within the HR or legal function of an organization.”
Within a typical HR department structure, you may find an employee relations specialist who is tasked with the following:
- Informing employees of a code of conduct by developing the company’s policies.
- Solving conflicts (disputes, sexual harassment, discrimination) between workers and the company.
Simply put, employee relations’ goal is to create a positive working environment and, ultimately, working relationships among employees.
Why Employee Relations Matters
Your employees are people with different backgrounds — life and education — and different personality traits. Not only that, but they may also have different approaches to work. Hence, it’s crucial for HR professionals to create company policies that create, maintain, and improve good employee relations.
Generally speaking, an organization cannot function properly without its employees. Therefore, it’s crucial for a company to keep valuable, productive, skillful workers for a long time. With that in mind, when everyone in the organization can work together in harmony, the benefits are shared across the entire company.
Let’s take a look at why building good relations between employers and employees would be beneficial to achieve business goals.
1. Better job satisfaction
Employees who feel good about their job, growth, and their overall experience working with the company are more likely to feel valued and appreciated. An immediate — and obvious — benefit of this is that your employees would stay with you longer, contributing to a positive image for the company.
In fact, when they feel happy and satisfied with what they’re doing, your employees are willing to go the extra mile to achieve their career goals and business goals with your company.
2. Greater employee engagement
On the other hand, employee relations and employee engagement go hand in hand. In fact, in today’s working space, it is vital for organizations to have greater employee engagement. Also, as mentioned above, you want to make employees stay longer in a company, and to do that is by making them feel happy and valued. In addition, companies with engaged workers can face any challenges caused by a pandemic, recession, or political unrest.
4 Factors That Damage Employee Relations
You have heard employees say they leave because of bad bosses, not companies. In fact, a report by Gallup highlights that one in two employees leave the job because they want to remove themselves from bad managers. But, truth be told, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The reasons they tender their resignation are more than just because of a single person in management. It can be a myriad of factors that drive them to make the decision to jump ship. Here are the four factors that you need to keep an eye out for.
1. Toxic workplace culture
We have established that bad bosses can drive employees to find the exit and never return. However, according to the MIT Sloan Management Review report, toxic culture in the corporate world is the major contributor to employee turnover.
But what does the term mean, exactly? Well, it can mean a number of things. The researchers at MIT Sloan analyzed 1.4 million reviews on the job and review website and categorized them into five categories; disrespectful, non-inclusive, unethical, cutthroat, and abusive.
2. Bullying and Harassment
The next factor that you should consider as part of your employee relations policy is workplace bullying and harassment. In fact, it’s a common incident that is happening in the United States, where 30% of Americans experience bullying in the workplace. Meanwhile, 19% of the respondents witnessed the incident and explained their unwillingness to help their affected colleagues.
It’s worth noting that when one talks about bullying, it’s not always physical. It can be psychological, too. For example, an employee manipulates a colleague into doing things for them — completing their work, taking the blame for their mistakes, and exerting their power over others.
*First published on Manatal.com.
*To read the full article, click here.
Manatal is an end-to-end recruitment and onboarding SaaS platform trusted by thousands of brands in over 135 countries worldwide. It is an AI-powered Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that allows companies to hire faster, better and save costs.
