5 Tactics To Improve Employee Relations
Publié le 24 October 2022
Build an organization based on mutual trust and respect with 5 tactics to improve employee relations.
Employee relations is a Human Resources concept that refers to the relationships employees have with their employers and colleagues.
Organizations adopt employee relations policies and strategies to improve cooperative relationships in the workplace. Studies reveal that strong employee relations foster a more positive attitude to work and contribute to a firm’s overall performance.
The relationship between employers and employees has gone beyond issues of salaries and compensation. Employees have more expectations from their employers, and organizations that fall short of meeting these risk losing their staff.
In light of this, companies are advised to provide a conducive working environment that fosters a good relationship between employees and their employers, as well as coworkers.
In this article, we provide 5 tactics to improve employee relations in your organization.
5 Tactics To Improve Employee Relations
- Understand your employees’ needs
- Offer career development opportunities
- Encourage open communication and transparency
- Make Them Feel Special to the Organization
- Focus on Work-Life Balance
1. Understand your employees’ needs
Employees are more likely to be committed and satisfied when their needs are met. As a result, understanding what your employees want, need, and expect is vital to creating a positive relationship with them.
Going back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, employees have psychological, safety, social, esteem, and self-actualization needs.
- Psychological needs: basic human needs like air, food, water, clothing, and sleep.
- Safety needs: focus on individual security and well-being.
- Social needs: employees need to feel accepted and supported.
- Esteem needs: highlight the need for respect and self-esteem.
- Self-actualization: the highest in the hierarchy refers to a person’s need to reach their full potential.
Individually and collectively, these needs contribute to how motivated employees are in the workplace.
Applying this to employee relations will also help you create policies that prioritize key employee needs and make adequate provisions for them.
Some practical ways to address these needs would be to provide a conducive work environment where basic facilities are provided. Create a safe space for employees by addressing any organizational or managerial misconduct that may arise.
You’ll also need to ensure that employees have stability when it comes to job security. Additionally, work towards creating a safe and supportive work environment where employees are treated well and have a sense of belonging by enforcing strict anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies.
You also cannot ignore the self-actualization needs. Communicate your business goals and support your employee’s efforts to grow their skills and overall careers. That’ll help you create an environment where employees can reach their full potential.
While Maslow’s theory gives us a broad perspective on employees’ needs, you should take intentional steps to discover specific work-related needs your employees have and address them.
One way to achieve this is by implementing a feedback process that captures employee experience and the needs they might have. With this, you can attend to those needs that would have been overlooked.
2. Offer Career Development Opportunities
Providing career development opportunities for your employees is another way to improve employee relations in your organization. It’s also a mutually beneficial approach because employees will gain more knowledge to help them perform their jobs at a higher level.
Career development structures will improve your employee retention rate. A recent survey showed that 45% of employees would stay at their current job if they received more training. With this in mind, consider setting up training and development structures in your organization.
To achieve this, you can create upskill programs with courses relevant to your employees’ jobs and prepare them for senior positions. You can also initiate mentorship programs that help new or junior employees learn from more experienced employees within your company. This will prepare them for career growth opportunities within your company.
Using career coaching programs also contributes to improving employees’ development. It’s an effective way to provide guidance that helps your employees feel more invested in their careers and discover their unique abilities.
Your company may also offer financial support or tuition reimbursement for educational programs taken by your employees that are relevant to their professional development.
3. Encourage Open Communication and Transparency
Communicating with your staff through emails or notes alone is not only inefficient but also impersonal. Allowing two-way conversations with employees would be a more welcome approach. This is also crucial since employees make up your most valuable resources, and it’s important to hear from them.
As a business owner, it’s ideal to establish an open-door policy where employees can easily ask questions, make suggestions, and lodge complaints. You should also reduce bureaucratic processes when it comes to passing information across different levels and units within your organization.
For effective communication, ensure it’s easy for employees to reach coworkers or management when a need arises. One way to achieve this is by using small office phone systems in your company. Other key initiatives include having regular meetings and using team chat apps like Slack, Skype, or Discord. The great thing about these apps is that you can create separate groups or channels for specific purposes/teams.
Also, it would be a good idea to have a group where you can take employee feedback concerning work-related issues. Of course, these groups can be monitored, and some ground rules should be laid to avoid misuse of the platform. It’s also critical to encourage a workplace culture where employees use inclusive language to communicate so that no one feels left out.
4. Make Them Feel Special to the Organization
Employees who feel appreciated at work tend to be happier and more productive. That means they may also be less likely to look for other employment opportunities, reducing employee turnover. The efforts you make to ensure your employees feel appreciated indicate that you care about their personal well-being.
Basic ways to make your employees feel appreciated include adding financial incentives for exceeding expectations and ensuring adequate remuneration for their services. That means going well beyond the minimum wage to ensure your employees are fairly compensated. Not only that, but you also want to offer competitive bonuses to employees who go above and beyond for the company.
Another way to improve employee relations and make employees feel special to the organization is to celebrate achievements and milestones with them.
Moreover, implement award and recognition programs that reward top employee performance. Doing this will also encourage employee loyalty and commitment.
5. Focus on Work-Life Balance
Work-life balance is critical to improving employee relations. Beyond setting up policies, employers and employee relations managers must ensure that workers are available for their non-work engagements.
Your employees’ personal lives should not suffer because their jobs are too demanding. Recent studies by NCBI on different life domains and their levels of importance indicate how an average work-life balance should be reflected.
Typically, it covers health, family, friendships, leisure, and training activities, household management, and community involvement—all with their unique level of importance.
The research claims that when the balance is successfully implemented, both at work and at home, people feel more content.
Improve your employees’ work-life balance by ensuring their workload is not overwhelming. Follow up with your team to know which employees have excessive tasks and create a means of fixing that. It may require getting new employees or assigning some of the work to coworkers that are not as engaged.
You should also encourage flexible work hours and allow employees to take time off when they feel overwhelmed.
Work-life balance encompasses more than just workplace policies. Managers also need to show empathy concerning outside-of-work issues that workers may have. A healthy work-life balance goes a long way in creating an ideal work environment for employees.
In closing
Healthy employee relationships promote a pleasant work environment where employees feel content at work. This is why you need to adopt an effective employee relations strategy if you don’t have one already.
Your employee relations plan should foster employee satisfaction and prioritize their well-being, as this will improve productivity.
We’ve discussed 5 tactics to improve employee relations and help you achieve strong professional bonds with your employees. They include:
- Understanding and addressing employee needs
- Offering career development opportunities so that they experience growth
- Ensuring honest communication and transparency
- Making employees feel special
- Helping employees achieve work-life balance.
Employee relationship management is not only the responsibility of top leadership within your organization but also of every employee. So work towards mutual and inclusive participation towards creating a healthy and happy work environment.
By understanding and implementing these tactics, you can significantly improve positive employee relations in your organization.
