EMPLOYEE RELATIONS

Employee Relations

Employee Relations

Introduction

One common topic in employee relations training is how to increase employee engagement. A comprehensive human resource training program should cover the development of an engagement strategy as well as cover the tools needed to assess the current engagement climate. There is a variety of drivers of engagement. One might argue that the largest driver of engagement has to do with the leaders of the company and how they interact and build relationships with coworkers. Employees that leave a company cite that a main reason of dissatisfaction is that they had a bad relationship with one of their leaders.

Thesis Statement

“Employee relations training can give human resources the tools they need to help their leaders encourage engagement. Employees that have financial difficulties are much less likely to feel attached to their work, even if they enjoy it. Financial stress does not drive employee engagement. A company must provide a good rewards system to foster more engagement.”

Discussion and Analysis

Employee relations practices are major causes of manifest problems such as low productivity, poor quality, missed delivery dates, and excessive costs. Personnel practices can be indirectly measured, for each manager, by the following standards:

Turnover in terms of voluntary resignations.

Attendance.

Number of promotions made within the manager operation and from his operation to other segments or functions of the enterprise.

Number, frequency, and severity of lost-time accidents and dispensary visits involving hourly employees.

Number and contributed value of ideas for improving operations which are submitted by hourly and salaried employees.

Training time and loss of productivity to break in new employees.

The existence or lack of formal orientation and indoctrination programs and regular follow-up meetings.

Frequency of staff meetings.

Use of management by objectives.

The existence or absence of organization charts, position descriptions, and performance standards.

The number, nature, and extent of expressed employee disappointments at all levels.

Difficulty or ease of recruitment of exempt employees-that is, the ratio of job offers to acceptances.

What has been done to develop and improve the performance of key people.

A manager should be held fully accountable for the proper use and development of his human resources. These simple quantitative measures, coupled with exit interviews, and counseling interviews by the human resources executive, will show how well or how poorly a manager is managing his human resources. (Eric, 2005)

Measurement of performance encompasses appraisal of individuals and the collective work group as well as feeding back results to those appraised. Simply stated, performance appraisal is an attempt to think clearly about what each person does, how well he does it, and what his future prospects are when viewed against the background of his total work situation, including the direction and opportunities which his manager has provided.

The fact of the matter is that, whether the manager intends it or not, his every word, every suggestion, every criticism, every look tells a man how his performance is being judged. Each builds him up or tears him down. Performance appraisal is the most sensitive part of the manager's job. Either he uses this managerial tool effectively to build loyalty, teamwork, cooperation, ...