Employee Relations

Positive Employee Relations is Beneficial to the Workplace

A positive relationship between a company's management and its employees can have a profound effect on its success. These relations include conflict resolution techniques and providing workers with a positive workplace identity. Positive employee relations can help an organization avoid conflicts and increase a sense of teamwork. Positive corporate culture leads to positive employee relations, which attracts more client’s, new business, challenging projects and more profits to the organization.

Advantages of Positive Employee Relations:

1. Employees feel that they have a purpose in the workplace
2. It maintains healthy relationship among all the staff, boss and colleagues
3. It encourages more creativity, new innovative techniques and ideas from employees
4. It improves moral level of employee’s and makes them more responsible
5. It reduces costs related to (due to high turn-over rate):
1. Training new employees 
2. Drug testing new employees
3. Background checks for new employees
6. Employees typically use less sick days
7. It increases quality and productivity of work 
8. It makes employees more enthusiastic and focused towards the work and management’s expectations 

How to Communicate with Employees:

1. Newsletter
2. Memo
3. Conference Call
4. Email
5. In-service
6. Employee Event 

Case Study:

 

When personal issues affect employee performance (Purdue, 2005):

Karen Smith has been employed in your department for six years. During her tenure she has been a valuable employee, although during the past two years you've observed a drop in her work performance due to tardiness and absenteeism. The whole department is aware that Karen is facing many problems at home, and her co-workers have covered for her and even completed work for her when necessary, but they are beginning to complain. 

Although you had hoped that Karen's issues would improve and she would return to being the dependable employee you once knew, you must confront her about the work piling up. 

When you meet with her the next morning and begin the discussion of her work performance, she starts to cry and tells you her husband has been abusive, her son is taking drugs, and she's been battling alcoholism and depression. You try to help her talk through these issues. You suggest that she visit the Employee Assistance Program and see her physician, and by the end of the meeting, she seems better. She leaves your office and starts a one-week vacation that you've just granted so she can begin to deal with these issues. 

You feel she is taking steps to improve her situation. You realize that you never really did discuss her work performance, but you're confident that she'll be fine once she takes your advice.
  
What did this supervisor do right?

• Scheduling a private meeting with the employee to discuss her work performance issues was a positive step.
• The supervisor provided the employee with contact information for the Employee Assistance Program, stressing that EAP is a free, confidential service available to employees and their families to deal with issues, problems, or concerns. This gave the employee an avenue to seek help and begin the road to recovery.
• The supervisor recognized that this employee might need time off to begin dealing with these issues. Often, employees feel they must deal with home and work issues in tandem.

What could this supervisor have done better?

• Discussing performance issues, absenteeism, or tardiness with an employee when you first begin to observe the problem can help resolve it at the lowest level possible. When problems are ignored, they can escalate and are almost always harder to handle.
• This supervisor allowed himself to be swayed from the purpose of the meeting, which was to discuss work-related issues. Information was provided to the employee on help available for issues outside of the office, but the conversation should have stayed focused on the work performance and the expectations being laid out. Upon the employee's return from leave, this conversation will have to start all over again.
• Employee Relations should be contacted to discuss this case. Vacation time might have been appropriate, but Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) information should also have been provided. Depending on proper medical documentation, provided by the employee's health care provider, she might have qualified for a medical/sick leave of absence. If an employee discusses the possibility of a serious health condition, such as depression or alcoholism, or treatment for such, and needs time off to address these problems, FMLA leave information should be provided.
• If the employee needs additional time off beyond the job-protected 12 weeks of leave, then Employee Relations would have to consider whether the employee's condition rises to the level of a disability as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If Employee Relations determines that the employee is protected under the ADA, then additional leave could be a reasonable accommodation.

- Connie Reckowsky
Employee Relations