Recently I’ve been following the plight of Boeing, and it has me thinking about employee and employer relations, and how important they are to the success of an organization. Let me make this clear, I’m not taking a stance on this situation, I’m looking at the value of a workplace where employees are employers are not in conflict, and the steps HR can take to help build this relationship.
No one enjoys a confrontational work environment. It’s stressful for employees, management, and is poor for productivity. Based on a quick and dirty meta-analysis of research, there are a number of benefits to a healthy employee-employer relationship. I’m sure none of the following will be shocking to anyone:
Top 3 Benefits of a Healthy Employee-Employer Relationship
- Happier Employees = Increased Productivity (particularly in knowledge workers)
- Better Employee Engagement = More discretionary effort. I break employee satisfaction out from engagement, as for personal reasons I think they measure slightly different things, and thus have different impacts. I view productivity as efficiency, and discretionary effort as whether a not an employee consistently goes the extra mile in to meet the organizations goals.
- Increased Committment to the Organization. With fewer employees leaving the organizaton, you reeduce turnover costs (both quantitative costs of replacement/loss of productivity, and qualitative such as socialization, employee knowledge, informal roles.
While their are far more benefits, I feel these cover some of the most pressing goals of most managers and executivees within their organizations.
So what can HR do to help maintain or build a healthy work environment?
- Ensure interpersonal relationships are successful by building the tools and accountabilities (what gets measured, gets done) at all levels for staff to strive towards having good relationships. Studies have shown that a leading cause of employee stress (at all levels) are interpersonal conflicts. Recent Corporate Executive Board research has put respect, caring, and trust as the key factors in organizational relationships.
- Being both an employee voice, and a voice to the employees. Building these channels, and acting in these roles are essential for uncovering small issues before they become large problems.
- Provide Learning and Development Opportunities to all employees (significant boost to employee commitment)
- Fair compensation. Employees should be viewed as investments, not costs. In fact a Watson Wyatt study found effective human resources practices lead to positive financial outcomes more often thanpositive financial outcomes lead to good practices.
- Ensure a safe work environment (both physically and mentally). I view this similar to Maslow’s pyramid. You need to feel safe, before you can move to the next steps.
Proactive HR departments are already consciously doing many of these things and more. But this is really just the beginning, I think organizations are going to be facing far more challenging times, and the days of being able to make autocratic moves while remaining competitive are going the way of video rental stores. Employees are more mobile than ever before, governments are (sometimes) more willing to step in to protect employees, and people are ever more a competitive advantage when used correctly.
So if you’re currently dealing with a conflict filled work environment, I wish you the best of luck in making the culture shift – for both your employees, and organizations sake.
If anyone has any stories of successful improvement of employee-employer relationships, or methods they use to improve their organizations please feel free to let me know.