Creating good employee relations

There is no single answer to what creates good employee relations – it will depend on your organisation, the context of your work and your working practice. But having a focus on and interest in employee relations will help you take positive steps and anticipate problems.

It’s important that you take steps to understand how employee relations are working in your organisation, and that you do this regularly. For example, you may want to carry out an annual staff survey.

Managers

It’s also important to understand how confident managers are in carrying out key aspects of employee relations, and ensuring they are given the skills and training they need to do this well. CIPD research has shown that the two skills line managers find most difficult to apply are ‘managing conflict’ and ‘managing difficult conversations’. This clearly shows that organisations need to consider improving training in these two key areas to improve employment relations.

Further CIPD research, Managing conflict in the modern workplace found that employers are positive about the employee relations in their workplace, with more than 75% describing it as ‘good’ or ‘very good’. Employees are also positive, with overwhelming majority reporting good working relationships with colleagues. Individuals were also generally positive about their relationship with their line manager. With 40% describing it as good.

The role of HR

Many HR functions have taken on a more ‘strategic’ focus over the past two decades, meaning there’s a risk of managers being isolated as they assume more day-today responsibility for managing employee relations. At the same time, less value is often attached to the role of employee relations as an HR discipline, with employee relations and conflict management typically viewed as operational and transactional in nature. This view needs to change. Against a backdrop of political and economic change and highly pressurised work environments, there has never been a greater need for the expertise offered by employee relations specialists.

Not only does the requirement for employee relations expertise need reasserting, but it’s reach needs broadening so that managing the employment relationship, and conflict, is seen as an integral part of every people professional’s role. The more traditional, formal employee relations and negotiating skills need to be complemented with a much wider set of competencies, such as consultation, surveying and interpreting employee attitudes, spotting potential signs of conflict and early resolution of differences between employees and management.