The relationship between an organisation and an employee is critical to business success. While organisations invest generously in engaging their people focusing on individual motivators and interests, it is also extremely crucial to foster and maintain a strong work relationship with employees. Although each employee in an organisation acts as a building block, it is the collective effort that makes a difference to how successful a company is. When people come together in harmony, they are able to unleash the best of their potential as opposed to teams or cultures where they may feel oppressed or strained, which may in turn curb their performance.
Here are seven proven ways to build stronger work relationships with and amongst employees.
Be friendly to your employees
To create a good relationship with your employees, it very important to get friendly with them but this does not mean the employers should start sharing their personal problems with the employees. They just need to make the staff feel comfortable in front of them, providing them a safe environment where they feel valued.
Ask people for advice
Involving employees in every activity is very important. Companies can also get good inputs from their employees. Taking advice from employees will give them a feeling of importance. It is necessary for the companies to let their employees know that they are valued and their views in business activities matter.
Respect your employees
Employers need to respect the ideas shared by the employees. It is not necessary to always disagree with them. One can politely point out their mistakes and show an empathetic attitude. Such a culture should flow from the top, ensuring all the managers and peers are aware of how they behave with others around them.
Appreciate your employees
It is very important for the employers to appreciate the good work of the employees. This will encourage them to do well in the future as they start recognising the employers as builders of a good relationship. Also, appreciation is an important element to keep teams driven.
Implement autonomy
Employees should be given their space while working. Employers should not try to dictate them. Complete freedom should be given to the employees when they are working on any assignment.
Be transparent – Communicate well and often
Transparency plays a big role in creating an inclusive culture in an organisation. Maintaining transparency across all levels in the organisation becomes essential to build good relations with the employees. It is important to keep communicating with the staff and taking feedback from them about the work. It is also necessary to keep giving feedback to the employees on a daily basis.
Detect the most positive capabilities of people
Criticising employees on their shortcomings may demotivate them, which may hamper relations between the boss and employees. It is necessary to highlight the capabilities of people and try building on them by assigning projects which fit them the best rather than only targeting their weaknesses.
The same methods may not work for all organisations. Therefore, companies need to keep experimenting with various ways and actions and choose those that work best for them.
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To add, apart from relationship skills, focus on liberal practical needs of employees promoting welfare and dignity without stinginess, reserving from profits for employee welfare even in bad times and giving them regular bonuses and salary raises and rewards winning their trust and confidence and employee engagement in line with their talents and potentials and enquiring about their needs through dialogue and surveys, promoting talent attraction and retention, alongwith good employee relations skills promoting total employee love and care sharing profits and prosperity with employees consistently, employees first approach :
01. Provide good working infrastructure-office, stationary, canteen facilities, air conditionors, tools and tackles,
communication facilities, etc enabling dignified and productive work atmosphere and etiquette.
02. competitive salaries and benefits design as per employee needs, timely annual raises
03. liberal leave facilities, flexitime, travel expenses in line with cadre and dignified hotel stay and conveyance
04. learning and development ecosystems, library, training programs, professional magazines, seminars, etc
05. total and instant-timely liberal reward processes
06. family atmosphere, family involvement, dialogue with families and children and their development
07. work-life balance, no daily overtime, liberal overtime benefits and compensatory offs to be fair
08. liberal health care, life insurance, loan benefits for housing, marriage, furniture, vehicle, etc etc
09. meaningful performance counseling processes/dialogue, investing time in people, individuals and teams
10. participative realistic goal setting
11. simplified work procedures and approvals, not too many unproductive long meetings,
maintaining appointments, not making people wait
12. involvement of employees in corporate social responsibility, csr activities as per aptitude
13. timely instant grievance redressel both individual and collective, open door policy, removing every irritant in
the work atmosphere or hr policy or leadership behaviours, interpersonal relationships and team
relationships, employees working free from worry and irritation at all times.
14. Promptly move out employees not meeting values and performance objectives, and spoiling team work
and discipline and ethics of the organisation, not adding value to the organisation, demoralising other
employees too impacting productivity and ROI.
Engaged and satisfied employees promote customer care and business growth, profitability and ROI,
through visionary values based exemplary leadership promoting talent and prosperity of employees as family members with purposeful involvement and pride in work and the organisation linked to the overall business objectives, handled with dignity and care and involvement with professional growth prospects.
hope the points enable enhance investment and returns on meaningful employee relations at all times, able to attract and retain talent, employee fist approach.
best regards, kshantaram
Retired hrd consultant and leadership coach, India
Effective employee relations involve effective work and liberal welfare infrastructure and tools and tackles, competitive compensation and benefits, instant liberal rewards, learning and growth and career opportunities, removing irritants continuously for continuous improvement, moving out unproductive and indisciplined or unethical employees promptly demoralising others and lowering productivity, involvement of family and children and their development, work life balance, avoiding continuous overtime or long work hours, complete compensation for overtime, flexitime, liberal travel expenses and hotel stay and conveyance expenses, liberal housing-marriage-conveyance and study loans for self and children, learning and development ecosystem, simplified work systems and approvals, avoiding taking work home regularly, not distracting employees while at home in general, meaningful performance feedback and counseling-coaching and mentorship processes facilitating personal introspection, self-renewal and growth, thus promoting talent and growth and employee engagement levels winning trust and confidence of all employees and their long-term retention for enhanced talent engagement and ROI.
Employee first approach, maintaining reserves to cater to employee welfare and rewards/salary increases in dull times without deferring the same and demoralising employee morale, while well engaged employees could support the management and work with involvement in bad times supporting the management, coming up with business renewal plans, which would the outcome of positive dignified fair employee relations with love and total care for employees and their family.
kshantaram
Retired hrd consultant and leadership Coach. India.