Three Tips for Improving Employee Relations

Dr. Ryan Giffen

Managing your employee relations will help to guarantee your best employees will stick with your company for years to come. Employee relations work similarly to any other type of relationship in your life. People will stay around if they are happy. The trick is to be sure that your employees are happy with the way things are in your work environment. 

What Are Employee Relations? 

Employee relations are the efforts a business takes to build, maintain, and strengthen the relationship between an employer and its employees. 

All companies benefit by implementing a program like this in their workplace. You may have one person dedicated to managing employee relations full-time. Or maybe you would like to design a team of people who would work together to develop a strong employee relations system. Either way, learning more about employee relations skills can be a huge benefit. 

Why is it Important to Have an Employee Relations Program? 

The best way to improve your employee relations is to understand what the benefits are to this type of program. It is more than opening up communication between the employer and their employees. With the right type of program in place, you can take a multi-sided approach to create a better work environment for all. 

3 Ways to Improve Your Employee Relations 

Now that you understand the importance of an employee relations program, here are a few tips you can use to improve things in your work environment. 

Encourage Open Communication 

Communication is the key to having a successful employee relations program. It's good to have a work environment where employees are comfortable sharing ideas. Good leadership management skills can also be very useful.  Having these skills makes it easier to create an environment where everyone feels at ease while communicating. As more people share their ideas about how to make the workplace better, your company will begin to benefit from this program in more ways than one. This is how you will lay the groundwork for your new employee relations program. 

Make Employee Appreciation a Necessity 

Another primary area is making your workers feel valued. A recent study showed that 79% of people who quit their jobs stated they felt a lack of appreciation as one of the main causes. Don’t simply think that your employees already know you appreciate what they do. Instead, make it a priority to recognize them for a job well done. Take the time to speak with them individually, and let them know specifically what you like about their job performance. Showing your employees how much you appreciate their hard work will help improve your employee relations. It will also improve momentum all throughout the workplace. 

Offer Your Employees More Opportunities to Grow 

As your company grows and prospers, you should also allow your employees to do the same. With industries being more competitive, it’s more important than ever before to give your workers the opportunity to make themselves more desirable to their employers. 

So many employees today quit their jobs because they want better development opportunities. They want more chances to move up the ladder. And they would like to grow along with the companies they currently work for. 

By creating a work environment where the employees feel like they can grow successfully, it will help improve employee relations across the board. 

About Dr. Ryan Giffen

With over 20 years of experience, Dr. Ryan Giffen is an expert in human relations and business culture. His career began in hospitality, leading operations and human resource departments for Fortune 500 companies and the like. Not long after, Ryan found his passion for teaching and consulting. He earned a Ph.D. in Hospitality Management with a Human Resources focus from Iowa State University and now works as an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach. For over a decade, he continues to research and speak on organizational culture, relationship intelligence, and leadership effectiveness. Ryan is also the founder of Inospire, a company helping bosses and employees build stronger relationships with one another.  Lastly, Dr. Giffen is producer and host of the Corporate Shadow Podcast. a show helping everyday employees overcome workplace nonsense.