Employee Relations Articles

Corporations with a high employee churn rate face expensive recruitment/training costs, loss of productivity, and a remaining workforce that ends up overworked and therefore more likely to quit.  Recognizing the most common causes of employee turnover allows a company to take steps to hire and retain qualified personnel.  

Downsizing, restructuring, permanent layoffs – all these terms for reduction in force point to one inevitable truth.  There are fewer jobs to go around and people are going to be unhappy about it.  This is not a minor concern.  Act now to reduce the anxiety your employees go through during these stressful times.  This will have a huge impact on the success of your newly reorganized company.  

The best way to safeguard your job in troubled times is by becoming indispensable.  Increasing your level of personal productivity makes it less likely that your position will be cut.  The same principle applies to the people who work for you.  No company wants to lose the employees who are bringing in revenue or reducing operating costs.  Here are some areas to review for ways to increase your value.  Pass these on to your team so you can make this a group effort.

As your corporation continually transforms itself to meet new challenges, helping your employees cope with any potential disruption should be a top priority.  Your company changes may involve expansion/reduction of your workforce, introduction of new technologies, or modification of benefits.  These are just a few examples of the types of adjustments businesses make all the time to remain competitive.  How these plans are introduced to your staff makes a big difference in whether they choose to resist or cooperate with you.

Implementing an effective recognition and rewards program for your company starts with a few simple steps.  

First, make a list of attitudes and actions you want to encourage.  These could be related to quality control scores, attendance, workplace safety, or other types of beneficial conduct.  You can even reward employees who volunteer to work overtime when others are absent or out sick.  

Employee recognition is much more than the occasional pat on the back.  Handing out compliments on a regular basis is just the start.  Look for practical ways to show your workers that their success is important to the overall health of the company.  This creates an incentive for even higher levels of performance in the future.

The most reliable path to achieving short and long term goals is through intelligent performance management.  Many methods for setting and reaching individual targets also apply to working successfully with a team.  Here are some questions to ask yourself as you review your current way of getting things done. 

There are many kinds of negative events that can discourage your workers. Most businesses experience a reduction in staffing levels, a dip in the price of company stock, or an incident of workplace violence at some point. If your company has recently gone through a difficult time, the entire workforce has probably suffered.  After dealing with the immediate fallout from a serious problem, you should turn your attention to rebuilding employee morale.  Here are 3 places to start.

Employee healthcare is a complex issue involving a vast array of market forces, endless regulations, and hundreds of billions of dollars each year nationwide.   However, you don’t have to be an expert to know that prices are going up.  The panel is out on who is ultimately to blame but there is no lack of finger pointing.  Profit driven insurance companies, inadequate government funding, and a shortage of qualified medical professionals all play a role.  To further complicate matters, lack of good preventive care (among both the insured and uninsured) leads to expensive surgeries and costly ongoing drug treatments. The staggering number of emergency room visits each year in the U.S. takes a further toll on already strained resources.  

The role of managing a company’s human resources is never more crucial than during an economic upheaval.  This is not the time to make things worse by giving in to panic.  Decisions made in haste can have far reaching negative consequences.  Instead of going into “crisis mode”, view this as an opportunity to regroup and plan for the future.  If your business is fundamentally sound, there is no reason for it to flounder when faced with change.  Your goal during this time is to be flexible and look for ways to increase efficiency.