How To Have A Strong Employee/Employer Relationship

Example of a work team with good employee employer relations

Is your company on the road to success? If not, it could be because of weak employee/employer relations. Maintaining strong employee/employer relations has many advantages, including:

Increased productivity
Stronger employee loyalty
Streamlined conflict resolution

If your business could benefit from any or all of the above advantages, it’s worth your time to focus on building the relationship between you and your team members. Thankfully, there are a number of ways to do that. In this article, the management experts at Sling will discuss 15 easy methods to improve employee/employer relations.

How To Have Strong Employee/Employer Relations

1) Don’t Micromanage

Manager and employees with a good relationship

When you micromanage, you make your employees feel like they can’t do their job. That has a negative effect on their productivity and confidence.

One of the easiest ways to give your team members a modicum of control is to let them schedule their own work hours. Software like Sling allows you, the manager, to set up the schedule so that your employees can choose when they want to work.

2) Embrace Diversity

If you want your employee/employer relations to be strong and your business to be successful, hire a diverse workforce. Diversity in the workplace has the added bonus of promoting:

Better employee performance
A wider range of skills, talents, and experience
Creative innovation
Access to a broader client base

3) Maintain An Open-Door Policy

Open sign symbolizing employee employer relations

A great way to begin building your employee/employer relations is by maintaining an open-door policy. When your team members feel comfortable approaching you with questions, concerns, and new ideas, a natural give-and-take develops. That then serves to strengthen your employee/employer relations.

4) Work On Your People Skills

The relationship you have with your employees largely depends on people skills, such as:

Patience
Sympathy and empathy
Flexibility
Trust
Ability to listen

Traits like these go a long way toward strengthening your employee/employer relations.

5) Communicate With Your Employees Face-To-Face

Manager and employee communicating face to face

Don’t let your reliance on digital communication like email, texting, instant messaging, and webcams get in the way of face-to-face, in-person communication. Talk to your employees directly. Give them assignments personally rather than just through email.

Engage your team members in personal conversations to find out how they’re doing. When you’re physically present in your team members’ lives, your relationship will improve.

6) Conduct Performance Reviews

Performance reviews may not sound like a way to build strong employee/employer relations, but, done right, they can forge a bond between you and your team that will inspire them to greatness.

Schedule performance reviews at least every six months (once a quarter is even better). During these reviews, try to focus on the positive rather than always spotlighting the negative.

7) Create Employee Development Plans

In conjunction with your performance reviews, create an employee development plan for each team member. This will allow your employees to see the path to success and help them to know that you, their manager, are on their side.

8) Spend Quality Time With Your Employees

Coworkers spending quality time together

Just as good communication demands face-to-face contact, strong employee/employer relations require spending quality time with your employees. Go above and beyond the normal team meetings. Spend some time with your team in the trenches to foster the sense of camaraderie that is essential for a strong working relationship.

9) Delegate

When you delegate, you give employees the opportunity to get a feel for your responsibilities. This serves to teach them about what goes on in the business around them, and it helps you all understand where the team’s strengths and weaknesses lie.

10) Be Fair

Do your best to treat all your team members equally. This means:

Enforcing rules the same way for everyone
Exercising a positive attitude toward all employees
Rewarding hard work and success equally

By doing these things, you can avoid the sense of discontent that comes with perceived unfairness.

11) Improve Motivation

employee employer relations with motivation

To foster a strong employee/employer relationship, find ways to improve your team’s motivation. Activities such as focusing on the big picture, recognizing results, taking plenty of breaks, and staying healthy along the way can all forge strong bonds during a particularly difficult project.

12) Set Reasonable Goals

Don’t ask for the impossible. And don’t require your team members to do something that you wouldn’t do yourself. Instead, set reasonable goals and give your employees plenty of support in the process.

13) Include Employees In Important Decisions

Granted, there are some decisions that only you can make. But, whenever possible, include your employees in the decision-making process. This is especially crucial when the decision impacts policy, goals, and tools that affect the way your team works.

Give employees some input to help them feel valued and important. Doing so goes a long way toward strengthening the employee/employer relationship.

14) Be Honest

Honesty is always the best policy. Lying erodes trust, which damages employee/employer relations. So be honest with your employees in all things. Even if they don’t like what you have to say, they will at least appreciate and respect your openness.

15) Work By The Same Rules

Work chart for a team

Don’t let your status as a manager go to your head. Avoid making exceptions for yourself just because you’re a supervisor. When you play by the same rules as your employees, you avoid the dreaded “us versus them” scenario and build much stronger, longer-lasting employee/employer relations.

Make Strong Employee/Employer Relations A Priority

Strong employee/employer relations can take many forms. What works for one business may not work for another. So don’t try to model your employee/employer relations on someone else’s ideals.

Find what works for you, and then strive to maintain a good relationship with your team. When you make strong employee/employer relations a priority, you set your business on the road to success.

For more free resources to help you manage your business better, organize and schedule your team, and track and calculate labor costs, visit GetSling.com today.

See more in: Employee Management