Why Good Employee Relationship Management is Important for Your Business?
What is employee relationship management?
HR's approach to employee welfare has been ever-evolving. Over time, this concept has seen a shift from employee satisfaction to employee engagement and now has arrived at employee relationship management. This newest iteration seems to be holistic among all its predecessors and focuses on everything from career progression to fruitful work relationships and evolving opportunities.
Research studies have found that teams become more productive, agile, and innovative when they are self-directed. This simply doesn't mean that teams should get rid of managers, but the effort should be to share a good relationship. While so, they can be coaches in the career journey of employees, and focus on problem-solving, building relationships, etc.
Therefore, employee relationship management is the process of managing workforce relationships by removing roadblocks, setting goals, and providing continuous mentorship.
Why employee relationship management is important?
To facilitate a better relationship and collaborative conversation between managers and employees, both must lean into bi-directional feedback loops. It will help both of them to make improvements, provide support and empower each other. Constant coaching and mentoring are so much value embedded that it can crave the employee to stay within the job. So, the secret to better employee relationships is hidden in the learning and development component too. Obviously, a better relationship will let them align their short-term or long-term career aspirations, and job roles to reach their full potential.
With the world changing so quickly, it’s difficult to keep up
Employers who invest in ERM are more likely to have employees who are satisfied with their jobs, which means they’ll be more productive and stick around longer
Role of HR in employee relationship management
From having limited access to information to significantly impacting employees with their power, influence, and authority - the role of HR has unfolded. There is no clear answer on how have they struggled to figure out things as they go, but yes, they have begun to be comfortable with the ever-changing environment, ambiguity, and risk. Most importantly, they began to bridge the gap between management and employees to unionize the company's success.
Corporate strategists and high-performing managers are asserting over the decades that human resources are the prime thing to gain success. Amid the turbulent business scenarios, they have to deal with several questions - How to deal with changing employee-management expectations and equations? compensation and performance, shifting new talent demands, exploring career advancements, and even furloughing employees, etc.? Of course, there are several ways to answer these questions and some ways are better than others. Yet, to outperform the competitors, they have to be smarter in building strong employee relationships.
Role of managers in employee relationship management
How can the HR professionals help in this? Well, they can play these roles-
- Be a coach, mentor, philosopher, and guide
- Practice Management by Objectives (MBO) approach
- Allow participation at the early planning stage
- Ensure bi-directional feedback and discourse
- Enable consultation and work flexibilities
- Be knowledgeable on emerging HR trends
- Understand the legal aspects and compliance
- Allow open communications and dialogues
- Mediate with the right conversation tones
- Handle grievances and dispute handling
Strategies to improve employee relationship management
Maintaining positive employee relationships will have a huge impact on your company's work culture. With best practices, it will improve morale, ensure team building, reduce conflicts, and foster productivity. Below are five strategies to map your journey-
- Set the right first impression-
- Speak positively about them
- Augment communication mediums
- Set Career Orientation
Meanwhile, companies can work to improve work-life balance, set the privacy policy, and help team members to be happier, healthier, and prosperous.
Without ERM, your employees can feel disengaged and unmotivated
Implementing ERM will help your company stay competitive in the marketplace and grow
Employee relationship management software
Employee relationship management software is a techno-enabled solution that helps companies to manage the relationship between all the employees in a company. Such relations can be between employer-employee or employee-employee. Nowadays, companies are increasingly opting for software-based solutions to manage employee relationships at the workplace. With this, they can streamline communication, track messages, and allow showcasing of social functions.
Studies say that transparency in the workplace can enhance productivity and employee satisfaction by up to 71%. Employee Management will allow activity integration, and knowledge sharing and provide a place where they are heard and respected. Also, the software provides a platform that can act as a suggestion box for employees to voice their ideas and therefore strengthen team dedication. Undoubtedly, motivated and happier employees result in better customer satisfaction and added revenues.
Benefits of using employee relationship management software
Employee relationship management software rationalizes the internal operations and works across desktops and mobiles including Android and iOS. What else can an Employee Management software do? Check more benefits below-
- Share ideas and knowledge across the organization
- Facilitate work innovation and brainstorming
- Nurture a problem-solving mentality and healthy criticism
- Initiate and improve positive employee engagement
- Send survey, collect responses and share feedback
- Keep the employees updated with the policies of the company
- Build and reinforce the strong HR culture of your organization
With the rapid changes in technology, business environments are becoming increasingly demanding
A good ERM strategy will help your company adapt more quickly and efficiently to changing business environments