CH 14

Building Positive Employee Relations

What is Employee Relations? is the activity that involves establishing and maintaining the positive
employee-employer relationships that contribute to satisfactory productivity, motivation, morale, and
discipline, and to maintaining a positive, productive, and cohesive work environment.

Employers can do many things to build positive employee relations. Some examples include:

 providing good training, fair appraisals, and competitive pay and benefits
 Employers also institute special “employee relations programs” to maintain positive employee
relations. These include employee fair treatment programs, improving employee relations
through improved communications, developing employee recognition/relations programs, and
having fair and predictable disciplinary procedures.

How to ensure fair treatment

Ensuring Fair Treatment – Anyone who has suffered unfair treatment at work knows it is
demoralizing. Unfair treatment reduces morale, poisons trust, and negatively impacts employee
relations and performance. Employees of abusive supervisors are more likely to quit, and to
report lower job and life satisfaction and higher stress. The effects on employees of such
abusiveness are particularly pronounced where the abusive supervisors seem to have support
from higher-ups.

At work, fair treatment reflects concrete actions such as “employees are treated with respect,”
and “employees are treated fairly.”

Reasons for fair treatment.

1. Unfairness can backfire on the company. For example, victims of unfairness exhibit
more workplace deviance, such as theft and sabotage. Victims of unfairness also suffer a
range of ill effects including poor health, strain, and psychological conditions.
2. Unfairness leads to increased tensions between the employee and his or her family or
partner.
3. Abusive supervisors undermine their subordinates’ effectiveness and may prompt them
to act destructively.
4. In terms of employee relations, employees’ perceptions of fairness relate positively to
enhanced employee commitment; enhanced satisfaction with the company, job, and
leader; and enhanced organizational citizenship behaviors.

5. The employer and the manager are responsible for ensuring that the employee is
treated fairly and with respect (and that its employees treat each other respectfully).

Research Insight – A study illustrates the effects of unfairness. College instructors first
completed surveys concerning the extent to which they saw their colleges as treating
them with procedural and distributive justice.
 Procedural justice refers to justice in the allocation of rewards or discipline, in terms of
the procedures being evenhanded and fair;

Distributive justice refers to a system for distributing rewards and discipline in which
the actual results or outcomes are evenhanded and fair.) Procedural justice items
included, for example, “In general, the department/college’s procedures allow for
requests for clarification or for additional information about a decision.” Distributive
justice items included, “I am fairly rewarded considering the responsibilities I have.”

Bullying and Victimization

The U.S. government (www.stopbullying.gov) says most would agree that bullying involves
three things:

 Imbalance of power. People who bully use their power to control or harm, and the
people being bullied may have a hard time defending themselves.
 Intent to cause harm. Actions done by accident are not bullying; the person bullying has
a goal to cause harm.
 Repetition. Incidents of bullying happen to the same person over and over by the same
person or group, and that bullying can take many forms, such as:
1. Verbal: name-calling, teasing
2. Social: spreading rumors, leaving people out on purpose, breaking up friendships
3. Physical: hitting, punching, shoving
4. Cyberbullying: using the Internet, mobile phones, or other digital technologies to
harm others

Improving Employee Relations through Communication Programs

This employer uses an open-door policy to encourage communication between employees and
managers, an employee handbook covering basic employment information, and “the
opportunity to keep abreast of University events and other information of interest through the
website, e-mail, and hard copy memoranda.

Two-way communication also helps management know what’s bothering employees.

Approaches may include:

1. hosting employee
2. Focus groups,
3. Making available ombudsman and suggestion boxes,
4. Implementing telephone, messaging, and Web-based hotlines.
5. Exit interviews, discussed in an earlier chapter, provide another opportunity to sample
the quality of one’s employee relations.
 6. Using Organizational Climate Surveys – Similarly, employers use attitude, morale, or
climate surveys to support employee relations efforts. They use the surveys to “take the
pulse” of their employees’ attitudes toward a variety of organizational issues including
leadership, safety, role clarity, fairness, and pay, and to thereby get a sense of whether
their employee relations need improvement.

Develop Employee Recognition / Relations Programs

There are other employee relations programs. Most notable here are the employee
recognition and award programs.

Instituting recognition and service award programs requires planning.

For example,

 Instituting a service award program requires reviewing the tenure of existing

employees and establishing meaningful award periods (1 year, 5 years, etc.). It also
requires establishing a budget, selecting awards, having a procedure for monitoring
what awards to actually award, having a process for giving awards (such as special
dinners or staff meetings), and periodically assessing program success.
 Similarly, instituting a recognition program requires developing criteria for recognition
(such as customer service, cost savings, etc.), creating forms and procedures for
submitting and reviewing nominations, selecting meaningful recognition awards, and
establishing a process for actually awarding the recognition awards.

Use Employee Involvement Programs

Employers encourage employee involvement in various ways. Some organize focus groups. A
focus group is a small sample of employees who are presented with a specific question or issue
and who interactively express their opinions and attitudes on that issue with the group’s
assigned facilitator.

Trends Shaping HR: Digital and Social Media

Many employers use social media, such as the pinboard-style photo-sharing Web site Pinterest,
to encourage involvement. One survey found that just over half of employers use social media
tools to communicate with employees and to help develop a sense of community.

Using Employee Involvement Teams

1. Suggestion teams are temporary teams whose members work on specific analytical
assignments, such as how to cut costs or raise productivity.
 2. problem-solving teams. These identify and research work processes and develop
solutions to work-related problems.
3. A quality circle is a type of formal problem-solving team, usually composed of 6 to 12
specially trained employees who meet weekly to solve problems affecting their work
area.
4. A self-managing/self-directed work team is a small (usually 8 to 10 members) group of
carefully selected, trained, and empowered employees who basically run themselves
with little or no outside supervision, usually for the purpose of accomplishing a specific
task or mission.
5. Using Suggestion Systems – Most employers understand that employee suggestions can
produce significant savings (and, through involvement and rewards, improved employee
relations). The head of one company that designs and installs suggestion systems for
employers lists the essential elements of an effective employee suggestion system as
follows:
✓ Senior staff support
✓ A simple, easy process for submitting suggestions
✓ A strong process for evaluating and implementing suggestions
✓ An effective program for publicizing and communicating the program
✓ A program focus on key organizational goals
Most everyone reading this textrightfully views themselves as ethical people, so why include
ethics in a human resource management book? For three reasons:

1. First, ethics is not theoretical.

2. Second, it is hard to even imagine an unethical company with good employee relations.

3. Third, ethical dilemmas are part of human resource management.

Ethics and Employee Rights

Protecting employee rights is thus part and parcel of all the employment laws we discuss in this
book. Although ethics, fairness, and morality help govern how employers treat their employees,
the enforceable rights embedded in employment law also govern what employers and
employees can do.

What Shapes Ethical Behavior at Work?

Why do people do bad things? It’s complicated. However, one review of over 30 years of ethics
research concluded that three factors combine to determine the ethical choices we make.
 1. The Person (What Makes Bad Apples?) First, because people bring to their jobs their
own ideas of what is morally right and wrong, each person must shoulder much of the
credit (or blame) for his or her ethical choices.

2. Which Ethical Situations Make for Ethically Dangerous Situations (Bad Cases)? People
seemed more likely to “do the wrong thing” in “less serious” situations, in other words,
the problem is that one thing leads to another; people start by doing small bad things
and then “graduate” to larger ones.

3. What Are the “Bad Barrels”?—The Outside Factors That Mold Ethical Choices? Finally,
the study found that some companies produce more poisonous social environments
(outside factors or “barrels”) than do others; these bad environments in turn foster
unethical choices. Those that encouraged employees to consider the well-being of
everyone had more ethical choices. Most importantly, companies whose managers put
in place “a strong ethical culture that clearly communicates the range of acceptable and
unacceptable behavior” suffered fewer unethical decisions.

How Managers Can Create More Ethical Environments

Reduce Job-Related Pressures – If people did unethical things at work solely for personal gain
or because they were “bad people,” it perhaps would be understandable (though inexcusable).
The scary thing is that it’s often not personal interests but the pressures of the job.

One study illustrates this. It asked employees to list their reasons for taking unethical actions at
work. For most of these employees,
1. “meeting schedule pressures,”
2. “meeting overly aggressive financial or business objectives,” and
3. “helping the company survive” were the three top causes.
4. “Advancing my own career or financial interests” ranked about last. In any case,
reducing such “outside” pressures helps head off ethical lapses.

How Human Resource Managers Can Create More Ethical Environments

1. Institute Ethics Policies And Codes – Employers use ethics policies and codes to signal
that their companies are serious about ethics.
2. Enforce The Rules – Codifying such rules without enforcing them is futile. To paraphrase
one study, managers’ statements can reduce unethical behavior on the part of
employees, but knowing that behavior is actually being monitored and enforced has the
biggest impact.
3. Encourage Whistleblowers – Some companies encourage employees to use hotlines
and other means to “blow the whistle” on the company when they discover fraud.
 4. Foster The Right Culture – Managers therefore have to think through how to send the
right signals to their employees—in other words, create the right culture. Doing so
includes:
 Clarifying expectations. First, make clear what values you want subordinates to
follow.
 Using signs and symbols. Symbolism—what the manager actually does—ultimately
does the most to create and sustain the company’s culture. As we said earlier,
managers need to “walk the talk.” They can’t say “don’t falsify the financials” and
then do so themselves.
 Providing physical support. The physical signs of the employer’s values—its
incentive plan, appraisal system, and disciplinary procedures, for instance—send
strong signals regarding what employees should and should not do. For example, do
the promotions employees get reward ethical behavior or penalize it?

How Human Resource Managers Can Create More Ethical Environments

1. Hire Right – hire more ethical people.” Start by using recruitment materials that
emphasize your firm’s commitment to honest dealings and ethics. Then use screening
tools like honesty tests, background checks, and interview

2. Use Ethics Training – Ethics training usually involves showing employees how to
recognize ethical dilemmas, how to apply codes of conduct to resolve problems, and
how to use personnel activities like disciplinary practices in ethical ways.
3. Use Rewards And Discipline – Employees expect you to punish unethical conduct and to
reward ethical conduct.
4. Institute Employee Privacy Policies –At work, employee privacy violations include
intrusion , publication of private matters, disclosure of medical records, and
appropriation of an employee’s name or likeness for commercial purposes. In practice,
background checks, monitoring off-duty conduct and lifestyle, drug testing, workplace
searches, and workplace monitoring trigger most privacy violations

Trends Shaping HR: Digital and Social Media

Monitoring

Such monitoring, as we said, raises privacy issues. The dilemma is that it can also boost profits.
For example, employers routinely use software to monitor (usually secretly) what their
employees are doing online. When one employer noticed high employee overtime claims,

Managing Employee Discipline

The purpose of discipline is to encourage employees to behave sensibly at work. Discipline is

necessary when an employee violates a rule. Proper disciplinary procedures are important for
several reasons. For one thing, positive employee relations require trust, and few personnel
actions will undermine trust as will arbitrary discipline. Legal concerns are another reason.

The Three Pillars ‫اعمدة‬of Fair Discipline

1. Rules And Regulations – An acceptable disciplinary process begins with a set of clear
disciplinary rules and regulations. The rules should cover problems such as theft,
destruction of company property, drinking on the job, and insubordination.

2. Penalties – A system of progressive penalties is the second pillar of effective discipline.

The severity of the penalty usually depends on the offense and the number of times it
has occurred.

3. Appeals ‫متابعة‬Process – Third, an appeals process should be part of the disciplinary

process. The aim here is to ensure that supervisors mete out discipline fairly. An appeals
process is essential but is no panacea. The employer can sometimes mitigate the effects
of unfair discipline by catching it during an appeal. However, some supervisory behavior
may be impossible to overcome

How to Discipline an Employee

1. Make sure the evidence supports the charge of employee wrongdoing.
2. Make sure to protect the employees’ due process rights.
3. Adequately warn the employee of the disciplinary consequences of his or her alleged
misconduct.
4. Have the employee sign form.
5. The rule that allegedly was violated should be “reasonably related” to the efficient and safe
operation of the particular work environment.
6. Objectively investigate the matter before administering discipline.
7. “The Investigation should produce substantial evidence of misconduct.
8. Apply applicable rules, orders, or penalties without discrimination
9. Maintain the employee’s right to counsel. For example, all union employees generally have
the right to bring a representative to an interview that they reasonably believe might lead
to disciplinary action.
10. Don’t rob your subordinate of his or her dignity, for instance by disciplining the person in
public.
11. Listen to what the person has to say.
12. Remember that the burden of proof is on you. In U.S. society, a person is considered
innocent until proven guilty.
13. Get the facts. Don’t base your decision on hearsay evidence or on your general
impression.
14. Don’t act while angry.
 15. Adhere to your company’s disciplinary appeals process.
Discipline without Punishment

Traditional discipline processes have two main drawbacks:

 First, no one likes being punished.

 Second, punishment tends to gain short-term compliance, but not long-term
cooperation.

Discipline without punishment (or alternative or non punitive discipline) aims to avoid these
drawbacks by reducing the punitive nature of the discipline. Steps include the following:

1. Issue an oral reminder for a first infraction ‫مخالفة‬.

2. Should another incident arise within 6 weeks, issue a formal written reminder, and
place a copy in the employee’s personnel file. Also, hold a second private discussion with
the employee.

3. Give a paid, one-day “decision-making leave.” If another incident occurs in the next 6
weeks or so, tell the employee to take a 1-day leave with pay, and to consider whether he
or she wants to abide by the company’s rules. When the employee returns to work, he or
she meets with you and gives you a decision.

4. If no further incidents occur in the next year or so, purge ‫ نظف‬the 1-day paid suspension
from the person’s file. If the behavior is repeated, the next step is dismissal.

Employee Engagement Guide For Managers

Companies Become “Best Companies to Work For”

We began this chapter by noting that some companies are better to work for than others,
and we therefore focused on programs managers use to cultivate the positive employee
relations that contribute to being a best place to work.

The “Best Companies to Work For” – Each year, several organizations publish “Best
Companies to Work For” lists, The Great Place to Work Institute defines a great workplace
“as one where employees trust the people they work for, have pride in the work they do,
and enjoy the people they work with.” They say that the companies on their great
companies list “have the highest levels of trust, strongest evidence of employee
engagement and demonstrate the best applied management practices and programs” as
defined by the institute’s proprietary models.