8 elements to consider when building an Impactful Employee Relations Strategy for your business.
The term 'employee relations' refers to a business’s efforts to manage relationships between employers and employees. The outcome of effective and positive employee relationships has exponential benefits to your employees, your customers, your business, and its bottom line (profits).
Effective employee relations can be the difference between high-performing teams and on the opposite end of the spectrum, a toxic culture where high employee turnover and burnout are symptomatic of a costly problem often stemming from leadership.
All too often we see a strong intention from business’s leaders to change the culture through committing to improving employee relations only to have it undone by one or two people. When it comes to creating a positive employee relations strategy, the overall buy-in from everyone involved needs to be100%.
It is our fundamental belief and hence, flows through all our practices when it comes to working with businesses to design employee relations strategies, that if you have true alignment to yourself, your team, and your business; clarity, empowerment, engagement, fulfilment and sustainable success naturally flow! The key is to start with genuine connection and alignment, and we’re committed to showing businesses how.
Throughout this blog, we’re imparting some of our secrets of how we work to create a strong employee relation foundation in a time where employees are shouting at businesses to pay closer attention to getting this right!
Building authentic connections.
This step doesn’t begin when the employee joins your business, rather, it's from the first interaction they have with you and your business. True to laying a solid foundation in any relationship, their needs to be a mutual understanding of the benefit from investment both parties in the relationship will receive.
Where managers and employers go wrong is when they believe business relationships are purely transactional. The more time you spend building, nurturing, and understanding one another the stronger employees’ commitment.
When we meet with businesses we often meet with multiple employees throughout the business and a great way to conduct a ‘health check’ on the relationships that exist is by asking the question; Does the business/your manager care about you beyond what they get from you?
So how do you begin to build these authentic connections? Recognise that each employee is much more than the role they fill in your team and organisation. They have their own values and interests outside their employment and they are in your team or business for their own purpose/reason. Take the time to get to know and understand each person. Understanding their purpose, motivations, interests outside work, their passions; all the intricacies that make them who they are. It is through this investment that you begin engaging their head and their heart.
Offer transparency at every touchpoint. Trust underpins the success of a long-term relationship both in and out of the workplace. The more information that is freely and openly shared throughout the business, the more likely employees will go the extra mile to continue to honour that trust.
Put your people first, they’re powerful.
One of our core pillars that paves the way for how we operate and advise our clients at Mirrored Horizons is “embrace who we are”. This pillar recognises all the unique differences that each person possesses that cannot be replicated by another person. These unique combinations of skills, knowledge, and attributes make every individual uniquely valuable to each business.
When businesses begin to embrace each person for who they are, they can unlock their full potential. The sooner businesses realise that their most powerful asset is their people, the sooner they can break down barriers to further increase efficiencies, engagement, and overall output.
Every business we work with always sets intentions to hire the best person for each position in terms of their skills, knowledge, and experience. To keep your people both at the forefront of their professions and to keep them engaged in your business’s purpose, you must continue to invest in them as you would with any software or technical solution.
All too often we encounter businesses that have high employee turnover as they believe replacing a person or over resourcing is the best option to deal with an issue or a deficiency. Instead, businesses would ideally invest their time, resources, and money into further developing those individuals both personally and professionally. The bottom line, people are not disposable, nor replaceable and the sooner businesses adopt this mentality, the sooner they will begin to experience the positive differences this approach provides.
Consider If you had spent $150k on software, would you just replace it at the first sign of an issue? Or would you explore the different solutions that perhaps meant additional training that could help you get more out of the software? The same goes for the people who make up your team or business. You get out, what you put in!
Aligning yourself, your team, and the business.
True alignment can only occur where there is a genuine connection and those individuals in leadership positions are committed to increasing their understanding of their team. When managers and senior leadership seek first to understand, they begin to actively listen to the information that is being given and can work to develop ways to respond that is meaningful to their employees.
For example; if you are a marketing manager you will know that you must seek first to understand your customer; who they are, what they want, how they spend their time, and every other valuable insight you can gather to make your campaign a success. Similarly, as a manager, it is just as important to gather insights into the employees in your team. Whilst managers may be experts in their fields, too often they overlook the critical element of understanding what it means to manage people and as such, they move to micromanaging rather than understanding.
When you take the time to understand your team, who they are, what they want, what motivates them, how they spend their time, and what gets the most out of them you can begin to work to truly engage them. You begin to make decisions and communicate in a way that demonstrates your understanding and assign work that is interesting and challenging to each individual. Employees thrive when they are given autonomy and assigned work that aligns with their development aspirations and values.
Giving people work that energises them is an important part of aligning individuals with projects that play to their skills, strengths, and career aspirations. Creating strategies within your business that ensure individuals, teams and senior leadership are all working towards a common purpose creates an environment built on empowerment and clarity.
To be clear is to be kind.
In a world of distraction and interruption, clarity aids productivity and enables people to feel a sense of accomplishment. Gone are the days of power management where hoarding information was seen to be an effective management strategy; it simply does not work. In a world where nearly everything has become instantaneous, it is easy to get lost in the low-value tasks such as responding to every email in your inbox. These practices tend to have the opposite effect on productivity whilst simultaneously driving poor behaviours. It is these instantaneous behaviours that contribute to a culture that must always respond (regardless of time or place)!
Providing your team or business with cultural principles that clearly outline a standard of behaviours in working and all engagements is the easiest way to begin creating an environment where clarity is nurtured and accountability is adopted. It ensures businesses clearly articulate “the way we do things around here” and provides clear actionable behaviours that bring the business’s values to life. Your cultural principles become beacons that tell you when you are off track. They help to bring you back into alignment to act in accordance with what is expected. Cultural principles are directional in nature and application. They can assist in moving you through decision making as they provide reasoning as to ‘why’ you’re making that particular decision and hence, provide clear direction.
So many businesses are moving at such a fast pace and generating so many outputs that they create an environment where employees burn out. Over time this environment can also create many distractions as cracks begin to form and people vent their frustrations. One of the most important things a business can provide clarity on is the priorities. Being clear, realistic, and having an achievement focus in setting business priorities, team priorities along with individual priorities is crucial to effective employee relations.
Once everyone is clear on the business's purpose and direction, outlining the same for each team within the business and individual role expectations are the next step.
By aligning each employee’s role, key competencies, and priorities to the overall team/business purpose and continually re-enforcing this through regular check-ins, managers continue to provide alignment and clarity throughout each touchpoint. Adopting a coaching approach to management whilst utilising MH’s simple tools will provide the framework to provide effective feedback and engage employees to take ownership of the road map ahead.
Showing meaningful appreciation.
Businesses need to recognise when individuals or teams go above and beyond to achieve an outcome or deadline without this then becoming the new expectation. Immediately following such an effort, effective managers will know how to show meaningful appreciation based on their teams’ needs, motivators, and interests (because they have created authentic connection!!)
Too often people forget to show appreciation for the effort teams and individuals display as many businesses adopt the mindset that this is “just part of their job”. When you have established a connection with a person and taken the time to understand what is important to them, showing appreciation comes naturally.
Appreciation does not have to be expensive nor does it have to be grand gestures. The best appreciation is thoughtful, considered, and can be as little as a handwritten ‘thank-you’ card explaining what you specifically appreciated. Acknowledging what the individual or team has done particularly well and the impact this has had on you, the team, the project, or the business is important. Ensuring you personalise any recognition to make it something that the individual and those closest to them will value is a great way to strengthen connections. For example; if someone had worked long hours away from home to achieve a deadline, showing them appreciation by giving them time with their family would help to re-fill their cup and show you understand their commitment. If they are working to progress their skills in a particular area, you could invest in a course, arrange a conversation with an expert in the field or you could send them to a conference on their topic of interest.
If you truly know an individual and what is going on in their life you can show appreciation which demonstrates you value not only the work they do, but you value them for the person they are and what is most important to them. By demonstrating you know what is important to them you will create a relationship that would be hard to replicate should another opportunity present to them. As the saying goes, “people leave managers, not businesses.”
Communication is key!
Communicating with employees solely through memos or emails is not only inefficient but impersonal. Teams and individuals will feel as though they are not an integral part of your company if all you ever do is talk at them. Your employees are some of the most important resources you have so having two-way personal communication is essential.
Creating environments where communication is not just filtered from “the top, down” is critical to building a culture where people feel transparency of information is at the forefront of the business’s practices. Developing communications in consultation with all stakeholders to ensure strong alignment with the business’s strategy, branding, cultural principles (values), and objectives are paramount to ensuring consistency, transparency, and continuous trust are being reinforced.
Every time you engage with an employee in two-way communication it allows managers and business leaders to further strengthen connections, garner valuable insights, and provide additional clarity as well as providing the opportunity to gain crucial buy-in from employees on any direction the business takes.
If you’re not on the bus, don’t expect to arrive at the stop.
Much to our dismay, we are too often met with the common misconception that employee relations are the sole responsibility and job of Human Resources (HR). From experience, if employee relations are not met with enthusiasm at a senior leadership/managerial level, HR can try all they want, but the cultural climate will remain the same for employees.
The investment and buy-in from everyone who has an impact on driving an overall employee relations strategy are imperative to its effectiveness and long-term success.
The behaviours managers and leaders display and act on will be adopted as the business's standard set of acceptable behaviours (irrespective of them being complimentary to or contradictory to the overall employee relations strategy). If these behaviours are inconsistent with the strategy’s foundations, it becomes near impossible to effectively “arrive at the desired destination.”
For example; if a business’s employee relations strategy and cultural principles (values) articulate open, clear, regular, transparent, in-person communication is critical and you as a manager acknowledge that communication is key, but decide you will rarely communicate in person with your team, you are setting the standard of behaviour that will be adopted and thus, risk the success of the overall employee relations strategy.
If there is a genuine appetite to truly improve a business’s employee relations strategy and curate a work environment that is aligned, effective, and unlocks the inherent potential in the team then commitment is key, this is not an overnight success story. The business and their representatives in leadership, management, and positions of influence need to embrace the discomfort of vulnerability and be prepared to experience (often uncomfortable) growth. If you are not prepared to challenge biases or work to break down the walls an ego builds over time, these changes may cause unrest amongst outdated, traditional groups. The process of self-reflection and realignment have profound effects on personal happiness and fulfillment and may prompt some members of the business to “hop off the bus” as you move toward creating a different environment when compared to what they were once acquainted with (and this is ok!!)
Choose a conscious culture. Work at it, maintain it, and evolve it!
At the core of employee relations, we are talking about the culture of your business. We certainly see stark differences in businesses that see culture as important, invest in it, make it a priority, consciously nurture and grow it, and businesses that leave their culture up to chance.
The reality is that every time you hire a new member of a team/business, their presence (whilst welcomed) dilutes what you have worked to create in your conscious culture. As such, it is important to understand that with this, you must re-invest in curating it.
Everything noted above is not just something that you can do once and tick off your to-do list. People, businesses, and teams are living organisms that are constantly changing and evolving as a consequence of their environment, and so too is the work required.
As such, if you have decided to prioritise and invest in your culture this will be an investment you are prepared to make on an ongoing basis. The only thing that we can guarantee is that strong commitments, whether it be time or financial will have exponential benefits to the business. What you can achieve as a business through a strong employee relations strategy is limitless but ultimately contributing to employee’s fulfilment, their enjoyment and thus retaining the best in the field will only continue to strengthen your business, positively impact profits and your bottom line.
Struggling to build an employee relations strategy for your business that is going to stick?
Mirrored Horizons have developed a cultural enhancement package to enable businesses who will take the opportunity to investing in getting this right. Our methods will assist businesses to consciously define, implement, and maintain a successful employee relations strategy.
True to our own cultural principles we will create connections and seek to understand each business, their leaders and individuals. We always aim to understand the essence of your business, its strengths and celebrate all the achievements made along the way to get the business to where it is today. These insights become the foundations to build and design bespoke principles that capture your business ethos and truly differentiate you. We support this by designing a framework that is right for you and doesn’t just exist because you “should” have it.
This is an opportunity to consciously enhance and curate your business culture harnessing the insights learned from our collective experiences that have evolved the workforce over the last 2 years. Now is the time to decide the legacy you will leave behind as you lead your team or business successfully through this new working landscape. The question to ask yourself is; will you create something that both you and your employees are proud to be a part of, one of genuine connection, care, and empowerment that produces an engaged, productive, successful business for the future or are you going to leave it all to chance?
Our Methods:
Building Authentic Connections; Alignment Workshop x 1 day. This will be the perfect opportunity to gain insights into the team and what will resonate with your employees.
Cultural Review Session; A complete audit of the current state of the business including all existing policies, contracts and all compliance documentation providing a summary review and roadmap of implementations to increase governance, engagement, and productivity across the business.
Aligning the business; workshop (2-3 hours) to develop and design your employee relations strategy that involves outlining practices that are suited to your inidvidualised business. Providing a detailed summary, insights, and recommendations in a bespoke roadmap to enhance your culture leveraging on your existing strengths.
To be clear is to be kind; developing a bespoke Performance Review tool for your business that works to unlock potential and further engage employees. Collaboratively designing your perfect one-page ‘Empowerment Conversation’ for your business to implement and facilitate regular reviews that inspire and energise employees.
For those that want to forge a legacy they and their team are proud of, Mirrored Horizons have carefully designed this cultural enhancement package for businesses wanting to build a positive employee relations strategy.
We look forward to working with you, for you to create your employee relations strategy that will carry you in to your business’s future success.