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Chapter 13Managing Employee Relations

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Open-Door Policy

A policy of encouraging employees to come to higher management with any concerns.

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Strategic Importance of Employee Relations

• Good employee relations practices improve productivity

• Good employee relations ensure implementation of organizational strategies

• Good employee relations practices reduce employment costs

• Good employee relations help employees grow and develop

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Five Key Dimensions of Employee Relations

Good Employee Relations

Employee Involvement

Employee Communication

Employee Rights

Employee Discipline

Employee Counselling

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Downward Communication Systems

• In-House Publications

• Information Booklets

• Employee Bulletins

• Prerecorded Messages

• Electronic Communication

• Information Sharing and Open Book Management

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Upward Communication Systems

• Grapevine Communication

• Electronic Communication

• In-House Complaint Procedures

• Manager-Employee Meetings

• Suggestion Systems

• Attitude Survey Feedback

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Counselling Functions

• Advice. Counsellors often give advice to those being counselled in order to guide them toward desired courses of action.

• Reassurance. The counselling experience often provides employees with reassurance, which is the confidence that they are following a suitable course of action and have the courage to try it.

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Counselling Functions

• Communication. Counselling is a communication experience. It initiates upward communication to management, and also gives the counselor an opportunity to provide insights to employees.

• Release of emotional tension. People tend to get emotional release when they have an opportunity to discuss their problems with someone else.

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Counselling Functions

• Clarified thinking. Serious discussion of problems with someone else helps a person to think more clearly about these problems.

• Reorientation. Reorientation involves a change in an employee’s basic self through a change in goals and values. Deeper counselling of the type practiced by psychologists and psychiatrists often helps employees reorient values.

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Discipline

Management action to encourage compliance with the organization’s standards.

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Preventative Discipline

Action taken prior to any infraction, to encourage employees to follow the rules so infractions are prevented.

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Corrective Discipline

Action that follows a rule infraction and seeks to discourage further infractions.

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Due Process

Established rules and procedures for disciplinary action are followed and employees have an opportunity to

respond to the charges.

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Hot-Stove Rule

The principle that disciplinary action should be like touching a hot stove; with warning, immediate, consistent, and impersonal.

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Progressive Discipline

A type of discipline whereby there are stronger penalties for repeated offences.

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Positive Discipline

• Focus on the specific problem rather than the employee’s attitude or personality.

• Gain agreement with the employee that a performance problem exists and that the employee is responsible for changing his or her behaviour.

• Approach discipline as a problem-solving process.

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Positive Discipline

• Document suggested changes or commitments by the employee.

• Follow up to ensure that the employee is living up to his or her commitments and to reduce the likelihood of having to take more severe action.

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Wrongful Dismissal

Dismissal without just cause or reasonable notice of termination.

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Requirements in Dismissing an Incompetent Employee

• Have a reasonable and objective performance standard. It is the employer’s responsibility to show that this standard has been effectively communicated to employees and that other employees have achieved the standard.

• Document employee’s performance indicating that he or she has failed to meet the standards (while other employees have been successful).

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Requirements in Dismissing an Incompetent Employee

• Have evidence of warnings given to the employee.

• Show that appropriate training, support, time, and feedback have been provided to the employee to enable the employee to learn the tasks.

• Demonstrate that the employee concerned had reasonable time to improve performance.

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Constructive Dismissal

Under common law, if an employer commits a major breach of a major term of the employment relationship, the employee may take the position that dismissal has taken place even though he or she has not received a formal termination notice.

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Employee Rights

• Right to Privacy

• Right to Fair Treatment

• Rights in Business Closings and Workplace Restructuring

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Progressive Discipline

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Employee Involvement

• Quality circles

• Socio-Technical Systems

• Codetermination

• Self-Directed Work Teams or Groups

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One employee needing discipline

One manager practicing progressive discipline

One Vice President – witness and advisor to manager

Role play a discipline situation real or imagined – be ready to demonstrate to class

Role play exercise