Employee Relationship Management

Employee relationship management is a process that Firms use to effectively manage all interactions with employees, ultimately to achieve the goals of the organization. The HR Processes play a critical role in this, both in terms of training and coaching managers and executives on how to effectively establish and nurture relationships with employees and in measuring and monitoring those relationships to determine whether objectives are being met.

Identifying Objectives

Employee relationship management is a general term that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. At the outset, it is important to define what is meant by employee relationship management and, specifically, what areas of the relationship will be managed. For most firms, relationship management centers around items like attracting and retaining employees. Common measures of the effectiveness of these relationships include time to hire, turnover and employee satisfaction.

Determining Employee Needs

It is not enough to assume that the Manager knows what is important to employees. Employee needs vary greatly depending on various characteristics such as age, gender, etc.-as well as the type of job being performed. It is a good idea to find out directly from employees what their needs are. We can do this in one-on-one conversations that take place informally throughout the year, during formal Career Management meetings and through surveys and that can provide a quantitative indication of employee needs.

Balancing Work and Life Needs

There is a widespread recognition in the 21st century that effective employee relationship management requires consideration of the whole employee. That means taking steps to ensure that the employee's work-life needs are well balanced. This can occur through creative staffing that might involve all methods of work assignments.

Open, Honest Communication

Communication is critical to establishing strong employee relationships. Managers must...