Chapter 3

Chapter 3 Summery

This chapter focuses on employee relations as the most critical factor in the success of a business and what lengths successful businesses have gone to in order to preserve, protect and promote this relationship.

As the first public of any organization is it’s employees and it is the employees who actually generate profit, their care should be given the highest priority even over that of the CEO. Unfortunately, in today’s business climate it is far more common to see employees and their pay as only a cost that has to be passed on in the price of goods and services and therefore the less you pay them, the lower the cost offered on the goods and services. It seems that this understanding of a business model allows for the most quantifiable measurement in calculation of cost verses return on investment. Those who have proven their true superiority in business have proven that there is often a far greater positive return when investment is made in employee relations as was once more common in the United States.

Good and trusted communication is the keystone of employee relations. Employees must be told first the information that affects them, both the good and the bad and this information should come directly from their employer. Timeliness is also critical as employees are expected to meet timelines, deadlines and pass information up the chain of command as it happens, so should the employer when it comes it information that affects them.

The critical factor of trust is essential both in the sources and the medium. Immediate supervisors are the first preference and face-to-face is the preferred form of delivery. If an employee doesn’t trust the individual to tell them the truth or critical information is left on a bulletin board unnoticed until it’s too late to act, employee relations will suffer.


Chapter 3 Examples

In a previous job, I worked for a business that only communicated with it’s employees when a problem arouse that management wanted to address or when they wanted to terminate the employee. A great sense of paranoia developed as a result and on the rare occasions when management wanted to discuss a minor issue, employee anxiety typically made the meeting for more tense and confrontational due to the employee being on guard and defensive. To compound the problem, the immediate supervisor had been caught in direct contradiction to the truth or failed to relay information critical to the employee altogether. Almost all communication was face-to-face but this was done as a way to deny previous statements or failure to communicate relevant information. After a time, employees accepted the general security of their jobs but lacked the support and confidence to be as productive and quality gradually began to slip.