The Scope of Modern Employee Relations Management

Introduction: The Scope of Employee Relations

The field of employee relations encompasses the entire spectrum of the relationship between employing organizations and their employees. In rough chronological order, modern employee relations is a fully comprehensive process that includes the functions and responsibilities of recruitment, hiring, new-hire orientation, employment benefits management, promotion of organizational culture and ethical values, personnel management, change management, employee motivation, performance appraisal and review, career advancement, conflict resolution, policy enforcement, legal compliance, retirement, voluntary departure, involuntary termination, and post-employment benefits management (Robbins & Judge, 2009). More broadly, the field of employee relations also impacts the political, economic, social, and technological organizational environment (PEST). That is particularly true in connection with legal compliance with employment laws and environmental regulations, the economic prospects for organizational growth, business cycles that inform hiring and personnel management decisions, the economic considerations dictated by inflation, interest, and income patterns, and numerous social or socio-cultural factors (Russell-Walling, 2008). Every one of those elements features prominently within the responsibilities ordinarily within the realm of employee relations management.

The modern approach to employee relations no longer begins only after the hiring of employees. In the contemporary business organization, competitive external environments require that the recruitment and hiring processes be fully integrated within the broader personnel management function (Kinicki & Williams, 2007). Typically, operational management representatives collaborate with human resource representatives to determine the ideal characterization used in job descriptions for the purposes of recruiting prospective employees to the organization (Warech & Tracey, 2004). In addition to improving the organization's ability to attract talent, that collaboration also reduces costs by narrowing the field of initial applicants, because it eliminates those who might otherwise respond in error to positions for which they are not qualified or not sufficiently competitive to hold realistic expectations of securing — thereby reducing the resources, including time, necessary to schedule and conduct interviews. Ideally, effective communication and coordination between operational management and recruiting management allows the organization to minimize the costs associated with filling open positions while simultaneously expediting that objective.

Recruitment, Hiring, and New-Hire Orientation

Within any sizeable contemporary business organization, new hires generally receive extensive orientation and initial training compared with their counterparts a generation or two ago (George & Jones, 2008). Today, new-hire training typically involves an introduction to the organizational culture and to the features and idiosyncrasies of the internal organizational environment considered important from the organization's perspective, legal training to reduce the risk of legal causes of action brought against the company due to the decisions or behavior of its employees, general expectations of employees, and information technology training to enable new hires to navigate the intranet and any proprietary systems or application platforms used within the organization (Robbins & Judge, 2007). In principle, the primary purposes of new-hire orientation and training programs are to minimize the time necessary for new hires to become fully integrated into their organizations and to perform the complete range of their operational responsibilities, and to maximize long-term employee retention by facilitating their success from the day of hire.

Modern employee relations includes the management of all ancillary benefits to which employees are entitled as part of their comprehensive compensation packages (Robbins & Judge, 2009). Generally, the individual elements include salary, life insurance, health insurance (in nations that lack national health systems and in which employers are responsible for providing health coverage, such as in the United States), and deferred compensation in the form of company investments and contributions toward retirement funds (Robbins & Judge, 2009). Employee relations management also maintains responsibility for tracking retirement eligibility schedules so that future positional openings can be anticipated and planned for optimally, as well as for providing any assistance or guidance required by employees approaching retirement. Following retirement, employee relations functions include maintaining communications with retirees and managing their continuing benefits packages throughout the post-retirement life of each retired employee (George & Jones, 2008).

Some of the most challenging aspects of modern employee relations management involve negotiating the departure of employees, especially in connection with non-voluntary departures — that is, termination. Managing voluntary departure includes coordinating the efforts of operational managers to make any necessary reassignments of responsibilities among remaining employees, ensuring uninterrupted operations in the area expecting a scheduled vacancy (George & Jones, 2008). Part of that effort also includes identifying the specific needs of the department with respect to filling the vacated position, including implementing any necessary updates to the position description or the operational responsibilities expected of incoming new hires.

Benefits Management, Retirement, and Post-Retirement Benefits

Sometimes, the departure of an employee provides an opportunity to make changes that would have been far more problematic while the position was still occupied by an employee whose performance met all of the formal requirements of the role as previously outlined (Robbins & Judge, 2009). Similarly, coordination and collaboration between operational management and human resource management allows the organization to incorporate lessons from previous experience and to adjust position descriptions, requirement criteria, and responsibilities to address issues or problems that arose in connection with the previous position holder (George & Jones, 2008).

In that regard, employee relations usually includes a process of conducting and reviewing exit interviews with all employees departing of their own volition (Kinicki & Williams, 2007). The purpose of the exit interview is to collect information from the departing employee that can be helpful to the organization. It is considered a particularly valuable resource because employees who are in good standing at the time of their departure and who leave the organization under mutually amicable circumstances can provide unbiased constructive criticism or share more general opinions and experiences that would typically never be collected or reported in the ordinary course of business or in the ordinary course of any individual employee's career during his or her tenure with the organization (Kinicki & Williams, 2007).

Voluntary Departure and Termination

Naturally, the responsibilities of employee relations management are substantially more delicate when they involve involuntary departures — that is, termination precipitated by the employing organization rather than by the employee. To insulate the organization against potential lawsuits for wrongful termination or illegal discrimination, it is incumbent on personnel management to establish and ensure comprehensive compliance with record-keeping and formal documentation requirements throughout the entire organization (Halbert & Ingulli, 2009). In that regard, the process of termination actually begins long before termination is ever contemplated. By the time any employment situation devolves into one that ultimately culminates in termination, it is preceded by numerous stages that, at the time of their occurrence, are indistinguishable from countless other similar occurrences involving employees who may never require a termination decision.

For example, many employees violate organizational policies or fail to fulfill some aspect of their responsibilities at some point during the long-term course of their employment. They may occasionally be late, violate specific rules or policies that generate adverse actions by their supervisors, or simply fail to maintain production standards or comply with operational instructions. In the vast majority of such cases, the transgression will be an anomaly within the employee's overall career track rather than the start of a chronic problem, much less one that eventually requires demotion or termination.

However, by the time such a pattern does emerge and adverse action is required, it is too late to amend the employee's file retroactively to establish the necessary formal record to support a termination decision. Therefore, one of the most critical responsibilities of employee relations within contemporary business organizations is maintaining effective procedures for documenting all negative occurrences in every employee's career, so that there is always a complete, dated record establishing the entire history of any violations or reprimands necessitated by conduct or performance issues in connection with that employee (Halbert & Ingulli, 2009).

In modern business organizations, termination rarely occurs as the result of a single incident unless it is particularly serious — such as accusations of illegal conduct, violence or threats of violence against others, or other comparably egregious conduct that justifies immediate termination or that would otherwise expose the organization to potential liability for harm resulting from a failure to respond appropriately (Halbert & Ingulli, 2009). Instead, every negative occurrence must be documented in writing, with a formal record of copies notifying all parties involved — typically the employee and his or her immediate supervisor, at minimum.

Moreover, employee relations managers must establish and maintain a set of formal procedures for escalating the organization's response to continued problems with any employee, such as a structured order of verbal warnings, followed by written warnings, followed by adverse actions such as loss of pay or demotion, and ultimately leading to termination. Ideally, that process should also include signed acknowledgment on the part of the employee involved, specifically as protection against any future claims that the employee was not properly notified, did not fully understand the nature of the organization's response, or was unaware of the objective standards that would be used to determine whether subsequent efforts would be deemed sufficient to continue employment (Halbert & Ingulli, 2009).

In principle, it is incumbent on the employee relations management team to ensure that whenever the difficult decision to terminate an employee is made, the personnel file of that employee contains a record of communications and of compliance with standard processes that are sufficiently clear, comprehensive, and objective to fully support that decision — particularly in the event the organization must defend itself against future legal claims. By "objective," the meaning is that adverse action policies and responses, up to and including termination, should, as much as practicable, follow a predetermined schedule of escalating severity rather than an ad hoc process that could be challenged as discriminatory, retaliatory, or arbitrary (Halbert & Ingulli, 2009).

Business organizations evolve as entities over time in ways that reflect both the predominant values of the organization and the idiosyncrasies of the internal environment in relation to established norms and practices (George & Jones, 2008). Organizational values are typically generated by the core beliefs and ideas of founders, executive management, and — in the case of publicly held organizations — shareholders (Kinicki & Williams, 2007). Internal norms and practices, by contrast, are usually the result of patterns and systems that evolve over time and reflect the collective preferences of supervisors and managers, as well as the operational needs of the organization (Stevens, 2008).