a. 1. Identifying objectives: It is important to define what is meant by employee relationship management and, specifically, what areas of the relationship will be managed. For most companies, 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.
2. Determining employee needs: It is not enough to assume that a company or even its HR professionals know what is important to employees. Needs vary greatly depending on employee characteristics--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. This can be done on one-on-one conversations that take place informally throughout the year, during formal employee evaluation meetings and through surveys and polls that can provide a quantitative indication of employee needs.
3. 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 part-time, flextime or even off-site work assignments.
4.Open and honest communication: Communication is critical to establishing strong employee relationships. Managers must be committed to communicating regularly and honestly with employees about the issues that impact their work. The more open organizations can be, the more likely they are to establish strong relationships that lead to increased loyalty and productivity among employees and decreased turnover and dissatisfaction.
5.Measuring and monitoring results: Effective employee relationship management requires ongoing attention. That means that managers and their HR departments should be alert at all times for signs of discontent, which can be subjective, as well as carefully monitoring the results of more formal assessments. These results should also be shared with employees. Too often employees are asked to complete surveys and are not informed of the results--or what will be done with the results.
6.Relationships are interpersonal: Ultimately, employee relationship management requires the same skills and processes required to manage any relationship; a clear understanding of employees' needs and a desire to meet those needs is foundational. Then steps must be taken to interact effectively with employees through a variety of communication channels, both interpersonal and formal (e.g., intranet site, employee newsletters, etc.). Finally, measurement of the effectiveness of these efforts should be frequent and ongoing, with improvements and adjustments made when results are not showing continual improvement or satisfactory levels of performance.
b. good behavior in human interaction; sharing and compassion; fostering respect for differences.
