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Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
Part Five
Enrichment Topics in Human Resource Management
Chapter 14
Building Positive Employee Relations
Lecture Outline:
What is Employee Relations?
Employee Relations Programs For Building And Maintaining Positive Employee Relations
Ensuring Fair Treatment
Improving Performance: The Strategic Context
Bullying and Victimization
Improving Employee Relations Through Communication Programs
Develop Employee Recognition/Relations Programs
Use Employee Involvement Programs
Trends Shaping HR: Digital and Social Media
Improving Performance: HR As a Profit Center
The Ethical Organization
Ethics and Employee Rights
What Shapes Ethical Behavior at Work?
The Person (What Makes Bad Apples?)
Which Ethical Situations Make for Ethically Dangerous Situations (Bad Cases)?
What Are the “Bad Barrels?” – The Outside Factors That Mold Ethical Choices
How Managers Can Create More Ethical Environments
How Human Resource Managers Can Create More Ethical Environments
Improving Performance: HR Tools For Line Managers and Small Businesses
Know Your Employment Law – Electronic Monitoring
Trends Shaping HR: Digital and Social Media
Managing Employee Discipline
The Three Pillars of Fair Discipline
Diversity Counts
How to Discipline an Employee
Discipline Without Punishment
Employee Engagement Guide For Managers
How Companies Become “Best Companies to Work For”
The “Best Companies to Work For”
SAS: Great Benefits, Trust, and Work-Life Balance
Google: Happiness and People Analytics
FedEx: Guaranteed Fair Treatment
A “Best Company” Human Resource Philosophy?
Chapter Review
Chapter 14: Building Positive Employee Relations 14-2
Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
Where Are We Now…
The main purpose of this chapter is to explain the building blocks of positive employee relations.
Our topics include what is employee relations, managing employee relations, using human
resources management tools to promote ethics and fair treatment, managing employee discipline,
and developing employee engagement and great places to work for.
Interesting Issues:
After a worker uprising over pay and work rules at Apple Inc.’s Foxconn IPhone assembly plant
in Shenzhen, China, Apple asked the plant’s owner to have the Fair Labor Association (FLA)
survey the plant’s workers. The FLA found “tons of issues.” We’ll see what they found and
what Foxconn’s management did to improve the situation.
Learning Objectives:
14-1: Define employee relations.
14-2: Discuss at least four methods for managing employee relations.
14-3: Explain what is meant by ethical behavior.
14-4: Explain what is meant by fair disciplinary practices.
14-5: Answer the question: “How do companies become “Best Companies to Work For?"
Annotated Outline:
I. What is Employee Relations? – it’s the managerial activity that involves establishing and
maintaining the positive employee-employer relationship that contributes to satisfactory
productivity, motivation, morale, and discipline, and to maintaining a positive,
productive, and cohesive work environment.
II. Employee Relations Programs For Building And Maintaining Positive Employee
Relations
A. Ensuring Fair Treatment – unfair treatment reduces morale, increases stress, and has
negative effects on performance. Employees of abusive supervisors are more likely to
quit, and to report lower job and life satisfaction and higher stress. The effects on
employees of such abusiveness are particularly pronounced where the abusive
supervisors seem to have support from higher-ups. The employer and the manager
are responsible for ensuring that the employee is treated fairly and with respect.
B. Improving Performance: The Strategic Context
C. Bullying and Victimization – some unfairness is blatant. Bullying—singling out
someone to harass and mistreat—is an increasingly serious problem. The U.S.
government (www.stopbullying.gov/#) points out that while definitions of bullying
vary, most would agree that bullying involves three things:
Chapter 14: Building Positive Employee Relations 14-3
Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
1. Imbalance of power – people who bully use their power to control or harm, and
the people being bullied may have a hard time defending themselves.
2. Intent to cause harm – actions done by accident are not bullying; the person
bullying has a goal to cause harm.
3. Repetition – incidents of bullying happen to the same person over and over by the
same person or group, and that bullying can take many forms:
a. Verbal: name-calling, teasing .
b. Social: spreading rumors, leaving people out on purpose, breaking up
friendships.
c. Physical: hitting, punching, shoving.
d. Cyberbullying: using the Internet, mobile phones, or other digital
technologies to harm others.
D. Improving Employee Relations Through Communication Programs – many
employers use communications programs to bolster their employee relations efforts
on the reasonable assumption that employees feel better about their employers when
they are “kept in the loop.” The employers can use the following: open door policy,
employee handbook, email, hard copy memoranda, focus groups, ombudsman,
suggestion boxes, telephone, messaging, Web-based hotlines, and exit interviews.
1. Using Organizational Climate Surveys – these are used to “take the pulse” of
their employees’ attitudes toward a variety of organizational issues including
leadership, safety, role clarity, fairness, pay, and to thereby get a sense of
whether their employee relations need improvement.
E. Develop Employee Recognition/Relations Programs – instituting recognition and
service award programs requires planning. Service award programs require
reviewing the tenure of existing employees and establishing meaningful award
periods (1 year, 5 years, etc.). Recognition Programs require developing criteria for
recognition (such as customer service, cost savings, etc.), creating forms and
procedures for submitting and reviewing nominations, selecting meaningful
recognition awards, and establishing a process for actually awarding the recognition
awards.
F. Using Employee Involvement Programs – employers encourage employee
involvement in various ways, such as focus groups.
G. Trends Shaping HR: Digital and Social Media
H. Improving Performance: HR As a Profit Center
III. The Ethical Organization – ethics are “the principles of conduct governing an individual
or a group”; the principles that people use to decide what their conduct should be.
A. Ethics and Employee Rights – the enforceable rights embedded in employment law
also govern what employers and employees can do.
B. What Shapes Ethical Behavior at Work? – three factors combine to determine the
ethical choices we make: 1)”Bad Apples” which are people who are inclined to make
unethical choices must deal with 2)”Bad Cases” which are the ethical situations that
are ripe for unethical choices while working in 3)”Bad Barrels” which is the company
environment that foster or condone unethical choices.
Chapter 14: Building Positive Employee Relations 14-4
Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
C. The Person: (What Makes Bad Apples?) – because people bring to their jobs their
own ideas of what is morally right and wrong, the individual must shoulder much of
the credit (or blame) for the ethical choices he or she makes.
D. Which Ethical Situations Make for Ethically Dangerous Situations (Bad Cases)? –
people seem more likely to “do the wrong thing” in “less serious” situations. People
tend to cut more ethical corners on small things.
E. What Are the “Bad Barrels” – The Outside Factors That Mold Ethical Choices? –
companies that promote an “everyone for him or herself” culture were more likely to
suffer from unethical choices.
F. How Managers Can Create More Ethical Environments – by reducing job-related
pressures and walk the talk. The level of misconduct at work drops dramatically
when employees say their supervisors exhibit ethical behavior.
G. How Human Resource Managers Can Create More Ethical Environments – by
instituting ethics policies and codes, enforce the rules, encourage whistleblowers, and
foster the right culture.
H. Improving Performance: HR Tools For Line Managers and Small Businesses
I. Know Your Employment Law: Electronic Monitoring
J. Trends Shaping HR: Digital and Social Media
IV. Managing Employee Discipline – the purpose of discipline is to encourage employees to
behave sensibly at work (where sensible means adhering to rules and regulations).
A. The Three Pillars of Fair Discipline – the manager builds a fair discipline process on
three pillars: 1) rules and regulations, 2) a system of progressive penalties, and 3) an
appeals process.
B. Diversity Counts
C. How to Discipline an Employee – to help guide managers and head off errors, fair
discipline guidelines would include the following:
1. Make sure the evidence supports the charge of employee wrongdoing.
2. Make sure to protect the employee’s due process rights.
3. Adequately warn the employee of the disciplinary consequences of his or her
alleged misconduct. Have employee sign a form.
4. The rule that allegedly was violated should be “reasonably related” to the
efficient and safe operation of the particular work environment.
5. Objectively investigate the matter before administering discipline.
6. The investigation should produce substantial evidence of misconduct.
7. Apply applicable rules, orders, or penalties without discrimination.
8. Maintain the employee’s rights to counsel.
9. Don’t rob your subordinate of his or her dignity, for instance by disciplining
the person in public.
10. Listen to what the person has to say.
11.Remember that the burden of proof is on you.
12. Get the facts.
13. Don’t act while angry.
14. Adhere to your company’s disciplinary appeals process.
D. Discipline Without Punishment – aims to reduce the punitive nature of the discipline.
Steps include the following:
Chapter 14: Building Positive Employee Relations 14-5
Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education, Inc.
1. Issue an oral reminder for a first infraction.
2. Should another incident arise within 6 weeks, issue a formal written reminder,
and place a copy in the employee’s personnel file.
3. Give a paid, one-day “decision-making leave.”
4. If no further incidents occur in the next year or so, purge the 1-day paid
suspension from the person’s file. If the behavior is repeated, the next step is
dismissal.
5. The process would not apply to exceptional circumstances. Criminal behavior or
in-plant fighting might be grounds for immediate dismissal, for instance.
V. Employee Engagement Guide for Managers
A. How Companies Become “Best Companies to Work For” – the focus is on programs
managers use to cultivate positive employee relations.
B. The “Best Companies” to Work For – based on an extensive multinational survey of
employees by the Great Place to Work Institute (www.greatplacetowork.com). The
Great Place to Work Institute defines a great workplace “as one where employees
trust the people they work for, have pride in the work they do, and enjoy the people
they work with.”
C. SAS: Great Benefits, Trust, and Work-Life Balance – SAS, whose headquarters is in
Cary, North Carolina, is a leader in providing business analytics software and services
to companies. The company is privately owned and has long been known for the
quality of its benefits and for the support it provides for its employees’ work-life
balance.
D. Google: Happiness and People Analytics – the founders turned to SAS to better
understand what made it consistently a “Best Company to Work For, and thus made
benefits equal to or exceed those of SAS including providing on-site dry cleaners,
bowling alleys, café’s, transportation to and from campus, and nap pods.
E. FedEx: Guaranteed Fair Treatment – this company has been one of the “Fortune
Magazine’s 100 Best Companies to Work For” for 12 of the past 15 years. Excellent
benefits, competitive salaries, and a focus on promoting from within help to explain
this; however, it may be FedEx’s emphasis on building trust through communications
that most sets it apart. The Guarantee Fair Treatment Process (GFTP) is a sort of
turbocharged grievance process, an appeal can go all the way to top executives.
GFTP is available to all permanent employees. It has three steps: 1) management
review, 2) officer complaint, and 3) executive appeal review.
F. A “Best Company” Human Resources Philosophy – every personnel decision you
make, the people you hire, the training you provide, your leadership style, and the
like, reflects (for better or worse) the basic philosophy. One thing that also molds
your own philosophy is that of your organization’s top management. While it may
not be stated, it is usually communicated by their actions and permeates every level
and department.
Chapter Review
Chapter Section Summaries:
