The way employees are handled in an organisation determines the success or failure of an organisation in a competitive market economy.

Effective employee relations can take an organisation to greater heights while mishandling employee issues can lead to great challenges in organisational operations.

Has your organisation planned for improved employee relations in 2014 and beyond?

Employees are among public relations (PR) publics. As stated before in the past articles under this column, other PR publics of an organisation are customers, investors, potential employees,

government, local community, suppliers, distributors and opinion leaders. Legislators are also part of PR publics.

In addition to employees being one of the PR publics, they are the only resource that has senses to react to favourable and unfavourable situations which affect them.

In this article, the words ‘employees’ and ‘workers’ will mean one thing. The word ‘organisation’ will mean  any legally instituted profit or non-profit entity that has workers.

Employee relations is basically how an organisation handles employees’ matters and welfare. Employee relations, like human relations or PR can be bad or good.

Good employee relations is that which promotes high staff morale and high productivity of high quality products and services while bad employee relations in one that frustrates workers and therefore promotes poor work cultures among employees.

The conduct of each worker in an organisation is, to a large extent, influenced by how an organisation handles employee relations’ related matters. And the conduct of each worker attracts or repels customers of a respective organisation.

Therefore, the success or failure of an organisation in a competitive market is mostly determined by workers’ morale; and how such staff handle their  duties that either please or hurt customers and other stakeholders.

The purpose of this article is to show some of the positive and negative consequences of effective or poor employee relations.

Consequently, the article further reminds top management officials in various organisations of the need to improve on employee relations strategies to enhance high quality products and services for an organisation that can bring more revenue, profits and more job creation  in that organisation in 2014 and beyond.

But before one goes into details about such a topic, it is important to thank our esteemed readers for  the support given to these PR Forum’s articles. This writer and Sunday Times of Zambia management feel motivated to learn that you are always waiting for Sunday to get your copy of Sunday Times of Zambia where you say informative, educative, practical and interesting articles that satisfy your information needs are found.

Among such readers is Gladys Katala of Lusaka. When this writer met Gladys at her working place, she said: ‘Mr Ndhlovu, your articles are very interesting and refreshing.’ I asked Gladys what she meant by so saying. She said: ‘I have done PR before. And when I read your articles every week, I feel refreshed on PR knowledge and practice.

Your articles remind any PR practitioner of what one learnt at college or university; and what one might have been forgetting in his or her duties. So, PR Forum articles refresh my PR knowledge and practice’.

And when I met Mr Nsosombi at Ridgeway Campus in Lusaka, I asked him about his  health and that of his family.

In reply, he just said: ‘Thanks.’ And went straight into saying that he likes what I write both in Let’s Talk Careers and in PR forum. He said the articles this writer produces in Let’s Talk Careers’ in Times of Zambia on Saturday and those of PR Forum in Sunday Times of Zambia are free tuition materials for various fields of study; especially in human resource related management, PR studies and any professional practice.

Mr Nsosombi said students, workers and top management officials should develop keen interest in reading those articles.

He said such articles provide free tuition and consultancy materials as most of the work professional enough and is already well researched and presented.

He said one is just supposed to read them for personal or official use as the situation arises.

Mr Nsosombi confessed that one of his colleagues wondered seeing Mr Nsosombi with Times of Zambia on Saturday and Sunday of Zambia on Sunday; and asked him when he started buying such newspapers.

Mr Nsosombi told his friend that now I buy such newspapers after discovering that they publish informative, education and practical articles on careers and on PR on Saturday and Sunday respectively.

He said, like many readers of such columns, he has created a folder for each column where he keeps all the articles this writer writes.

And when I met Longa Mugala of Lusaka, he said: ‘Mr Ndhlovu, have you already taken those powerful and interesting articles to Times of Zambia?’‘Why do you think those articles are powerful? I asked Mugala.

He said he likes reading this writing articles because they address practical issues which affect many workers and organisations.

Each worker sees and learns many things about what is happening in an organisation. Employees are the ones who produce the product. Some workers also provide direct services to customers. Employees, by their numbers, are also the ones who regularly interact with many other stakeholders.

Although an organisation can have a policy against releasing organisational confidential information to the outsiders, some workers still share such information with other stakeholders.

Therefore, workers, in the process of interacting with many stakeholders, tell many stories about what is happening in their respective organisations.

Therefore, practically, employees represent their respective organisation more than what top management officials think and do.

To prevent such from happening, hiding certain information to some employees is not enough as workers always have a tendency of digging deeper into what top management is hiding from them; and sharing such information with others.

Therefore, the best way of ensuring that workers don’t jeopardise an organisation either in the quality of products or services on one hand; and releasing damaging information or promoting negative publicity, is to handle issues relating to workers’ welfare objectively, factually and fairly.

Another practical example of the importance of effective employee relations is like that of a husband and a wife.

When the couple is in good books with each other, they keep family secrets without releasing such information to outsiders.

But when things get sour (ikazanda) to such an extent that they fight terribly or they reach courts of law for divorce, one gets surprised to learn how one of the couples reveals top secret and damaging information about the other.

And to avoid such events from happening, some couples with certain secrets don’t fight or divorce because they know that the other person might reveal what is not supposed to be for public consumption.

As a result, they just stay together as if nothing is wrong between them.

This is the same secret with mishandling employee related issues.

　

 

　

 

　

 

　

 

Some disgruntled and indiscipline workers might deliberately spoil the quality of a product or render poor services or reveal to outsiders confidential information against a respective organisation’s interests. These things happen in some organisations (vicitika).

 

Therefore, an organisation should take every step to ensure that workers’ needs, interests and expectations are handled accordingly.

 

This can be achieved through employers establishing and developing an effective and regular two-way communication process both with workers themselves and with their trade union leaders to get accurate, factual and up-to-date information about workers’ needs, interests and expectations while also providing workers an opportunity to learn organisation’s situation; and the position of top management on an issue (s) presented.

 

Therefore, the best way of improving employee relations is to understand workers’ needs, interest and expectations.

 

Workers’ needs, interests and expectations can include issues relating to economic monthly wages and salaries.

 

Good conditions of service can include normal working hours, off duty week-ends, over-time, leave days, provision for loans, staff development programmes, bonuses and awards for outstanding employee performance and others are among tools and strategies of improving employee relations.

 

Sometimes top management officials or the chief executive officer merely saying ‘thank you’ to a worker or to all workers is a motivation enough to that worker or to workers; and can contribute to effective employee relations in an organisation.

 

Workers should also realise that they are a valuable resource of an organisation in the provision of high quality products and services to the customers; and to the public in general.

 

Therefore, they should also demonstrate their value to an organisation for respective employers to reciprocate such a gesture.

 

Committed, honest and hard working workers prove to top management that workers are really a valuable asset for a respective organisation.

 

Therefore, effective employee relations is not necessarily a one-sided responsibility; but that both employers and employees should work together to promote effective employee relations for the betterment of an organisation, employers and employees.

 

It is improved employee relations that promote industrial harmony, high productivity, high quality products and services, more revenue, more profits and more job creation in each organisation.

 

The author is a PR Trainer and Consultant.

 

For comments and ideas, contact:

 

Cell: 0967/0977 450151

 

E-mail:sycoraxtndhlovu@yahoo.co.uk