Chapter 11: Employee Relations

I. Strong Employee Relations Equals Solid Organizations:
• The wave of downsizing and layfoffs that dominated business and industry worldwide after the high tech bubble burst in the early years of the 21st century has taken its toll on employee loyality.
• The widenning gulf between the pay of senior officers and common workers is another reason organization must be sensitive to employee communications.
• The move toward globalization, including the merger of geographically dispersed organizations, is another reason for increased focus on internal communications.
• Research indicated that companies that communicate effectivly with their workers financilly outperform those that do not.
II. Dealing with the Employee Public:
• There is no signle “employee public”
• Employee public is made of numerous subgroups: senior managers, first-line supervisors, staff and line employees, union labours etc....
• A smart organization will try to differentiate messages and communications to reach these diffenrnt segments.
• Management should ask these tree questions about the way it conveys knowledge to the staff:
1. is management able to communicate effectivly with employees?
2. is communication trusted, and does it relay appropriate information to employees?
3. has management communicated its commitment to its employees and to fostering a rewarding work environment?
• The lack of understanding leads to dicounts, frustration, miscommunication, problems, and eventually to the feeling that the grass is greener elsewhere.
III. Communicating effectively in a Sea of Doubt:
• An organization that is concerned about getting though its employees in an area of downsizing,displacement, and dubioud communications must reinforce five specific principles:
1. Respect:
2. Honest feedback
3. Recognition
4. A voice
5. encouragement

• Milton Moskowitz: gave the six criteria for a company to succed:
1. Willingness to express dissent
2. Visibility and proximity of upper management
3. priority of internal to external communication
4. attention to clarity
5. friendly tone
6. sense of humour

IV. Credibilty: the Key
• Management must be truthful.
• Employees want managers to level with them and they want facts and not wishful thinking
• Research indicates that trust in organizations would increase if management
1. communicated earlier and more frequently.
2. demonstrated trust in employees by sharing bad news as well as good.
3. involved employees in the process by asking for their ideas and opinions.
V. S-H-O-C the troops:
• How does management build trust when employee morale is so brittle?
• Part of the answer lies in an approach to management communicatrion built around the acronym S-H-O-C.
• Management should consider a four step communication approach:
1. all communications must be strategic: where is the organization going? What is my role in helping us get there?
2. all communications must be honest.
3. all communications must be open.
4. all communications must be consistent.
VI. Employee Communication tactics:
• Once objectives are set, a variety of techniques can be adopted to reach the staff. The initial tool again is research:
1. Internal Communications audits
2. Online communications : blogs and wikis
3. The intranet :
a) consider the culture
b) set clear objectives and then let it evolve
c) treat it as a journalistic entreprise
d) Market, market, market
e) Link to outside lives
f) Senior management must commit
4. Print Publications
5. Employee annual Report
6. Bulletin Board
7. Suggestion Box and town Hall Meetings.
8. internal Video
9. Face to face communictions