Building a Strong Employee and Employer Relationship

A relationship is characterized by the way two individuals or groups of people view and behave toward each other. An employer/employee relationship, then, is the way an employer (either an individual or an entity) and employees view and treat one another in a work setting.

From the moment a person signs his or her employment contract, a relationship starts to develop between that employee and their employer. The nature of that relationship depends on many factors, which vary from organization to organization, including the work environment and the nature of the industry. Given the fact that employees spend so many of their waking hours at work, often in close proximity with each other and with their employer, relationships of one kind or another are bound to form.

The Importance of the Employer-Employee Relationship 

The relationship between employer and employee is primarily determined by the actions and attitudes of the employer. For instance, the employer generally sets the tone for whether the climate in the work environment will be casual, professional, regimented, creative, etc. The atmosphere that the employer desires to create will, therefore, determine whether the employer/employee relationships are healthy and productive.

Whichever direction the employer chooses to take things, however, the importance of the employer-employee relationship cannot be overstated, as that relationship largely defines the organization and has far-reaching effects on company culture, employee satisfaction, and turnover rates. 

According to Nesco Resource, “When employees have a strong, healthy relationship with their employers, the entire company benefits. Studies show that employees who have mutually respectful relationships with their employers are more likely to be happy, loyal, and productive in the long-run.”

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6 Elements for Building A Strong Employer/Employee Relationship

1. Be Authentic

Be authentic and genuine. In other words, don’t pretend you mean something you say when you don’t. People are smart—they can see through employers who claim to care about their people but who provide unsafe or unpleasant working conditions or set unreasonable expectations. 

Make sure your actions match your words. You’ll build the relationship between yourself as an employer and your employees on a solid foundation of trust if your teams know that you’re as good as your word.

2. Provide Adequate Training

Set your employees up to succeed. Most students remember at least one situation when they were given a test that they could swear included material which was never covered. That experience likely didn’t sit well with the student.

               

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That is precisely how your employees feel if they’re thrown into a new job (or are assigned a new project) for which they don’t feel adequately prepared. It’s essential for the employer-employee relationship that you provide adequate training (both general and personalized) for your people, whether they’re just starting their employment with you or you’re giving them new instructions and responsibilities.

One way to ensure your company is ready to provide adequate training is to train yourselves thoroughly. Corporate training is available to unlock your team’s potential and navigate your unique digital transformation and skills gap.

3. Set Clear Expectations

Everyone functions better when they know what’s expected of them. From productivity to the office dress code, to the rules governing workplace romances, make sure your people understand the expectations, and they’ll be more apt to deliver. This will only enhance the employer/employee relationship in both directions. 

Set clear expectations with thorough and personalized training. You should ensure that you have a well-written and comprehensive employee handbook that’s consistently reviewed.

4. Be Flexible

One of the most essential elements for a good relationship between employers and employees is flexibility. A healthy work/life balance is essential to achieve employee satisfaction and retention. Helping your people achieve that balance will almost certainly require flexibility on your part regarding things such as hours, shifts, time off, remote work, and adapting to unforeseen circumstances or emergencies. 

Perhaps nothing else will bring home to your people the importance you place on the employer-employee relationship as much as your ability to adjust, adapt, and work with them to find the best ways to meet both of your needs.

5. Be Consistent

Whatever boundaries you set, policies you adopt, and rules you enforce, always be consistent. All people value equity in life, and they certainly expect it in their business dealings.

Everyone needs to be aware of and abide by the same policies and procedures, and therefore should know that they’re all being held to the same standards at every level in the company, from interns to the CEO. Consistency is pivotal in the employer/employee relationship because it builds confidence and trust.

6. Reach the Millennial Generation

Today, more than ever, it’s critical to engage with and retain Millennials. How do you do that? 

It’s important to understand the engagement drivers within your organization, and appropriate targets and goals for the engagement strategy should be carefully designed. 

Regular employee satisfaction monitoring, understanding the effectiveness of your engagement efforts, and open and transparent communication will help win over this generation. Millennials believe in continuous learning and self-development, so you should offer them opportunities to reskill and upskill whenever possible. 

10 Benefits of a Strong Employee-employer Relationship

1. Less Conflict

Knowing how to approach each of your employees and how they react to various situations makes it easier to understand the best way to broach a potentially difficult situation. A strong employee-employer relationship means that you have likely already been through enough conflict together to understand how either party reacts to different situations.  It could also mean that you have learned enough about each other to know how to handle each other in these situations.

Ultimately this means a lot less conflict, and minimal conflict goes a long way in high-stress jobs.

2. Better Employee Engagement

Employees yearn for recognition, and they need to know that their efforts are being noticed. Building a strong employee-employer relationship requires the employer to know exactly what their employees are doing and how well they are doing it. This lets the employee know that the employer is aware of their contribution.

Even if employers aren’t always praising an employee for their work, something as simple as asking a question about how a specific part of the project is going can go a long way to make employees feel more engaged at the workplace.

3. Reduced Attrition

Happier employees feel that they have a personal connection with their employers, which means that they are likely to stay in the organizations longer.

A major benefit of cultivating a meaningful and strong employee-employer relationship is that employees learn to trust you, and you learn to trust them.

This kind of environment breeds healthier attitudes towards work and improves work ethics. Employees who feel trusted by their employer aren’t going to seek a change anytime soon.

4. Better Understanding of Skillset

Here is another great benefit of having a strong employee-employer relationship, you know your people, so you know what their skills are and what they are capable of. This means that you know how to put the team together for the project. You also know what kind of projects you can take on.

Understanding who is capable of what kind of work precisely, takes time. When you hire someone, you hope they always give their best. However, once you’ve built a good relationship with someone, you know how much effort they will actually put into their jobs.

5. Open Communication

While you don’t necessarily want your employees hugging you or jabbing you in your side with their elbows, you do want to have a pretty free atmosphere. It definitely shouldn’t be that the entire floor goes silent when the boss walks in.

Create a healthy employee-employer relationship so that your employees can talk freely to you. This could be about how they think the process can be improved or how they feel about the work they do.This also means that you can communicate openly with your employees and give them your honest feedback.

This leads to a much healthier work environment and ultimately creates a great feedback culture.

6. Equality

In many cases, employers only spend time with their immediate subordinates. This could mean that you are partial to their views and don’t necessarily take the time to listen to all your other employees.

A good employee-employer relationship means that you are linked to everyone who works for you. This means that no one gets special treatment, and everyone has access to you.

While this is surely possible in small and even some medium-sized organizations, it can be impossible in larger organizations. In this case, you have to create ways of representing yourself as an employer and still remain accessible to your workforce.

7. Loyalty

A strong employee-employer relationship fosters loyalty, employees who understand their employer and who feel understood are likely to be more loyal. Taking the time to network with your employees and understanding them helps them feel that they can always come to you for anything. This means that you always have their back. If you can make them feel that, then rest assured that they will always have your back.

8. Easier to Create Employee Development Plans

Creating development plans to improve your workforce is essential. However, creating effective development plans can be a nightmare. Different people in the team likely need different approaches and development plans.

This involves extremely impersonal surveys and questionnaires.

However, if you have a healthy employee-employer relationship, you already know what kind of development plans would work for specific employees. This could mean getting them trained in specific areas or just knowing which employees you are going to promote to positions of responsibility.

9. Flatten the Hierarchy

When employees feel like they have become a vital part of the organization and have become a part of a family, they naturally take on more responsibility and ownership.

This implies that they don’t necessarily feel like employees, but like stakeholders who are executing a particular task in order to further the interests of ‘THEIR’ organization.

Take the time to truly bond with your people and create a strong employee-employer relationship. The results are going to be phenomenal.

10. Increased Productivity

At the end of the day, a good employee-employer relationship produces all the above-mentioned. When you’ve checked all these boxes, it leads to a better work environment and ultimately higher rates of productivity.

We’ve all heard it before. ‘An inspired workforce is a productive workforce'.

Conclusion

A meaningful employee-employer relationship not only boosts the overall productivity but also increases employee engagement and satisfaction at the workplace. According to a study by Smarp, an employee communications platform, companies with high employee engagement are 22% more profitable. It is a full circle in that engagement improves productivity and productivity leads to satisfaction.  

Take the time to bond with your employees. While you don’t have to be their best friend, being a good employer takes effort, and you must get to know your team. This also means that you have to drop a few walls and show your feelings every so often as well.