Establishing A Better Manager-Employee Relationship: An Action Plan

Employee relationship

You are required to provide a detailed response as indicated by the specified word counts for each point listed and to use examples to support your responses wherever possible. You are expected to use the information provided in this unit; however, you will also need to demonstrate that you have carried out your own research. Remember to properly cite any sources that you use.

Employee relationship covers the aspect of the relationship of employees with the employer as well as with other employees of the organization. These relationships are key elements to the organizational efficiency. In the given scenario, it has been observed that manager does not have a good relationship with his employees that are resulting in poor performance of the organization. Poor relationships affect organizational as well as employees’ performance (Giuliano et al, 2011). To establish a better relationship between manager and employees, this report is prepared to describe a thorough action plan. This action plan will include all the steps which are required to resolve such relationship issues. In this report, the complete action plan will be discussed which will describe nine different tasks to be implemented by the organization to establish the better relationship of manager with his employees (Strohmeier, 2013).

An organization consists of diversified resources with the motive to grow and expand their business to attain the desired goals. It is a major responsibility of the manager to maintain a balance between the employees and utilization of resources that are being utilized in the organization. One of the most important resources is the employees. Employee relationship term itself has its definition which states that managers have to maintain healthy relationships with their employees. These relationships are very important for organization’s growth perspective. There are various scenarios in the organization which describes managers are not able to establish healthy relationships with their employees which constantly affects organizational performance which ultimately results in declining productivity of the organization. It is the human resource that converts available resources into the ultimate desired productivity. Resources are available in a limited quantity to the organization and it is the responsibility of the team leaders, line managers, and other superior authorities to utilize the resources in an appropriate manner so that desired results could be attained.

The inappropriate employer-employee relationship ultimately affects organizational performance.  This issue is resulting in poor productivity, negative synergy, and poor coordination, wastage of resources and time, and hindering the organization to reach out the desired goal. Hence, for proper utilization of all the resources, appropriate strategies have been formulated in order to develop positive synergy in the organization. To create a harmonious environment following plans and strategies will be used namely:

• Communication plan
• Consultation plan
• Resolution plan
• Diversity and ethics policies
• Developing trust
• Networking events
• Role modeling
• Professional conduct
• Managing Workplace Difficulties

Communication Plan

These steps will help the organization to attain positive outcomes along with utilizing the available resources.

Communication Plan:

Timing	Spokesman	Channel	Purpose	Content	Audience	Accountability
July	Leader	Meeting	To communicate the work strategy for next 6 months	The strategy that contains how employees should follow ethics, code of conducts with their responsibilities.	All team members	Leader and HR team
August	leader	Email	Start pushing employees as per strategy and overview their opinions about the same.	To explain the responsibilities to employees.	All team members	Leader and HR team
September	Leader	Video Broadcast	Review the performance of the employees and divide their responsibilities for the remaining 3 months.	An internal review of the performance of team members.	All team members	Leader and HR team
October	Leader	Newsletter	Will circulate the letter of required changes and news related to plan, if any.	Include employee’s opinion with the changes in the organizational culture and ethics.	All team members	Leader and HR team
November	Leader	Meetings with workgroups	Meeting with the group member to review the achieved work and will explain the way to achieve the remaining requirements of the strategy.	Prepare a report on the individual performance of employees regarding their responsibilities and duties.	All team members	Leader and HR team
December	Leader	Meeting	A meeting will be held to review the performance of employees and success of the strategy.	A final meeting to find out the changes in environment and bonding of employees after 6 months.	All team members, BODs, Brand and Divisional managers.	Leader and HR team.

The consultation plan will be the responsibility of the leader and the target audience will be 10 members of the team.

Strategy	Step	Outcome
Explain responsibilities to employees with their authorities	For this purpose, a meeting will be held to define the targets and regards to employees and same will be processed on emails also.	Employees will have a clear vision about their work and duties in the company.
Ensuring that all the team members are getting equal opportunities to perform their responsibilities.	The leader and HR team will analyze the number of opportunities to the ratio of a number of employees or as per their responsibilities.	The leader will have the knowledge of identifying employee’s efficiency in relevance to accomplishing tasks by minimizing resources’ utilization for higher outcomes. Further, corrective actions can be taken on these bases.
Measuring performance	Performance measurement will be executed with the help of the data of opportunities.	Employees will be consulted and each employee’s efficiency will be determined. Along with this, challenges faced by employees will also be acknowledged for the purpose of attainment of desired goals and objectives.

(Lando, 2014)

Specific Conflict	Find out the issues and specific reason for the particular issue. All sources and reasons behind the issue will be identified.
Employees involved	Employees and people involved in the conflict and the root cause of the issue will be identified. Role of employees will also be determined in the occurrence of an issue.
Action Plan	The leader will try to resolve the conflict by communicating with employees involves in the conflicts. The opinions of the employees will also be considered and examined to obtain results through which appropriate decision could be taken.
Expected Results	Expected results will include the solution of the conflicts and satisfaction of the employees affected. The ethics of the company and responsibilities for the same will be considered at the time of making the decision.
Accountable	Leaders, HR department, Line managers, and legal department (in case of any legal dispute) will be accountable and responsible for successful execution of the plan.

(LI et al, 2009), (Longfield et al, 2008)

Purpose:

This policy aims to provide equal treatment to all employees during the stage of recruitment, training, development, promotion, and the elimination of conflicts irrespective of their religions, beliefs, gender, and races.

Scope:

The obligations and rights set out in this policy are equally applicable to all employees of the organization, whether full time or part time or on a fixed term or substantive contract and also related to the employees such as agency staff, seconders, and contractors. All employees are individually responsible for the application of this policy. This policy is also the relevance of directors, senior managers and all other employees included in the recruitment, training, and employment and promotions procedures affecting the employees (Fassinger, 2008).

Commitment:

Every employee is permitted to work in an environment that enforces equality, respect, and dignity for all. The company will not tolerate any unfair or unlawful discrimination done against a job applicant, an existing employee, a contractor or a visitor on the basis of gender reassignment, race, sex, disability, age, religion, and belief.

All the employees will be given chance to develop their skills individually and to take advantage of development and progression opportunities within the organization. Selection and promotion of employees will be on the basis of ability and aptitude (Labelle et al, 2010). 

When does the policy apply?

The policy applies to all activities at the workplace and outside the workplace if such activities are related to work including meeting, social attractions and events and in day to day working of the employees.

Purpose:

The ethics policy outlines its expectations regarding the behavior of employees towards their seniors, juniors, colleagues and overall organization. The company provides freedom to its employees to express their opinions but it also expects to follow the code of conduct from the employees.

Scope:

The policy applies to all employees irrespective of their ranks and employment agreements.

Elements:

• All employees are required to follow the laws related to environment, society and fair treatment to workers.
• Employees are strictly prohibited to misuse the property and equipment of the organization.
• All employees must respect their colleagues and should not include in any kind of harassment and discriminatory behavior.

Professionalism:

All employees must follow professionalism at workplace by considering following mentioned key areas:

• Communication
• Collaboration
• Corruption free practices
• Punctuality
• Following obligations and performing responsibilities.

Disciplinary Actions:

The company can take action against the employees who intentionally or repeatedly fail to work and follow the code of conduct. The disciplinary actions will be different according to the consequences.

Consultation Plan

The main activities which will be carried out to develop trust among team members are:

Truth, Lie:

This is a fast team building activity quickly accomplished within 10 to 15 minutes during a casual meeting. In this activity, every team member requires to write one trust and one lie. Then time is given to all employees to state their lies and truths. This activity challenges the creative ideas of everyone to come up with shocking personal fibs and facts. Apart from this, co-workers also get the opportunity to know each other’s behavior. This helps in identifying employees to each other in a more precise manner which is the base of developing trust (Hauer et al, 2015).

Egg-Drop Challenge:

All team members are divided into two or three groups and are sent to a private room. An equal set of required material to frame an egg protector is provided to all the teams. The teams are given instructions to use the raw material and construct a package to wrap the egg. After 20-25 minutes, collect all the groups and allow them to sell their package within one minute. Then ask other employees to vote for the best presentation and effective package and reward the team accordingly (Palvia, 2009). This activity helps the employee to coordinate with each other at the time of developing a package. They are able to understand the importance and advantage of a team and also help in developing trust by executing the ideas of each other (Xu et al, 2014).

Workplace Scavenger Hunt:

The scavenger hunt is related to an activity which includes sending employees across all the office for searching the specific items. These are helpful not only in building trust and bond, but also help employees to interact with other departments. The hunt can be filled with a collection of random items. This is an important activity that provides a chance for employees to interact with each other in a positive manner and gives them a chance to work with each other.

The networking events in which the team would like to participate are:

Conferences:

Participating in official conferences will help the team members to communicate with the other managers and stakeholders of the organization. This is because business conferences are attended by both, internal as well as external stakeholders. It also help the team members to understand the vision and mission of the organization and as per that, appropriate strategies and policies are being adopted and developed (Mountain, 2010).

Resolution Plan

Rewards and Recognition:

This is the best networking event to make effective relations with the stakeholders. The employees who get rewards for their performances are also get identified by the managers and stakeholders. The employees can also take advantage of these events to build up their image in the eyes of stakeholders (Nishimura and Okamuro, 2011).

Refreshers:

This includes attending high level training programs organized by the company. During high tea, all managers and employees get a chance to identify the areas of improvement and their performance is also evaluated by the stakeholders. Thus employees get a chance to interact with the stakeholders (Kim and Feamster, 2013).

The two main behaviors of role models are as follows:

Demonstrate leadership with confidence:

To be a good role model, a leader should always be confident, calm and positive in his work so that he could guide his teammates in an appropriate manner. The employees do not like a leader who is always negative and tries to bring down the morale of employees. Employees can never accept such type of leader as their role model. A leader who is always happy and positive and still continues for better and bigger objectives have more chances to become the role model for his or her employees (Sanderse, 2013).

Interact and communicate with everyone:

A leader must communicate to all teammates so that he can identify the issue and problems of the employees. With the help of this quality, leaders could easily develop positive relation with its teammates. A leader should also be polite while communicating with employees and management (Felstead, 2013). It makes him recognizable in the workforce and inspires others to work like him. Thus, communication skills help a lot in becoming a role model for the employees (Price and Price, 2009).

Newsletter:

(Greenbaum, 2010)

Conflict As an opportunity:

The conflicts will be faced as opportunities for identifying new areas of improving performance. This strategy will help the leader as well as the employees to treat with the conflicts in a positive manner. Similarly, rest of the employees or team members will also get to know the reason for occurrence of such conflict so they can work accordingly.

Identification of issue:

Sometimes there are some situations which are exactly the same in reality as they are presented but some others are not the same as they are presented. Before trying for the settlement of conflicts, one should identify the issue from both perspectives.

Diversity Policy

Assessment of issue:

At this stage, a leader or manager is required to assess the issue form the desired results or behavior. He should access the possible cause of generating the conflict. This would help him in identifying the direction of the solution.

Meeting with employees:

At this stage, managers should meet their employees for discussing the issue. The employees should be given chance to prove their point of view regarding the conflict. The managers are required to arrange the meetings at official places so that stakeholders could feel safe and secure (Strohmeier, 2013).

Framing a solution:

After analyzing conflict from both sides, the manager is required to draw a solution. For this purpose, he should take advice from the concerned employees which is an important aspect and in the situation where conflict cannot be resolved, last call would be taken by senior management and the resolution will be the final and no party will be able to challenge the particular decision rather going outside the organization (Torppa and Smith, 2011).

Monitoring the performance:

The managers are required to monitor the performance of employees on the regular basis, especially after providing the solution for the conflicts. It there is an increase in the level of performance, then it is to be assumed that given solution is appropriate for the concerned issue. But if there is a decline in the employee’s performance, then corrective steps are required to be taken immediately.

Maintaining records:

The manager should keep the record of the issues raised and resolved. It includes the information of employees, concerned departments and managers, the reason for issues and the solution provided.

Step	Target Audience	Accountable
Identification of issue		Leader
Assessment		Leader and HR Team
Meeting	Parties of conflicts, other related team members	Leader
Solution	Parties of Conflicts	HR team and Leader
Monitor performance	Parties affected	Leader
Records		Leader

Conclusion:

The above content presents the problem faced by the organization due to poor relationships between the employees and employer. For any organization to work smoothly and to reach to the desired targets, it is essential to work in a peaceful environment where every individual plays their roles for the attainment of organizational goals and objectives. Conflicts and miscommunication lead to poor productivity which distracts the organization to reach to the desired destination. The report highlights the strategies and plans of the organization which are adopted for accomplishing desired goals and objectives. When an organization works to attain the predetermined goals, they join hands with people which help them to make their vision a reality. Working towards any goal needs ‘teamwork’ where every individual pulls off their roles to the desired and expected role. In the given scenario, the organization was already facing issues in maintaining good relations with the employees; hence the policies and strategies have been adopted for assisting the management to avoid the issues and challenges in order to enhance the performance of the employees as well as an organization. In relevance with this, communication plays the vital role in reducing the impact of conflicts and it also helps the employees to communicate with its superiors in an appropriate manner.

Ethics Policy

References

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