Employee

Relationship
Management
2020 JUNE

surya luitel
 Table of Content

Employee Relationship Management..........................................................................................................1

Elements of ERM........................................................................................................................................1
Role of Communication in Employee Relationship.....................................................................................2
Role of Motivation in Employee Relationship.............................................................................................2
Role of HR in Employee Relationship.........................................................................................................2
Role of Managers in Employee Relationship...............................................................................................3
Trust............................................................................................................................................................3
Shared Goals and Values.............................................................................................................................3
Leadership...................................................................................................................................................3
Don’ts for a Healthy Employee Relationship..............................................................................................5
For Better Employee Relationship...............................................................................................................5
Challenges for a Better Employee Relationship Management.....................................................................5
SWOT Analysis of Vivo Employee Relationship Management..................................................................6
Trends in ERM............................................................................................................................................6
Case Study...................................................................................................................................................7
Employee Relationship Management
Employee relationship management refers to managing the relation between the various
employees in an organization. The relationship can be between employee and the employer as
well as between employees at the same level.
Employee relationship management is an art which effectively monitors and manages the
relation between individuals either of the same team or from different teams. Employee
relationship management activity helps in strengthening the bond among the employees and
ensures that each one is contented and enjoys a healthy relation with each other.

Certain activities which are imperative for a healthy employee relationship management are
listed below:
 Transparency in communication is of utmost importance for a healthy employee
relationship management
 Encourage group activities at the workplace
 The employees must be motivated to avoid politics and blame games at work
 Partialities must be avoided for a better employee relationship

Elements of ERM

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Role of Communication in Employee Relationship
A healthy employee relationship ensures a positive environment at work and also helps the
employees to achieve their targets at a much faster rate.
 The communication has to be transparent and precise for a warm relationship among
employees
 The employees must be very clear about what is being expected from them.
 Don’t change statements quite often
 Important information should be passed on in the presence of each and every employee
for better clarity.
 Depend more on written modes of communication as they are more reliable as compared
to verbal communication

Role of Motivation in Employee Relationship

A healthy employee relationship leads to an increased level of satisfaction among the employees
and in turn an increased productivity. Workplace becomes a much happier place and employees
tend to concentrate more on work rather than unproductive things.
 A motivated employee works better and at a much faster rate as compared to others.
 Simple words like “Well done”, “Bravo”, “Great”, “Wow” can actually work wonders
and go a long way in motivating an individual.
 A token of appreciation is a must
 The employees must be motivated not to spread negativity around
 Job rotations and promotions are also an important way to motivate the employees

Role of HR in Employee Relationship

It is rightly said that the success and failure of an organization is directly proportional to the
relationship shared among the employees. The employees must share a cordial relation otherwise
they would always end up fighting with each other. Nothing is possible without trust.
 A human resource professional plays a key role in binding the employees together.
 Organize various activities like potlucks and small get togethers at the workplace
 One day probably the last day of the month should be earmarked with the sole objective
of celebrating birthdays falling in the particular month
 Shared common practices of Human Resources policies and procedures
 Coordination with different line manger to know the employee status
 Warm welcoming/orientation to the new commers

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Role of Managers in Employee Relationship
Employees must be comfortable with each other and work in unison towards a common goal. An
individual cannot remain tight lipped and work for infinite hours, he needs people around to talk
to and discuss his ideas.
 The team leader should understand his/her team members well
 A team leader should be a role model to his team members. He should treat each and
every individual as one and avoid partialities at work
 The manager must ensure that all important communication takes place on an open forum
for everyone to get a common picture
 As a team leader it is one’s prime responsibility to encourage healthy competition at work
 The superior must not act pricy and should always be accessible to his employees.

Trust:
If the employees do not trust the management and the managers do not trust their
subordinates then, it creates an invisible barrier in communication and negatively hampers
the growth and development of both employees and organisation (Daniel, 2003).

Shared Goals and Values:

According to Herington et al., (2009), the organisation goal is something that is common in
the context of each and every employee of the enterprise. A common organisational goal
creates a sense of value between the employee and employer. Shared values represent how
far the organisational objectives and beliefs are common, the appropriate and
inappropriateness of behaviour, policies and goal.

Leadership Style
According to Wang et al., (2005), leadership has a significant impact on the performance of
employees and managers in an organisation. Managers use different leadership styles or
management styles to deal with their subordinates or employees. Armstrong, (2009), says
different leadership styles determine the relationship between the employer/manager with the
employees. Different styles of management impact the relationship differently.

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 Employee
Loyalty

Open
Employee
Communi
Rentation
cation

ERM
Employee
Employee
Turnover
Morale
Rate

ERM focus
Gillenson and Sanders (2005)

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Don’ts for a Healthy Employee Relationship
Don’t treat your colleagues as your enemy. Learn to respect as well as trust them. Team leaders
and superiors must ensure a healthy relationship among the employees to avoid negativity within
the teams.
 Avoid partiality at work
 The employees must avoid lose talks
 An individual must never break his colleague’s trust
 Avoid criticism at work.
 Too much of interference in each other’s work is bad and can lead to adverse effects
 Avoid being selfish at work.
 Efforts must be taken to avoid conflicts at work so that employees come closer to each
other, work together and does not lose their focus

For Better Employee Relationship

For an organization to perform well, it is essential that the employees share a warm and a healthy
relationship among themselves. They must be comfortable with each other for them to enjoy
their work and deliver their level best.
 The first and the foremost mantra for a healthy employee relationship is effective
communication
 Professionals must depend more on written modes of communication than verbal as it is
more reliable and one can’t back out later
 One should never adopt a casual attitude at work
 Employees must help each other at work for a better relationship
 Avoid being jealous at work.
 One needs to be sensible enough to understand that every organization has a set of
policies and it is mandatory for everyone to abide by the rules and regulations.

Challenges for a Better Employee Relationship Management

The relationship between employees working in a common organization is called as employee
relationship. Every employee should ideally be comfortable with others to stay motivated and
stress free. No conclusion has ever come out of disputes; instead it is just a mere wastage of time
and lead to a negative environment at work
 It is really difficult to meet the expectations of each and every employee
 You can never change the thought process of any employee
 The superior might not always be accessible to his team members.
 Remember life is all about adjustments

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SWOT Analysis of Vivo Employee Relationship Management
Strength
 Organizational cultural is motivating
 Improved HRIS System
 Employee care is good
Weakness
 Communication Gap between employee and management
 Delay in providing real time decision making
 Complicated Grievance handling process and time consuming
Opportunity
 Could be trendsetter in nepali market
 Motivating cultural can attract more employee in coming future
 Cross cultural platform for employee
Threats
 Employee turnover
 Employee engagement could be low in workforce
 Delay in workforce

Trends in ERM
 Preparing employees to deal with massive change.
 Tech continues to roll the waves of change.
 Employee care increasingly goes virtual.
 Every employer is a teacher; every employee is a learner.

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Case Study
How the MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) Grand Maintains Employee Engagement
When Gamal Aziz became president of MGM Grand Hotel & Casino in 2001, Las Vegas was on
a roll—and so was the MGM Grand. The 5,000-room hotel was ringing up $175 million a year.
The challenge for Aziz: to take something good and make it even better. Under Aziz, revenue
zoomed, and the MGM Grand became the second-most profitable hotel on the strip after the
Bellagio. Some credit goes, of course, to a $400 million spruce-up of the hotel in which 36
restaurants were opened or remodeled and Cirque du Soleil was brought in as a headlining act.
But ask Aziz what was the single-most important factor in the jump, and he won’t talk about
twirling acrobats or signature dishes such as free-range quail stuffed with foyers. His answer is:
the employees. Now with times getting tougher in Las Vegas as tourism drops and gambling
revenues fall, Aziz says his people have become even more critical to the company’s success.
“Employee engagement in times of difficulties and severe economic climate is far more
profoundly important now,” says Aziz. “Employees are willing to give their allto unlock that
potential is a competitive distinction. It’s their decisions, their actions, their attitude that really
makes the difference between [us and] a company that has its employees just punching the clock
and trying to get through the day.” But Aziz, like all managers, is under pressure to justify every
cost. Although his hotel is still running 96 percent occupied, groups are canceling, and those that
do come are spending much less per visit. That’s forced Aziz to economize on some of these
successful programs. He still does regular employee appreciation dinners for top performers, but
he’s spending about half as much this year as last. He’s started recruiting managers from sister
properties to attend his MGM Grand University as a way to defray the costs of training his own
top managers. And he’s put on hold one program training next-generation line managers. Aziz
shares with employees the challenges he’s facing. Employees, the CEO says, were what got the
hotel to the next level, and they are the key to pulling through hard times. “We will get through
this, we will survive,” says Aziz. “Once we get through this, the employees will be the ones who
have gotten us through.” When Aziz arrived in 2001, he sought out rank-and file insight into the
hotel and how it could improve. A survey of the hotel’s 10,000 employees made clear that very
little was being communicated to the staff about the events going on in the hotel on a daily basis,
including such basics as who was staying there, and what the hotel had to offer those particular
guests. Employees sometimes didn’t even know what conventions were at the hotel. Aziz came
up with a simple fix. There is a short meeting now at the start of every shift in which every
employee is given a rundown of what’s happening in the hotel that day. It’s a simple concept, but
rolled out across 10,000 employees a day, it’s a major undertaking. In his recent book Closing
the Engagement Gap, Towers Perrin Managing Director Don Lowman highlights many MGM
programs, including the MGM Grand University that offers dozens of classes on an invitation-
only basis for high achievers. The MGM Grand Leadership Institute is a 24-week program for
executives. And REACH! is the hotel’s six-month course on basic supervisory skills for
ambitious hourly workers. This investment in the staff, along with recognition dinners and other
rewards, have led to more than 90 percent of MGM Grand employees saying they are satisfied
with the jobs, and 89 percent saying their work has special meaning. In the book, Lowman cites a
finding from the firm’s survey of tens of thousands of employees in six countries: that the

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number-one thing that engages employees is senior management’s interest in their well-being.
Visiting the MGM Grand, Lowman says he found evidence of that connection in spades. Aziz
was impressive, Lowman says, for his tendency to ask questions and listen to the answers.

Ans
Gamal Aziz is the CEO of MGM in Las Vegas, and recently he was interviewed to discuss the
changes that he has implemented since he took over in 2001. I found the article interesting
because he has credited the recent success of the casino not so much on the new attractions that
were added but to the increased employee engagement in almost every aspect of operations.
When he first came to MGM he found that employees were not aware of what was going at the
hotel beyond their immediate environment and scope of work. A survey of the hotel’s 10,000
employees made it very clear that little was being communicated to the staff about the events
going on in the hotel on a daily basis, including such basics as who was staying there, and what
the hotel had to offer those particular guests. Employees sometimes didn’t even know what
conventions were being held at the hotel, which made it difficult for the staff to give the level of
service that would affect customer loyalty, return visits, and spending in the hotel. So Mr. Aziz
came up with a simple solution to the problem, now, at the start of every shift, every employee
would be debriefed of what’s happening in the hotel that day.
This was just an example of Aziz’s recognition that employees are vital to the success of the
company. He prided himself on creating a culture at the hotel where bottom up communication
was not only allowed but encouraged and ideas were not just considered but many times
implemented. He, himself was amazed at the level of feedback he received from his staff and he
openly credit the key successes in the company to keeping these channels of communication
open.
He went on further to implement many educational programs that teach and train his employees
leadership and teamwork. One such program is the MGM Grand University that offers dozens of
classes on an invitation-only basis for high achievers. Another is the MGM Grand Leadership
Institute is a 24-week program for executives. And furthermore REACH! is the hotel’s six-month
course on basic supervisory skills for ambitious hourly workers.
All this investment in the staff, along with recognition dinners and other rewards, have led to
more than 90% of MGM Grand employees saying they are satisfied with their jobs, and 89%
saying their work has special meaning, 91% report they are proud to tell others where they work.
So what does this all mean? We’ve learned over and over that happy motivated employees are
the heart of every company and that success of that company is deeply rooted in the level of
engagement on the part of the staff. This is just one of the articles that reinforces this seemingly
obvious but often overlooked and underappreciated key to success in any organization.

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Engagement is what you see above the surface and culture is
what lies underneath
The people and engagement survey is a good indicator of what is happening in the organisation
at the ‘visible’ level. With a measure of culture to provide an understanding of what drives
people to do the things they do; HR teams have all the data they need to pilot the organisation
with the long-term in mind.

Thank you

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