Employee Relations

Understand the fact that you cannot change your employees. You can only coax them to bring their talents to the surface. Do your employees know what you expect of them each and every day? Do your employees have the tools or materials required to effectively perform their duties or responsibilities? Do you as an owner or manager genuinely care about your employees? Do your employees see that you do care and are interested in them as valuable members of your team? Would your employees say that in the last week or two, you have given a thank you or some form of positive reinforcement for a job well done? Do you regularly encourage them in their professional and private lives? Have you made the investment of the time required, to actually know the people who ultimately represent you, and your business aspirations or visions?

You have to be willing to trust that your employees are acting in good faith, and in accordance with company policy, until such time as one of them has proved you wrong, then you can deal with situations on a case by case basis. If you penalize the entire staff for the fault of one individual, you could breed negativity into your organization which can lead to poor customer service, and poor productivity or performance.

You need to start thinking that a good customer service plan encompasses a good employee relations plan as well. A very wise older man once told me that you can achieve great customer service, simply by achieving organizational goals, structured around good employee relations combined with proper policies and procedures.

This is true, as long as the goals include customers and employees. You cannot have one without the other, as there is a certain synchronicity or correlation between the two. You cannot have one without the other. Therefore you need to take care of both aspects of good employee relations leading to good customer service.

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often”  Winston Churchill – Prime Minister of England

David