The pendulum continues to swing. Going “back to normal” is a status many businesses long for even as they struggle to manage the “new normal.” With many workers insisting on the freedom they experienced working remotely, and employers calling for a return to their cultivated work culture, there is bound to be tension.
So, “Who’s in control of employer/employee relations?”
Employer/employee relations form the foundation of our modern workforce. By examining the current trends, we can gain insight into the evolving dynamics of employer/employee relations.
Remote Work and Flexible Arrangements
In recent decades, many trends have altered the employment landscape. Non-traditional work arrangements, such as freelance and contract work, have blurred the lines between traditional employer and employee roles. This results in new challenges in determining control and responsibility.
Remote work often requires a shift in management strategies, with a greater emphasis on results and performance. However, this shift means that employees may feel the need to be constantly connected to work. This sometimes blurs the line between their personal and professional life.
While workers have more control over their work environments and schedules, employers may fear that this lack of oversight could result in less productivity. The challenge is finding a balance. The desired solution would allow employees the flexibility they desire while ensuring employers can maintain control over work outcomes.
Mental Health Matters
Additionally, mental health has emerged as a prominent issue. More people are reporting feelings of depression and anxiety. Rates of drug abuse, addiction, and suicide have been steadily increasing. Although many are becoming more aware of mental illnesses, work-related stress, and burnout, businesses continue to find practical solutions to be a challenge.
Employers recognize that overly strict regulation can lead to feelings of employee dissatisfaction. That results in high turnover rates. In fact, the Great Resignation and quiet quitting trends have been linked to the level of support an employer offers its workers.
Workers prioritize their mental well-being and the quality of the work culture as they seek opportunities. Therefore, wellness and mental health have become important recruitment strategies for businesses.
Major health events, including mental health ones, change everything in a person’s life. As employers and HR advisors, we need to take the health of our workers seriously.
Balancing Employer and Employee Interests
With the increased attention that employee needs are getting, more employers are aware than ever before. Unfortunately, inflation has made wage increases difficult. Plus, more inclusive benefit options are increasingly expected to attract new talent. It has become challenging for many employers to keep up.
Employers are vested in ensuring their businesses’ productivity and profitability. This often involves making decisions that affect employee workloads, compensation, and job security. In contrast, employees seek job satisfaction, fair compensation, and security.
Employers often feel torn between wanting to support their employees and wishing to avoid price increases. This is clear in the healthcare benefits landscape. Balancing these sometimes conflicting interests is essential for a healthy workplace.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Although the pandemic redefined work dynamics, there’s a real sense of cooperation and negotiation. It’s in the best interests of both employers and employees to work for a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Employers can engage in open dialogue with their workforce. They can seek feedback and involve employees in decision-making processes that affect them. This inclusive approach can enhance employee satisfaction and reduce feelings of powerlessness.
When employees feel included in the process, they are more likely to cooperate. They may support initiatives that may initially appear restrictive.
As businesses weigh their needs with those of their employees, it becomes increasingly apparent. This support is required to attract and secure top talent in a competitive environment.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be delving into a few innovative solutions for improving employer/employee relations. We’ll discuss measuring employee engagement as well as creative recruitment strategies.
Overall, the employer/employee relationship is in a decent place, with neither in the position to make many demands. That is a pretty good way to start.
August has been an eventful month for government agencies overseeing workplaces. With new and returning rules pushed forward by both the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Department of Labor, employers and HR leaders need to take notice.
Companies should begin preparing now so they have less to do when the rules are finalized and implemented.
Here are a few of the key points for HR leaders to consider.
News From the National Labor Relations Board
Last week, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced returning to a rule that would reduce the time between a union expressing interest in representing employees and the actual union election. Around the same time, the NLRB also changed the process for unions to organize, making it easier for unions to organize and could even remove the need for an employee vote.
The Final Rule ensures the following steps occur more quickly to make pre- and post-election hearings more efficient.
Pre-election hearing
Distribution of election information to employees
Ensures elections are held quicker
Chairman Lauren McFaren stated, “It’s the basic principle of the National Labor Relation Act that representation cases should be resolved quickly and fairly. By removing unnecessary delays from the election process, the new rule supports these important goals, and allows workers to more effectively exercise their fundamental rights.”
This could be good news for unions, but it may not be the best news for your company.
Recent polls show that support for labor unions is strong across many industries. Therefore, no industry is entirely safe from the possibility of unionization.
What Does This Mean for Your Company?
If you are an HR leader of a company at risk of unionizing, you should take these developments seriously. Building positive relationships with your employees is crucial to union avoidance.
Supervisor training plays a critical role in maintaining employee satisfaction and reducing the likelihood of unionization. Well-trained supervisors understand company policies, labor laws, and employee needs. This enables them to foster positive workplace environments.
When supervisors effectively communicate, provide support, and address concerns, employees feel valued and heard, diminishing their desire to seek representation through unions. Unfortunately, during the pandemic, supervisor training became something of an afterthought, and that is becoming evident.
News From the U.S. Department of Labor
In another recent development, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has also proposed a new rule. This rule aims to raise the minimum salary that workers must earn to be exempt from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Basically, the proposed rule would increase the minimum salary for exemption from $684 per week to $1,059 per week or $35,568 per year to $55,068 per year. The rule would also raise the “highly compensated employee exemption” from $107,432 annually to $143,988 per year. Furthermore, the DOL could automatically adjust these figures every three years.
What Does This Mean for Your Company?
Like most employers and HR leaders, you may need to figure out which jobs will be impacted by this proposed rule. Then you might weigh potential overtime implications against the following options:
Employing measures to shift duties and reduce costs
Switching employees from exempt to non-exempt
Increasing employee salaries
While inflation has led many employers to increase salaries over the past few years, few have increased by the substantial margin that the DOL’s rule suggests.
What Can You Do?
Although the NLRB’s changes become effective December 26, 2023, the DOL’s rule is likely to be decided in late 2023 or early 2024. Until then, the DOL encourages the public to share their opinions before it implements a final rule.
Employers who might be affected by this new rule should definitely take advantage of the opportunity to provide feedback. The DOL is required to consider all public comments before making a final decision.
Although you should only make big changes once the DOL rule is finalized, it’s not too early to begin thinking about your strategy. That will make things easier when the final rule is eventually published.
When planning your response to the new NLRB rules, you should immediately fortify your HR department and begin training your supervisors and managers. Trained supervisors can resolve workplace issues promptly and fairly, addressing employee grievances without needing third-party intervention.
That not only strengthens the employer-employee relationship but also contributes to a harmonious work environment that is less susceptible to unionization efforts.
As more states begin their official economic reopenings in the wake of COVID-19, many organizations feel like resuming the work itself isn’t the biggest challenge. For many of us, reengaging and rebuilding our teams of talented professionals and getting them motivated and bought-in to the new way of work is an extremely daunting task.
Many people are scared, distrustful, and depressed right now, and that is the exact opposite of the recipe for a successful team. Whether they know it or not, professionals are hungry for their employers to help them feel normal and plugged-in again. That means employee culture and engagement should be points of emphasis for every business in the coming weeks and months.
Identifying the Best Aspects of Your “Pre-COVID” Culture
It may seem like a long time ago now, but less than three months ago, you had a thriving community sharing a physical space and working towards common goals – some of your team members might even have compared it to being part of a family!
The realities of COVID-19 mean that workplace culture and team atmosphere can’t resume with perfect continuity. With that said, there is the potential to create a new, even stronger community by porting what worked about your previous approach onto new methodologies and emerging best practices in light of COVID-19.
How Do We Figure Out the Best Parts of Our Culture?
Your team members are the best source of information when it comes to which parts of your workplace culture, employee wellness initiatives, and daily perks really make a difference for them. You can get that information through employee culture surveys, which can be blasted out team-wide via email as you plan your return to the office.
If possible, you should do this work in the weeks ahead of your reopen to give your new initiatives the most possible planning time. However, if getting people back into the building is the main priority, you can use the opening weeks of the return to work to gather this data to inform your employee engagement strategy.
What About Employee Mental Health?
Workplace culture and collegiality are crucial to creating a positive work environment that drives work people can be proud about while robustly supporting people’s humanistic and mental health needs to prevent tension, frustration, and burnout.
One of your culture survey’s main goals should be determining what services you were providing that people found really valuable pre-COVID. Did they value seeing their colleagues in contexts other than work? Did they appreciate making time for serious conversations during the work week? What made them go home feeling good about themselves at the end of the day?
What Strengthened the Team?
As the old axiom goes, “teamwork makes the dream work.” While it may sound trite at first, bringing your employees together to create a true team is the difference between having a great approach to human capital management and just being a “job” where people work.
Another main concern of your employee surveys should be to identify what aspects of your pre-COVID-19 approach brought people together to create a more functional, vivacious unit. What made people feel like true colleagues and not just people who worked in the same space? How did you help team members discover, appreciate, and celebrate each other’s strengths? How did you foster an environment where people understood and were not judgmental about their colleagues’ areas of need or weakness?
What Gave People a Sense of Shared Purpose?
If you’ve got people feeling positive about themselves and their work and functioning as part of a thriving team, there’s only one real component left to a great culture: shared goals and purpose.
In order to get your employees reintegrated into the work and making up for lost time, you need to figure out what messages, incentives, and motivational tactics really worked for them. What about your organization or leadership did they find inspirational? What about the nature of your work makes team members feel good about what they’re doing? What approaches to shared success and shared failure spoke to them?
Leveraging Technology to Modify & Modernize
Once you’ve drawn out the aspects of your workplace and employee culture that really worked and inspired excellence, you’ll likely have a long list of activities and approaches that feel like a real challenge to recreate in the context of social distancing.
At first, this can feel discouraging, but luckily, the last few months have seen an explosion of remote communication and interaction platforms that enable us to continue positive community interactions without the risk of viral transmission.
Migrating Physical Interactions Online
Video conferencing and project management platforms have picked up much of the slack during our time away from the office, and they also offer opportunities for employee culture reengagement.
Think of ways you can allow people to “take a walk” to visit friends in other departments for a quick chat like they used to. Provide people with document sharing and collaboration tools that make it just as easy to work together as if you were sitting at the same table. Consider meeting in a text-based chatroom where people have time to think about their responses and process other people’s ideas at their own pace.
All of these are different ways we can use emerging work tools as culture tools as well!
Embracing an Opportunity to Grow & Redefine the Work
It’s important to understand that there will not be a cut and dry way to completely recreate our previous approach to office life and employee culture post-COVID-19. We will need to stay open-minded and identify employee needs in order to find solutions and approaches that support them.
With that in mind, this is an opportunity to grow and redefine what it even means to be a business, a team, and a professional. The new work will be finding ways to continue and extend intellectual and communal closeness without the benefit of physical proximity.
If we stay open minded, remain grounded in what we know works and what employees need, and keep our ears to the ground for the best emerging tools and solutions, we’ll be able to reopen the business space in a powerful way that makes all of us better.
How to Learn More
If you’re an HR professional or business leader looking to guide a successful reopening as COVID-19 continues, be sure to download Launchways’ Complete Return to Work Toolkit. The toolkit provides a variety of checklists and other resources that help you consider reopening from every conceivable angle, including:
Recalling furloughed or laid off employees
Modifying your physical workspace
Best practices for employee safety
Personal protective equipment (PPE)
New policies for meeting, communication, shared space, etc.
