Employee Relations

Job quality should be a key objective of any employer.  Happy employees create happy customers which produce business results.  Employees want fair, respectful, healthy and democratic workplaces that value their participation.  The key determinants of job quality include:  the pace of work and work stress; opportunities for input; job security; work-life balance; workplace relationships; individual development and physical working conditions^{Note 1}.  Employees also look for excellent employee benefits, competitive salaries, flexible schedules, and a focus on placing employee’s personal well-being front and centre.  The following sections will profile different aspects of these employee priorities, including workplace practices; training; safety, health and wellness; work-life balance; diversity; and living wages.

Workplace Practices

Workplace practices are the procedures and practices affecting how work gets performed in your organization.  They include recruitment and promotion, discipline and grievance, termination, compensation, and practices that affect working conditions, such as employee participation.  (They also include training, health and safety and working time, which are discussed below.) While governments have the primary responsibility for ensuring fair treatment, businesses that seek to be good employers will go further than required by legislation to foster a quality working environment. 

A starting point could be an employee survey to determine employee job satisfaction and areas of strength and weakness.  Or it could be a staff retreat, where the staff are engaged in identifying job-related issues that could improve their work experience. Talking to other employers to find out what works for them can also be worthwhile. 

At a minimum you’ll want to ensure you are providing decent wages and hours of work and medical and dental benefits if you can.  Listening to and involving staff in your business direction can benefit your business both through the goodwill generated and the opportunity to capitalize on their ideas to grow the business.  As the eyes and ears for your business, they can bring new and important perspectives critical to your firm’s success.  And in the event of significant operational changes, employees will expect timely consultation to minimize the adverse impacts on themselves and their families.  “Best employers” often have the following practices^{Note 2}:

• senior leaders maintain visibility with employees, helping to build trust
• regular communication with employees about the company’s direction, strategy and progress and the employees’ role
• promote a culture of participation, encouraging employees to provide input and help solve problems
• celebrate achievements
• hire within and conduct regular performance reviews
• support work-life balance

Work-Life Balance

Ten years ago, the number one work priority of Canadians was career advancement; today it is work-life balance: nearly 40% of working women and men say they would leave a job for work-life balance reasons^{Note 3}.  With this reality, flexible work practices can be a key source of competitive advantage for recruiting companies.  Work-life balance includes combining paid work and family care, but goes beyond it to include support for a variety of non-work roles, including education, culture, recreation and volunteering.  Small businesses have an advantage here in that employers can negotiate informal arrangements on an individual basis, by-passing the bureaucracy often associated with large formal programs.

Practices that support work-life balance include:

• flexible work schedules (flextime / telecommuting)
• ability to work from home (flexplace)
• bankable hours for time off
• time off for personal issues
• reduced work load
• voluntary reduced work time, e.g. part time work
• flexibility in scheduling vacation
• compressed workweek
• job-sharing
• leaves of absence
• child care and elder care support e.g. sick child care options, on-site or near-site daycare programs
• maternity, paternity, and adoption leave

Successful work-life programs depend on the example set by top managers and corporate culture.  Employers committed to supporting their employees to achieve a healthy balance between work and other pursuits need to demonstrate a personal commitment to this goal and not foster a round-the-clock work culture. 

Safety, Health and Wellness

An estimated $12 billion dollars is lost to workplace absenteeism each year, according to Statistics Canada, with companies spending 5.6% of their payroll on absenteeism^{Note 4}.  Consider that the average direct cost of employee absenteeism in 2000 was $3,550 per employee per year^{Note 5} and you can see how the costs can quickly start to add up, having a big impact on your bottom line.  Indeed, records show that companies with fewer than 20 employees lose an average of 6.2 days per employee; those with 20 – 99 employees lose an average of 7.3 days, with the numbers of lost days increasing with the number of employees^{Note 6}.

Small businesses may have goals to improve the safety, health and wellness of employees for these bottom line reasons, or for social responsibility reasons, or some combination. Some companies even see workplace wellness as a business strategy, because of the connection between health and improved employee satisfaction. Regardless of the business motivation, healthy workplace efforts typically start with a focus on worksite safety and injury prevention for workers and evolve to include programs that help employees choose healthy behaviours such as quitting smoking, healthy eating or getting physically active.

Your goal could be to promote the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of your employees and the protection from risks to health caused by working conditions.  Some of today’s major workplace health issues include stress, smoking, the inability to balance work and family, and feelings of loss of control over workplace schedules and environments^{Note 7}.  Health and safety concerns can arise over dangerous equipment, processes and substances. To help ensure a safe, productive workplace, businesses can adopt a safety, health and wellness policy, conduct inspections to ensure hazards are eliminated and controlled, train employees on workplace hazards and applicable health and safety regulations, and hold regular meetings to identify unsafe conditions and implement solutions.  It is important to ensure employees are interested and involved. A positive health and safety culture can help you to attract and keep your employees, reduce the health care costs associated with disability, drugs and absenteeism, and improve morale.

To encourage active lifestyles, modest investments can help employees make active choices.  Bike racks, showers, health and wellness newsletters, lunchtime walking programs, team sports, healthier alternatives (e.g., fruit and bagels) at business meetings, and cafeterias and vending machines that offer healthy options are just some of the simple measures that go a long way to encourage fitness and healthy lifestyles amongst employees. 

Promoting health in the workplace needn’t be complicated or expensive.   Success depends on management commitment, employee engagement, adequate resources and a healthy workplace policy that sets the tone and direction.  As a result you will have healthier, more productive employees, and may replicate returns on your investment of two to eight times the amount invested realized by other businesses^{Note 8}.

Diversity

A number of trends are driving businesses to actively consider employee diversity as a strategic business advantage, such as:  the need to remain competitive, demographic shifts and labour shortages, immigration and globalization.  Diversity goes well beyond employment equity legislation, quotas and targets which characterized the discussion of equal employment and affirmative action of the last few decades.  Today’s approach to diversity is about inclusive organizations that value differences, rather than simply tolerating them.

Companies that recruit for, and manage, diversity can tap into innovative business and marketing opportunities that come with diverse perspectives, and can better understand the needs and requirements of their changing customer base.  Including people from all communities regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation or belief can be a source of competitive advantage.  Think of it this way:  diverse staff are the point of contact between the business and the customer; they contribute to product and service design decisions; and they participate in business strategy where market and entry strategy decisions are made.  Employees from different backgrounds and groups can help you better understand and serve your customers. 

There are two stages to developing a diverse workforce:  the first step involves adapting your hiring practices to achieve greater diversity; the second is to manage the diversity to leverage the benefits to your employees and your firm.  If poorly managed, diversity can be a source of frustration, anger and even fear for employees, fostering an unhealthy workplace and limiting the benefits and opportunities that are possible.

Effective diversity management requires a commitment from company leaders, along with policies, training, supports, and an action plan, much as any other area of business strategy.  Complaints need to be investigated quickly and confidentially and all employees need to be held accountable for their behaviour.  This can help to promote a respectful workplace that values differences.

Businesses that hold managers accountable and measure results achieve the most from their diversity commitments.  Bringing people of diverse backgrounds and interests together in ways that maximize fair and equal treatment and opportunity can bring out everyone’s best for the full benefit of the firm and staff, and ultimately your customers.

Training

Ongoing and on-the-job training can help employees succeed in their current job and position them for future responsibilities within the firm.  Investments in employee training and development can help to build the firm’s overall capacity enabling it to achieve its business goals.  A higher skilled organization can result in greater employee satisfaction, fostering employee loyalty, and generating business benefits for the firm. 

Training can be used to orient new hires, help employees adapt to new technologies or work processes, address performance challenges, or to support employees in adjusting to new responsibilities within the business. 

Training options include apprenticeships and vocational training, paid educational leave, tuition reimbursement, and broad-based lifelong learning programs.  There are many ways to deliver training, including classroom training, e-training via webinars, mentoring, coaching, and support for professional certifications and licensing. 

Living Wage

Paying decent wages is a prime social responsibility of any business.  In Canada there is a growing awareness that minimum wages (the legal minimum employers must pay) are often unable to keep families, especially single parent families, out of poverty.  Many low-waged employees rely on government subsidies and food banks to ensure their children are properly fed and clothed and able to fully participate in school activities. 

With one of the most acute labour shortages in the industrialized world, Canada’s employers are facing recruitment challenges.  Labour shortages are a big barrier to workplace productivity, ahead of tax and regulatory burden and rising costs, according to one study^{Note 9}.  Thus, wage levels are predicted to have increasingly important productivity implications for small businesses.  By offering wages above the minimum, an organization can better attract employees, reduce turnover and absenteeism, and build the firm’s community reputation.    KPMG in London found that turnover rates were cut in half after it implemented a living wage policy for all direct and contract staff in 2006^{Note 10}. 

Employers can demonstrate their social responsibility, while also improving employee relations, by paying a wage that matches the cost of living, in other words, a “living wage”.  A living wage is the wage employees with families need to earn based on the actual costs of living in their community^{Note 11}.  It is the hourly rate of pay that enables the wage earners living in a household to feed, clothe and provide shelter for their family, promote healthy child development, participate in activities that are an ordinary element of life in a community and avoid the chronic stress of living in poverty^{Note 12}.  In Metro Vancouver in 2008 this amounted to $16.74 per hour, based on a two-parent family with young children^{Note 13}.

Businesses able to pay a living wage are helping to reduce child poverty and poor educational attainment and reduce the likelihood of future job insecurity, under-employment and poor health.  In addition to supporting healthy child development, living wages can promote gender equality and reduce severe financial stress faced by families.

Action

Workplace Practices

Consider surveying your employees (anonymously) to assess their job satisfaction and identify areas of concern.  Then develop an action plan to close the gaps.  Consult with employees on ways to improve their working conditions, for example, include this as a regular agenda item in your weekly or monthly business meetings with employees.  Create a safe environment for staff to raise their concerns.   Formal employee suggestion programs (e.g., suggestion box) can be used to learn of the challenges your employees face and what to do about them.  Leverage all your communication channels, such as staff meetings, emails from the CEO, newsletters, and memos to make sure your employees know how the company is doing and their role in achieving your business goals. 

Work-life Balance

To start a work-life balance program, assess employee needs and start modestly.  What are the priorities?  Compressed work weeks, flexible working hours, part-time work or job-sharing?  Pilot the changes and after a trial period, survey opinions of the employee, co-workers, customers, suppliers and others who were impacted by the initiative.  Identify any problems and adjust the program accordingly.  Write up and post your commitment to work-life balance, letting staff know of your support.  Do what you can to personally role model a healthy balance between work and other life pursuits to build the ethic into the work culture.

Safety, Health and Wellness

The first step to a healthy and safe workplace is communicating the commitment of the company’s leadership to employees.  This can be done by creating and distributing a policy to staff.  Involve employees in the development of the policy and in brainstorming initiatives to implement the policy.  A staff committee can help engage employees and identify further ways to make improvements.  To get ideas, survey employee needs through a questionnaire, online “quick polls” or a focus group meeting.

Other measures include regular checks that your business is in compliance with health and safety regulations; making safety, health and wellness a regular agenda item at management and staff meetings; and ongoing health, safety and wellness communications via staff newsletters.    While the long-term goal may be to have a comprehensive workplace wellness and safety program, you can begin with a simple, basic educational program such as “lunch and learns”.  Whatever you do, make sure that senior management demonstrates its commitment to employee health.

Diversity

As with most employee relations practices, the first step to promoting, implementing and managing diversity is to establish and communicate your approach.  In order to increase employee diversity, you will need to revisit your hiring and workplace practices to see what measures would encourage greater diversity.   For example, you could make changes to how you advertise vacancies to reach other groups.  Advertising in ethnic media, establishing relationships with ethno-cultural or disability organizations, and ensuring that recruitment materials reflect your diversity values in illustrations and language are some possible steps.   Ask your current staff, they may have ideas about how to approach this. 

You could consider how to reorganize or adapt tasks or physical arrangements in order to hire employees with disabilities.   If you suspect that diversity barriers arise from attitudes at the worksite, you might want to investigate training or other resources to help overcome attitudinal issues.  If employing people of a different sex, ethnicity, physical ability or other diversity characteristic, sensitivity training may be necessary to ensure employees understand the behaviours and communication style expected of them. 

Having a respectful workplace policy may be important to communicate the company values on this issue.  Ensure you follow-up all complaints of disrespect or harassment and that management and employees are held responsible for their behaviour.

To foster retention of diverse employees a business may wish to adopt flexible scheduling to accommodate health appointments, religious practices and child care, for example.  Fostering support groups may be key to encouraging diverse employees, including support networks and websites for sharing knowledge on resources and workplace rights, discussion, and information sharing.

Training

Good, cost-effective training programs usually start with a survey or workforce assessment to identify key training priorities, and research into available local or online training resources.  Many firms collaborate with local colleges and technical schools to create programs tailored to their business priorities.  Train-the-trainer can be an economical solution, in which you send a small group of employees for training and they in turn train the rest of your staff.

It is ideal if employees can have access to time-off for training, or even better, paid time off to attend training.  Tuition reimbursement programs are a benefit much appreciated by employees and can be the means by which you build staff loyalty and retention.

Business Benefits

There are many business benefits of healthy employee relations.  They include: 

• Increased employee satisfaction, resulting in lower turnover, improved ability to cope with change, increased productivity, significant savings and knowledge retention
• Better name recognition, improved reputation and larger talent pool, resulting in reduced recruitment costs and more unsolicited applications
• Reduced absenteeism, injuries, accidents, disability and compensation costs, healthcare and life insurance costs, temporary employee training costs, property damage costs, fines and insurance premiums
• Increased staff skills and competencies.

Employers who treat their employees well can outperform their peers in customer satisfaction, revenue growth and overall profitability.

Resources

Workplace Practices

What Makes a Best Employer? Insights and Findings from Hewitt’s Global Best Employers Study. (PDF - 1.20 MB - 28 pages)

Canada’ Healthy Workplace Month  provides best practices and resources to support healthy workplaces  

Trade unions can offer information and guidance on healthy workplaces.  The umbrella organization for Canada’s national unions is the Canadian Labour Congress.

Many chambers of commerce and boards of trade offer programs and advice for small businesses.  Contact your local organization.

Safety, Health and Wellness

“Health and Safety” is a Government of Canada website resource for employers and employees to help prevent work-related accidents and diseases

A Government of Canada website resource on “Active Living at Work”

A list of workplace health promotion resources

Diversity

A Canadian online diversity publication

What About Disability?  A ‘Need to Know’ Guide for Small Business

Training

Contact your local community college or technical institute.

Living Wage

A research paper that provides an overview of “A Living Wage for Families” (PDF - 2.85 MB - 52 pages) 

A “living wage for families” resource website.

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Footnotes

1. Job Quality Indicators  (return to reference 1)
2. Hewitt. 2004. What Makes a Best Employer? Insights and Findings from Hewitt’s Global Best Employers Study. (PDF - 1.20 MB - 28 pages) (return to reference 2)
3. Workopolis, March 20, 2006.  “Jobs in the new Millenium"   (return to reference 3)
4. Ultimate Achievements Canada 2010. Things you didn’t know about employee absenteeism.  (return to reference 4, 5, 6)
5. Government of Alberta. 2010. What is Workplace Wellness?  (return to reference 7)
6. The Oxford Health Alliance. 2010. OxHA Workplace Health Program    (return to reference 8)
7. Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, First Call and the Community Social Planning Council of Greater Victoria. 2008.  Working for a Living Wage, p. 40. (return to reference 9, 10, 11, 12
8. Some living wage definitions are based on individuals not families. (return to reference 13)