We understand that successful businesses often start with a workplace culture of everyone rolling up their sleeves and pitching in to do what’s necessary for the success of the business. This is evident through managers often performing multiple roles, many of which border on HR functions. But at a certain point, this culture becomes chaotic, leading to inconsistency in discipline and performance management, and the company’s failure to recognize or address serious employee complaints. Our approach to employee relations focuses on the following three core principles:

1. Defined Roles and Expectations: Each employee should know the exact job duties they’re responsible for and how the company measures their performance. The performance of all employees in the same job role should be measured in the same way, regardless of internal relationships or seniority. Performance evaluations should track detailed job descriptions and primarily measure objective criteria and goal realization. In short, employees should not have to guess what their job duties are, nor should believe that simply being in the workplace during business hours is good performance.

2. Consistency and Fairness: Discipline should be meted out equally in almost all situations. If one employee is permitted to show up late consistently, then their peer should not be disciplined for the same treatment. Employer policies and defined standards of conduct with which employees are expected to comply, should be communicated to all employees clearly and applied to all employees equally. Disciplinary documentation should also be standardized for simple policy violations, allowing managers to quickly issue minor discipline when needed. Serious discipline should always be discussed with an experienced HR team member to ensure consistency, and to ensure that disciplinary documentation is comprehensive and that the employee knows exactly what they did to warrant such discipline. There may be small deviations from policy enforcement for ADA- or FMLA-compliance purposes.

3. Address Serious Employee Complaints and Requests: Managers are usually poorly equipped to identify complaints and requests that rise to what’s known as protected activity as employees rarely come out and say “I am being discriminated against because I am a woman (or some other protected characteristic).” Instead they come out and usually make veiled complaints such as “My manager treats Jane and I (also female) like we are his servants but he doesn’t ask John to bring him coffee or run out and get his lunch.” When that employee is subsequently terminated for poor performance, it is not a leap for her to feel that her gender may have triggered her termination, or that her complaints were the reason for her termination, and it is relatively easy for a lawyer to make this case. We create defined avenues for complaints of unlawful conduct for our clients so that these complaints come to us, so we can ensure the complaint is addressed in a way to reduce your risk of an unwarranted claim.

4. Labor Law Compliance: While employee relations can often mean different things for different companies, one thing is true regardless of business size or industry—the employee relations function is can either significantly minimize your risk of legal claims for noncompliance, or if done poorly, it can open the floodgates for a barrage of claims which can often follow just one inadequately addressed employee issue. Hiring an inexperienced HR team member without providing that person with a highly experienced HR leader, will always cost a company far more in the long run.

CHRO provides you with comprehensive employee relations support, either by performing the function for you or by supporting your inexperienced HR team members through our HR Management Support service. Contact us if you are ready to discover more about how to improve employee performance, morale, and ensure labor law compliance.