Strategies for a healthy employee relationship

It is important that the management promotes healthy employee relations at workplace to extract the best out of each individual. Competition is essential but it should not promote negativity or any kind of enmity among the employees.

· Involve your team members: They should feel important and indispensable for the organization. An individual must be assigned responsibilities according to their interests and responsibilities. Don’t impose work on them. Let them willingly accept challenges. They must enjoy whatever they do otherwise they would end up fighting with their superiors and fellow workers.

· Encourage individuals to share their work with each other: This way people tend to talk with each other more, discuss things among themselves and thus the comfort level increases. Let them work together and take decisions on their own. A team leader should intervene only in extreme cases of conflicts and severe misunderstandings.

· Assign them targets and ask all your team members to contribute equally and achieve the target within the desired time frame. Motivate them to work in groups. This way employees have no other choice than to trust their fellow workers and take each other’s help as well. An employee must have the liberty to express his ideas and all of them should sit together to decide on something which would be beneficial to all.

· One should try his level best that all the employees must have their lunch together at the same time. Half an hour to fourty five minutes must be dedicated to lunch and one should not discuss work during lunch time. There are other topics as well. Discuss movies, sports, shopping or any other thing under the sun. There will be no harm if the employees go out together once in a while for get togethers, picnics or shopping. Ask them to bring their family members as well.

· Encourage effective communication among the team members. It has been observed that poor communication leads to confusions and misunderstandings. The communication has to be precise and relevant. One should not play with words and be very specific about his expectations from his fellow workers as well as the organization. If you are not very happy with your colleague’s proposal, don’t keep things to yourself. Voice your opinion and do express your displeasure. It will definitely prevent a conflict among employees later and improve the relations among them. Be straightforward. Don’t pretend things just to please your boss. If you find anything unacceptable, discuss with your superior but in a polite way.

· Morning meeting is another effective way to improve the relation among the employees. Let everyone come together on a common platform and discuss whatever issues they have. The meetings must not be too formal. Allow the team members to bring their cups of coffee. Start your day with a positive mind. Greet everyone with a warm smile. Exchange greetings and compliments. If any of your team member is not in a pleasant mood, do take the initiative and ask what is wrong with him. Try your level best to provide him a solution.

· Organize birthday parties, Christmas parties, New Year parties at the workplace. These small initiatives actually go a long way in strengthening the bond among the employees. Ask all of them to decorate the office, their work stations and make all the necessary arrangements themselves. You will actually be surprised to find out that everyone would be ready with something or the other. Employees would actually take the initiative and organize things on their own. Let them enjoy with each other and have fun.

Praise the individual if he has done something exceptionally well. Reward him suitably. The names of the top performers must be displayed on the notice boards for others to draw inspiration from them. Encourage everyone to perform well to live up to the expectations of the superiors as well as the management.

Factors Involved in Employee Engagement

 Employee Engagement is the extent to which employee commitment, both emotional and intellectual, exists relative to accomplishing the work, mission, and vision of the organization.or else simply we can define "Employee Engagement is a measurable degree of an employee's positive or negative emotional attachment to their job, colleagues and organization which profoundly influences their willingness to learn and perform at work".

To classify if an employee is engaged is not depends on a multitude of factors like his subordinates, peers, superiors, his emotional state, financial problems, family problems, recognition for work done, office environment, etc.

Some details about each of them:

Subordinates/Peers/Superiors : An employee's engagement levels depend not just on his work but also the work and attitude of his subordinates, peers and superiors. Unless there is a congenial work environment, bias free culture, employees are never engaged. Rather it gives rise to a state where some percentage of employees are partly engaged and some others are fully dis-engaged. There might be a very less percentage of employees who would be fully engaged.

Emotional/Financial/Family factors : External factors like the current emotional state of the employee would also determine the engagement levels of the employee. In case of an employee who has lost his motivation because of external factors, it would need identification and counseling, which often helps. In case of Financial & Family problems too, he would be fully-disengaged. In such cases too, counseling helps. This is purely personal in nature and might not impact the overall team/floor/organization, but unless it is addressed immediately, it might turn into an issue which would have a ripple effect on the team morale.

Recognition/Office environment : Employee engagement also depends to a large extent on the rewards & recognition policies of the organization. In fact, Gallup does this Employee Engagement surveys where an employee is asked twelve simple (patented) questions and the results are calculated on individual, team, group, organization levels to check for Employee Engagement levels. One of the questions is "Have you been recognized in the last seven days by your superior ?" This underlines the importance of recognition at the work place. 

360 degree feedback increases the productivity of the company

Now a Days 360 degree feedback has been one of the most productive ways to improve the quality of a person’s work. 360-degree feedback, also known as multi-rater feedback, multisource feedback, or multisource assessment, is feedback that comes from all around an employee. "360" refers to the 360 Degree in a circle, with an individual figuratively in the center of the circle. Feedback is provided by subordinates, peers, and supervisors. It also includes a self-assessment and, in some cases, feedback from external sources such as customers and suppliers or other interested stakeholders.

This method of feedback is very convenient for an employer or manager to see where their company might need more training. It is an easy way to isolate the strengths and weaknesses of an employee, project or company itself

360 feedback is a developmental tool. It is designed to encourage employees to grow and develop by providing feedback on their proficiency in the skills, competencies, behaviors, and practices related to the conduct of their jobs. As employees learn, grow, and develop, the organization increases its capacity to perform at higher levels. In business this means these organizations are more likely to out-perform their competitors. 

By design, 360 feedback is good at identifying, measuring, and improving the skills and competencies needed to perform a job. It is especially good for the hard-to-quantify interpersonal areas (often labeled the 'soft skills') of behaviors and practices. Examples of this include listening, informing, resolving conflict, coaching, teamwork, and leadership. Well designed 360's can even identify the underlying attitudes and thinking patterns that drive the behaviors and get to root causes of counter-productive actions. 360 feedback can also be adapted and used appropriately to identify and measure areas such as customer satisfaction, team effectiveness, training needs, and work environments. 360 feedback adds value to the employee and organization development process for three reasons: It has clear and precise measurement capability; it provides perspectives from multiple sources - co-workers who see and know the individuals' proficiency levels on a daily basis; and it accelerates learning. 

Performance appraisal, on the other hand, is good for measuring outcomes and results, what people are actually hired for and paid to produce. It is designed to clarify and document the goals, outcomes, milestones, time frames, and measurements to be used. Performance appraisal and employee development are separate and distinct processes with different purposes and different measurement tools. They can and do complement each other. They are related, but they are unique. 

360 degree feedback is also suggested to be followed up within year of the first assessment. In doing so,the employer or company and Productivity  will be able to see if there were results after giving such feedback. For many people, receiving constructive criticism is imperative to developing their leadership and team building skills. Once an employee has been told of their strengths and weaknesses, they will be more susceptible to working on their weaknesses. In conclusion, 360 degree feedback is an incredibly effective way to discover strengths and weaknesses through the company or management and to learn what needs to be changed for a more productive company.