I remember one job where I was given a poor performing retail location to manage. It had one of the lowest volumes in the area and employees were disgruntled and not motivated. I met with them and basically said 1 of 3 things can happen: you can keep coming to work in a bad mood and be miserable, you can find another job OR we can start having fun at work and with our customers. I told them I wanted to be really honest, that their poor attitude showed and was apparent to customers and management. I gave them the guidelines, such as ‘greet every customer, but use closed ended statements, no open ended ones, such as “glad to see you” “hello” and not “how are you”, so they would not have to wait on the customer to answer or get engaged in conversation. I told them we can laugh…joke a bit as long as we were getting the job done. They started to see how their work atmosphere was improving. The store volume went up drastically, with repeat customers, referrals, and such.Corporate asked me how I motivated my employees. I told them I enabled them and gave them a positive perspective rather than negative. Thoughts?

Employee relations describes an organization’s efforts to fully manage relationships between employers and workers since an institution with an effective employee relations program provides consistent and fair treatment to the entire workers so they will focus on their jobs and loyalty to the business. Some of the ways of managing it include proper communication since it maintains harmonious worker relationships and thus, one ought to make an open communication part of the business culture Carroll & Shabana, 2010). Another way of keeping this relationship is through constant cooperation since operating together is not considered as competition; however, it is a collective effort to meet common goals and objectives. Also, as a manager, it is significant to continually ask for feedbacks of all sorts where appropriate procedures must also be followed in the process. The manager should hold regular forums to discuss an existing topic as this assists in keeping a worker from hijacking the session with an unrelated issue.

Carroll, A. B., & Shabana, K. M. (2010). The business case for corporate social responsibility: A review of concepts, research and practice. International journal of management reviews, 12(1), 85-105.