A Major Change Initiative related to the Employee Relationships
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A Major Change Initiative related to the Employee Relationships
Employees are the most important and valuable resources in any organization. The role they play contributes significantly to the organization’s growth and success. They do tasks that directly impact the productivity of the organization. Due to their centrality, employees deserve to be happy and productive all the time as they discharge their duties. The management can achieve this by paying attention to employee relations in the organization. Employee relations is a broader concept that includes collective bargaining negotiations, work-life balance, employment legislation, equal opportunities and management of diversity. The understanding of employees’ relationships within the organization provides various benefits, including employee recognition, problem-solving techniques, and dispute resolution and policy development. Employee relations involve addressing issues that arise within an organization and establishing a good communication network for the employees.
Currently, employee relation has become broader as it involves establishing a work environment that meets the needs of all the employees. Productive employee relation is reflected in a highly motivated and productive workforce. The management needs to keep the dynamics of employer-employee relationships as they supervise the organization’ workforce. These dynamics involves the relations between the employees and their bosses. Also, it includes involving them in the management decisions of the company. When employees participate in programs such as conflict minimization, making the organization’s policies, communication and improving cooperation, the feel a sense of belonging which help them to work toward the organization’s mission and vision. Human managers should strive to create an environment where employees thrive are offer the best performance in the organization.
Employee relationships are dynamic in that they keep changing, or they can be influenced by the factors that arise as time goes by. Therefore, the management needs to keep an eye on this very crucial aspect of an organization. Policies that used to manage employees relationships in some few decades ago may not work now. This is because of the needs of t6he workforce change with time. Managing employee relationships is very important so that they may continue becoming productive. An organization with good employee relationships is reflected in the fairness and consistent treatment of the workforce. Employee relationships influence every sector of the organization, including customer services. When the employee relates together with each other and with the management, the likelihood that they will relate well with the customers is high.
Employee relationships begin with the written policies that govern the relationships of the employee within the organization. These policies also provide how executives need to treat the workforce. Many organizations have one or many employee relationship representatives who work under a human resource manager. The work of these representatives is to check where the organization’s policies on employee relationships are followed relatively. Additionally, they help resolve problems that may arise between the employees and supervisors. Strategies for establishing a good Employee relationships takes various forms including leadership philosophies, company size, industry and location. For instance, the issues affecting nurses might not be the ones that affect accountants. However, there are some aspects of Employees relationships that are shared among employees in various companies.
Communication is the most crucial element of employee relationships. This element ensures that employees relate well among themselves and with their supervisors (Thomson, 2011). It is through communication that people in the organization seeks clarification and voice their concerns. So, this element should be paid more attention to when a company is designing the policies to protect employee relations. The effective communication network in an organization is the one that makes the employees feel engaged in all the function of the organization. For instance, the employees should participate in management planning and should understand the impact those plans have on their jobs. Additionally, employees should feel that their opinions and concerns are taken into consideration and acted upon.
Microsoft is a multinational technology company which serves all the countries of the world. It is headquartered in Redmond, Washington (Bernstein, 2015). Many people may not know more about the company, but they have used one of their products and services. The company manufactures and licenses, computer software, personal computer, electronic devices and other related services. The company was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. However, the company rose to dominate the personal computer operating system referred to as windows. Since the company is a multinational corporation, it has many employees all over the world. In the wake of 1990, the company had penetrated to almost all countries in the world, and its share price had risen significantly creating three billionaires and over 12,000 millionaires of the employees.
The fact that the company is an employer of many people, the company, require effective employee relationships policies. It is worth noting that Microsoft employs people from different cultural, religious and racial backgrounds.so, the company’s executive needs to develop policies that will ensure that these employees work together in harmony irrespective of their differences. These differences have the potential to interfere with employee productivity if they are not checked. The best way to prevent cultural, religious and racial differences from perpetuating adverse effects on the functionalities of the employees is to make these employees aware of the differences and embrace them. Many companies have reported several cases of problems arising from cult6ural differences. These problems usually harm the productivity of the employees.
Over the last few years, Microsoft has been working hard to move in together with the technological changes that are taking place in the digital arena. This task requires a good relationship between the employees. The innovative capacity of the organization requires the employees to share so that the company may keep pace with the ever-changing technologies. So the significant change that I propose for Microsoft Corporation is communication. Communication is a significant form of social networking that allows employees to connect and share ideas. It creates a channel through which the leaders get to engage with the employees. Also, they listen to and learn what is in their minds. This is a major step toward innovation in any company and in particular, Microsoft Corporation.
Communication provides a channel through which the employees can channel their grievances and concerns. However, the problem may arise on the side of leadership on how the time they take to respond to the employees’ interests. Communication will only be effective if the actions on the issues communicated are done immediately. For instance, if one of the employees suggests something and the Executives do not act on it, that employee will be discouraged from raising and issue to the management of presenting a grievance. However, if the management, acts quickly on the opinion of an individual in an organization, all the employees will be motivated to air their concerns with the organization’s leaders. This will continue creating a good relationship among the employees and the management.
The implementation of any change in an organization involves procedures that need to be carefully considered to bring the change successfully. In Microsoft Corporation, if the communication strategy is to be implemented, the executives should be involved for them to plan the implementation procedure. All aspects of the implementation process should be considered. The first phase of the process needs to consider the reason for incorporating the strategy. It involves writing down what the strategy is and its purpose. This will act as the reference for the process of change in the organization. The next phase should involve assessing the current communication strategy and identifying its strengths and weakness. Tools like PEST and SWOT analysis can be used to analyze the communication strategy in the organization.
In implementing effective communication in an organization, there are some of the strategic considerations that need to be taken into account. First, the communication goals and objectives need to be outlined. These goals vary from one organization to another (Rees, & Smith, 2017). So the manager needs to understand the target audience before starting the implementation process. Second, development of key messages that are designed for the target audiences. The messages should be tailored to solve an issue that has been experienced in the organization in the past. For instance, violence against women is unacceptable. Third, the identification of effective channels of communication and techniques. The organization need to establish channels through which the employees can channel their opinions, grievances and suggestions. Lastly, write up of the new communication strategy document. This will continue to inform the management and the employees of the changes done in the organization’s management.
As Microsoft Corporation becomes global, the cultural, religious and racial differences widen. It is, therefore, crucial for the company’s executives to come up with policies that would ensure that the difference among the employees would not perpetuate any negative impact on their productivity. The success of any company relies on the employees, and therefore, employees’ relationships should be given the top priority in all the organization’s agendas. This study proposed the communication strategy change in Microsoft to help the corporation to relate with each other irrespective of their differences. It went further to describe the implementation of the strategy in the organization. These processes include outlining the communication goals and objectives, development of the critical messages tailored for the target audiences, identification of the effective communication channels and developing a write up a document for the strategy.
References
Bernstein, P. A., Harry, B., Sanders, P., Shutt, D., & Zander, J. (2015), August). The Microsoft repository. In VLDB (Vol. 97, pp. 25-29).
Rees, G., & Smith, P.E., (2017). Strategic human resource management (2nd Ed.). Sage. ISBN-13: 978-1-4739-6932-2
Thomson, S. (2011). Importance of Communication in an Organization. Retrieved on November 12, 2017.