What Employee Relations Is

Scope

Employee relations covers the day-to-day relationship between an organisation and the people who work in it — how issues are raised, how disagreements are resolved, how standards are maintained, and how trust is built or destroyed. Formal discipline and grievance procedures are the visible part, but they are the failure mode, not the substance. An organisation where every issue reaches a formal hearing has an employee relations problem that the procedures are not going to solve.

The material in this course describes widely used good practice. Employment law differs substantially between jurisdictions, and statutory minimum procedures, time limits and remedies vary. Always confirm your own legal framework and take advice on individual cases.

What drives the climate

• Consistency — the same behaviour producing the same response regardless of who did it. Inconsistency is the single most common cause of perceived unfairness.
• Voice — routes for people to raise concerns that are actually used and actually listened to.
• Line manager capability — most employee relations outcomes are determined by what a manager did or failed to do months earlier.
• Clarity of standards — people can only meet expectations they know about.
• Timeliness — issues addressed early are small; issues left for a year are entrenched.

Conduct, capability and something else

Categorising the issue correctly at the outset determines the whole route:

• Conduct — the person can do what is required but chose not to, or did something they should not have. Handled under the disciplinary procedure.
• Capability — the person is trying but cannot currently meet the standard, through skill, health or aptitude. Handled with support, training and, if that fails, a capability process.
• Health — performance or attendance is affected by a medical condition. May require adjustments and medical advice before any process is appropriate.
• Organisational — unclear expectations, inadequate tools, unreasonable workload or a management problem presenting as an individual one.

Running a conduct process against a capability problem, or a capability process against what is really a workload or management failure, produces unfair outcomes and usually loses at tribunal.

Roles

• Line manager — owns the standard, addresses issues first and informally, and usually presents the management case.
• HR — advises on process and consistency, and must be careful not to determine the outcome. An HR function that dictates the decision undermines the decision-maker’s independence, and that has been found to taint dismissals.
• Decision-maker — a manager not previously involved, who hears the case and decides.
• Appeal manager — more senior than the decision-maker and not previously involved.