10 Ways to Improve Labor Relations and Workforce Productivity

1. Management and Supervisor Training

Numerous studies repeatedly show that an employee’s day-to-day relationship with their immediate supervisor is the single biggest factor influencing their perception of the company and can have a significant impact on retention rates, teamwork, quality, and other key performance measures. Even a few supervisors with poor interpersonal skills can be the key cause for instigating union organizing campaigns, grievances, litigations, and other costly disruptions. For union represented locations, a few problem supervisors can make it far more difficult to secure and ratify a new competitive labor agreement.

The Hutchison Group provides onsite leadership and labor relations training for supervisors that is both practical and effective. As every company has different goals and objectives, our labor relations consultants start the process by meeting with senior management to ensure our labor relations training for supervisors addresses specific areas of concern.

2. Establish Partnerships with Unions (If You Have One)

For those companies with union-represented employees, our experienced labor relations consultants help facilitate union-management cooperation in order to solve problems and identify opportunities for improvement. Our union relations consultants facilitate discussions with union leadership and company management to develop practical action plans, labor negotiations consulting, and strategies to achieve meaningful change for the benefit of all parties (company, employees, and union). Given our years of experience, we have found that the best approach typically includes (1) working together to jointly identify and solve problems (2) creating a more flexible and responsive work environment, (3) implementing fewer grievances and other costly disruptions, and (4) an increased ability to negotiate competitive “win-win” collective bargaining agreements.

3. Establish Flexible Work Rules

A great way to improve employee productivity is to ensure that the workforce is not encumbered by restrictive work rules or practices. To help identify potential problem areas and opportunities for improvement, our employee relations consultants will arrange to interview frontline supervisors and employees. Based on their inputs, we will prioritize areas of concern and suggest alternative approaches that have been successfully employed by other companies. If your company has unions, our union contract negotiators will help prepare new contract proposals and employee relations strategies to facilitate their implementation.

4. Expand Scope of Work

Too often, company productivity and performance are hindered by having employees operate under narrowly defined job descriptions in overly complex multi-level job structures. Without question, expanding employees’ duties and scope of responsibilities is one of the best things a company can do to improve productivity. Operating with broad and flexible job descriptions can help reduce employee headcount, overtime requirements, and minimize administrative issues associated with job reassignment. Equally important, expanding the scope of an employee’s job duties provides them with an important opportunity to learn new skills.

Our employee relations consultants have many years of experience helping companies review their current job structure and evaluate each of their current job descriptions. Following a careful review, our labor relations consultants will identify potential opportunities for improvement and prepare a complete new set of flexible job descriptions to support your operation’s future success.

5. Too Many Chiefs … Not Enough Indians

Another item that has a direct impact on cost and workplace efficiency has to do with carefully assessing the levels of management or span of control. Research shows that organizations with fewer levels of management are more efficient, can react more quickly, and implement required changes in a more timely manner. Our labor relations consultants work with our clients to carefully assess each layer of management to help identify opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce cost.

6. Ensure Competitive Pay and Benefits

Working with the company’s Human Resource management team and using highly regarded industry compensation surveys, our employee relations consultants help prepare strategies to improve employee relations and to effectively benchmark pay rates for key positions and employee benefit plans. While this exercise should be conducted on a regular basis, it is especially helpful to understand your competitive position prior to any planned labor union contract negotiations or union organizing campaigns.

7. Reward Good Performance

Generally speaking, most companies reward their hourly employees with uniform annual pay increases, irrespective of individual or company performance. While this approach is widely accepted and easy to administer, studies show that it provides little motivation and can actually promote mediocrity, as it can have a deflating effect on high performers, while reinforcing the company’s acceptance of marginal performance. Our labor relations consultants work with management to devise and communicate compensation programs that are tied to both individual and company performance.

8. Career Advancement Opportunities

As noted earlier in the article, a company’s success is highly dependent on its ability to attract and retain skilled and talented employees. Aside from compensation, employees are interested in opportunities to grow and advance within the organization. Employees that have a clear career development plan in place are far more likely to remain with the company. Hutchison Group‘s employee relations consultants can help management establish a career development planning process that will benefit both employees and the company, helping to retain talented employees while also eliminating recruiting costs and lost time training replacements.

9. Give Your Employees a Voice

One of the best ways to improve employee relations and productivity is to listen to what your employees have to say; to understand their perceptions of what works, areas of concern, and their ideas for improvement. Our labor relations consultants have decades of experience conducting employee relations assessments and helping companies establish practical and effective employee engagement programs.

10. Leadership Visibility

Lastly, we recommend that senior management make it a point to be visible to their employees on a regular basis. Planned walk-arounds and small group meetings (i.e., coffee talks, bag lunch sit-downs, etc.) are just two ways senior leadership can interact with their employees. This is important, as employees associate visible leadership with “caring” leadership.