Using Performance Data to Inform Employee Relations Strategies

MX Bites / August 12, 2024

Employee relations serve as one of the bedrocks for building organizational stability. It creates stronger bonds between employees and the organization,  fostering collaboration, productivity, and innovation. Efficiency in the workplace is largely dependent on the strong relationships that exist within the organization.

If employee relations are that important, what are the right strategies to build this relationship in the workplace? Again, it boils down to employing data-driven processes to ensure accuracy in developing the right strategies. Using performance data to customize employee relations strategies will improve employee satisfaction and enhance a healthy work environment for productivity and collaboration. 

Let’s take a closer look at employee relations, the tactics, and the importance of using performance data to inform employee relations strategies.

What are employee relations strategies?

Generally, employee relations strategies are referred to as plans that organizations devise and implement to improve the relationship between the employees and the organization. Using performance data to develop strategies for improving employee relations helps to enhance employee productivity, satisfaction, and retention. It also Promotes a positive and healthier work environment. Some key components of employee relations strategy includes: communication, conflict resolution, professional development, work-life balance, employee recognition and awarding, etc.

Types of performance data and employee relation metrics

Growth-oriented workplaces usually place priority on metrics in order to measure their progress and make adjustments where needed. Therefore, performance data includes a wide range of metrics that can help you, as an organisation, to understand your employee behavior, capabilities, and areas for improvement. Some key types of performance data include the following:

1. 1. Productivity: It measures the amount of output each employee produces.
   2. Efficiency: It measures the time taken for each employee to complete a given task.
   3. Quality of work: refers to the attention to details, thoroughness, and accuracy of the work each employee produces.
   4. Employee engagement level: It measures how motivated and committed employees are to their duties. You can simply use surveys and feedback forms to measure this.
   5. Personal growth: How interested are your employees in personal development, training programs, and empowerment schemes?

Apart from these, there are other performance data metrics that your organization can customize to measure employee relations and develop strategies to improve them. The purpose of collecting performance data is to analyze, interpret, and use the insight gleaned from it to improve employee relations strategies. Some of the data analysis methods used for analysing performance data includes, but is not limited to, trend analysis, data aggregation, benchmarking, correlation analysis, visualization tools, etc.

Applying performance analysis to improving employee relations strategies

• Create a culture of open communication. An environment that gives no room for freedom of expression is simply a cage that prevents people from expressing the depths of their potential. Therefore, the first step to creating a culture of open communication is to provide an environment that encourages it. How can you create this kind of environment? It starts with the leaders. Organization leaders should openly discuss matters with employees, especially those that are related to the company’s progress, ask for their sincere feedback, and take prompt action to show that their opinion is respected.

• Prioritize employee feedback. Employee engagement is usually very low in organizations that give little regard for employee feedback. When performance data indicates that employee engagement is low, one of the ways to improve it is by prioritizing employee feedback. Regularly ask your employees for their opinion and suggestions about certain things that happen in the organization. More importantly, appreciate their responses and act on them immediately.

• Encourage a culture of inclusion. Nobody wants to be in an organization that makes them feel left out due to their demographics or physiographics. Every employee wants fair treatment, so help them to build a workplace where no one is left out. Especially in large organizations with people of different races, age groups, societal status, and the like, there will always be reasons for some people to feel like they don’t belong there. However, modeling a system where the culture of inclusion is encouraged is enough to break the stereotype and improve the relationship between the employees and the organization.

• Device strategies that make employee engagement a big deal. If you truly want to improve the relationship between your employees and the organization, then you must create a reason for the relationship to exist. In more context, create platforms, projects, and systems that bring employees together in peace and unity, striving for the single course of building the organization. Also, ensure work-life balance and that employees are not sacrificing too much of their personal lives to build your organization. If not, it will affect the quality of their work.

Conclusion

The advantage of using performance data to inform employee relations strategies is that it exposes different areas that need adjustment and measures the strength of the performance of each employee accurately. All these help organizations make informed decisions on how to build strategies that foster a healthier relationship among employees and with the organization at large, resulting in an increase in productivity, efficiency, quality of work, employee engagement, employee retention, and other key performance metrics.