Employee relations refers to an organization’s efforts to create and maintain a positive relationship with its employees. To maintain positive employee relations, an organization must first view employees as stakeholders and contributors in the company rather than simply as paid laborers. This perspective encourages those in management and executive roles to seek employee feedback, to value their input more highly, and to consider the employee experience when making decisions that affect the entire company.

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By maintaining positive, constructive employee relations, organizations hope to keep employees loyal and more engaged in their work.  Typical responsibilities of an employee relations manager include and either . When it comes to employee relations, an HR department has five primary functions:

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• Managing employee relations efforts.

• Preventing and resolving problems or disputes between employees and management.

• Assisting in creating and enforcing policies that are fair and consistent for everyone in the workplace.

• Acting as a liaison or intermediary between employees and managers.

• Creating or advising on the creation of policies around employee issues like fair compensation, useful benefits, proper work-life balance, reasonable working hours, and others.