Employee Relations

What employee relations is

Employee relations (علاقات الموظفين) is a function within human resources management concerned with the everyday relationship between an organisation and the people who work in it: how decisions reach them, how their voice reaches management, and how disagreement, complaints and misconduct are handled before they leave the organisation. This is our wording of what we read in the sources, not a literal quotation from any single source.

Arabic writing also uses the expression «العلاقات العمالية» as a close phrasing, and we do not assume that it matches employee relations in every use. The term names a function and a field of work, not a programme, a certificate or an imposed obligation, and its definition carries no regulatory judgement on any procedure in an organisation.

Which sources did we check?

We verified in Crossref the bibliographic data of the works we cite; Crossref confirms that a work exists and gives its details but says nothing about its content. We dropped hyphens from the titles we quote and left out any identifier that contains a hyphen.

• Guest. The article “Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations” in Journal of Management Studies, volume 24, issue 5, 1987, pages 503 to 521.
• Dundon, Wilkinson, Marchington and Ackers. The article “The meanings and purpose of employee voice” in The International Journal of Human Resource Management, volume 15, issue 6, 2004, pages 1149 to 1170, identifier 10.1080/095851904100016773359.
• Dundon and Gollan. The article “Reconceptualizing voice in the nonunion workplace” in the same journal, volume 18, issue 7, 2007, pages 1182 to 1198, identifier 10.1080/09585190701391925.
• Budd and Colvin. The article “Improved Metrics for Workplace Dispute Resolution Procedures: Efficiency, Equity, and Voice” in Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, volume 47, issue 3, 2008, pages 460 to 479.
• Budd and Bhave. The chapter “Values, Ideologies, and Frames of Reference in Industrial Relations” in The SAGE Handbook of Industrial Relations, 2008, pages 92 to 112, identifier 10.4135/9781849200431.n5.
• Fox. The article “A Note on Industrial Relations Pluralism” in Sociology, volume 13, issue 1, 1979, pages 105 to 109, identifier 10.1177/003803857901300108.

We read the abstracts of the articles by Guest, by Dundon and colleagues, by Dundon and Gollan, and by Budd and Colvin as OpenAlex displays them, and we read the text of none of them. We found no abstract for the chapter by Budd and Bhave or for Fox’s article, so for those two we go no further than their titles. We did not use consultancy websites as a source for any effect or benefit.

Where employee relations came from

The term is connected to an older field called industrial relations. We have no source that we read which dates the move of the name to employee relations, so we limit ourselves to what Guest’s abstract says about how the two fields relate to human resource management.

Guest’s abstract (1987) proposes that human resource management be defined in a way that sets it apart from traditional personnel management, and that it be understood as a set of policies aimed at organisational integration, employee commitment, flexibility and quality of work. The abstract adds that in this model collective industrial relations have at best a minor role, and that evidence of the effect of this style of management was very scarce at the time of writing. That describes a model the author proposed in 1987, not a judgement on what organisations do today.

The title of the chapter by Budd and Bhave (2008) indicates that it deals with values, ideologies and frames of reference in industrial relations, and the title of Fox’s article (1979) indicates a note on pluralism in the same field. We found no abstract for either, so we do not know their content.

What the work of employee relations covers

Our sources give no agreed list of the tasks of the function. This list is our own and is not attributed to any source:

• Channels for employee voice: meetings, surveys and direct feedback to the manager.
• The route for formal complaints and the documentation of the reply to each one.
• Disciplinary procedures and their documentation, keeping misconduct separate from disagreement.
• Disagreement between colleagues, or between an employee and their manager, before it turns into a complaint.
• Informing employees of the policies and changes that affect them.

A formal complaint that follows a declared internal route and awaits a written reply has a name of its own in the glossary: Grievance. For a manager handling a disagreement between two colleagues before it becomes a complaint, the glossary explains in Conflict Management a practice carried out by a manager and a team so that a disagreement is noticed early and named for what it is.

What does research on employee voice say?

Employee voice is among the topics of the field that come up most often in our sources. The abstract of the article by Dundon and colleagues (2004) offers a framework for examining the meanings, purposes and practices of voice, built on data from eighteen organisations in England, Scotland and Ireland. The abstract reports that managers defined voice by what it contributes to efficiency and played down the idea of rights, and that the link between voice and performance outcomes remained problematic.

For HR work, the most useful part of the abstract is its closing conclusion: how deeply voice practices are embedded in an organisation matters more than the number of individual or collective schemes on offer. An annual survey and a suggestion box mean nothing if no decision changes because of them. The survey and the suggestion box are our example of that conclusion, not one taken from the article.

The abstract by Dundon and Gollan (2007) is a conceptual analysis of voice in organisations without a union. According to the abstract, the authors argue that individual and company specific forms of voice are likely to grow, and that this poses challenges for traditional collective representation. Carrying that finding over to the Saudi market would need a study we have not seen.

How are dispute resolution procedures assessed?

The abstract of the article by Budd and Colvin (2008) starts from the observation that the debate on workplace dispute resolution systems in the United States lacks a measure richer than speed and satisfaction. The article proposes three criteria: efficiency, equity and voice. It then uses them for a qualitative assessment of three types of procedure: the grievance procedure in unionised workplaces, nonunion systems, and the court route for employment law cases.

In our estimate the three criteria work as questions for reviewing any internal complaints route. Efficiency: how long does the reply take, and what does it cost both sides? Equity: are employees in similar cases treated alike? Voice: is the employee heard before the decision? This wording is ours, and we do not know how the authors develop each criterion in the text of the article.

How employee relations differs from related concepts

Employee relations names the function that manages the relationship, while the neighbouring concepts describe the state of the employee or what the employee lives through. The Qoyod glossary defines Employee Engagement as the attachment that drives an employee to put in effort beyond the minimum the job requires, and describes that attachment as a behaviour that can be observed rather than a feeling that has to be inferred.

Everything an employee lives through in an organisation, from the first contact with it to the period after leaving it, is gathered under Employee Experience. The unwritten mutual expectations between an employee and the employer are the subject of the glossary page Psychological Contract.

In our view the difference is practical before it is theoretical: engagement and experience are outcomes that are measured, the psychological contract is a set of expectations that are discovered, and employee relations is the party that deals with what happens when all of them break down, by listening, documenting and replying.

A hypothetical worked example: the complaints log over two halves of a year

A hypothetical organisation with 120 employees has set itself an internal deadline of 10 working days to reply to a formal complaint. In the first half of the year 9 complaints were recorded, and 6 of them received a reply within the deadline. The second half logged 6 complaints, 5 of which were answered in time.

• Complaints per 100 employees in the first half: 9 divided by 120, then multiplied by 100, which is 7.5.
• The same rate in the second half: 6 divided by 120, then multiplied by 100, which is 5.
• Share of replies within the deadline in the first half: 6 of 9, or 66.7%.
• The same share in the second half: 5 of 6, or 83.3%.
• Complaints for the whole year: 9 and 6 make 15, or 12.5 per 100 employees.

The second half looks better on both figures. Yet the two figures measure only speed and count, and Budd and Colvin’s abstract calls for criteria beyond speed and satisfaction when dispute resolution systems are compared. The fall in complaints from 9 to 6 could mean that their causes were dealt with, or it could mean that employees stopped filing them. The questions of equity and voice help to settle it: did similar cases end in similar results, and was every complainant heard before the reply? All the figures are hypothetical, set out to show the method of calculation, and they represent no organisation and no study.

Where the internal route ends

The work of employee relations is internal at its root. Once a disagreement over a right between a worker and an employer leaves the organisation, its official route starts at the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, according to the entry Labour Disputes.

For the judicial body that hears claims arising from the employment relationship in Saudi Arabia, which sits under the Ministry of Justice, see the definition in Labour Courts. We do not cover the deadlines or conditions of the official route, since the reference for them is the regulatory texts and the pages of the competent authorities.

In our estimate the value of internal documentation shows once a disagreement leaves the organisation: a complaint recorded with its date, a written reply, and minutes of what was said. This is our opinion on the importance of the record, not a description of what any authority requires.

What does the evidence allow us to say?

We do not claim that having an employee relations function raises performance or reduces complaints by any known amount. The abstract by Dundon and colleagues describes the link between voice and performance as problematic, Guest’s abstract describes the evidence of effect for his model as very scarce, and Budd and Colvin’s abstract proposes criteria for assessment without reporting a measurement of their effect.

For the Saudi context, Crossref records a chapter on the role of culture in employee voice in Saudi Arabia, in the book “Employee Voice in the Global South”, published in 2023. We have not read it and do not rely on it, so we do not describe the situation of organisations in the Kingdom.

The concept remains a question an organisation puts to itself: when an employee disagrees with a decision, do they know whom to go to, does a written reply reach them, and does anything change when the same objection keeps coming back? The answer may differ from one department to another within the same organisation.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.