Almost all of us have heard something or the other about Employee Relations (ER) and the vital role it plays to bridge gaps between employees and management. Being an HR professional, it has been an immense pleasure to see HR function gain more and more importance every day and occupy a “strategic” role in an organization rather than the old “operational one”. However, ER has been an area of HR that needs to be understood by professionals and people in General.

The general perception is that whenever an employee is called upon by ER personnel; there is something wrong. Either the person called upon will receive a disciplinary action, inquiry, punishment or possibly termination. That is why most employees fear their interaction with ER section and are more inclined to have interaction with other functions of HR such as , compensation & benefit, training & development, as they know something good will come out of it.

However, this needs to be changed and people within and outside of organizations need to be made aware that ER does not only represents the interest of the employer but also the people working in it. That is ER is answerable to employees as much as it is to the top management. The core concept of ER function is to ensure that lawful rights of employees and employer are not violated. There is a wide spread presumption that ER- is an internal legal department of an organization, however, in reality ER is to ensure that a smooth and mutually beneficial relation is maintained between the employer and employees.

The Constitution of Pakistan has a wide range of laws in regards to labor rights and it is the job of ER to make sure all those laws are followed religiously and welfare of employees is taken care of such as minimum wage, freedom of association, grants right to unionize, old age benefit etc. In other words, ER is the undisputed “savior” of employee’s rights. Moreover, ER acts a reliable medium of communication between the employees/workers and the management so that no gap is created.

Now with an ever increasing role of HR in decision making, it has become essential to educate the lesser educated/aware employees about the role of Employee Relations and perhaps remove the stigma that has been unintentionally attached to it. The existence of ER function in any organization is an attempt to facilitate employees not to suppress them.