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How to Improve Relations Between Your Managers and Employees
The relationship between your managers and your employees is key to maintaining a productive and happy workplace. Here's how to improve the dynamic.
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Having a healthy manager-employee relationship is critical when running a business. Poor relationships in the workplace can directly impact employee performance and retention. Don’t risk losing good workers due to something solvable like poor working relationships. Here’s what you need to know about improving manager-employer relations for long-term success.
What is relationship management in the workplace, and why is it important?
Employee relationship management describes an organization’s ongoing effort to engage its employees and keep them satisfied. This initiative involves maintaining open communication in the workplace among workers of all levels. Positive manager-employee relationships in the office encourage productivity and collaboration among teams. When there’s mutual respect between a manager and a worker, there’s more willingness on both ends to offer support and perform well.
How you and your managers treat employees directly impacts employee behavior and output, and good leadership plays an essential role in forming a close, efficient team. Positive relationship management can increase employee engagement, productivity, creativity, innovation and collaboration.
“When people feel genuinely valued and understood, they’re more likely to be engaged and motivated,” Darrin Murriner, co-founder and CEO of team development technology Cloverleaf, told us. “When trust exists, it’s easier to share ideas, tackle challenges together, and stay committed to the team.”
Strong manager-employee relations can also help reduce employee absenteeism and employee turnover. According to a 2024 Gallup study, more than two in five workers who chose to resign stated that actions by their manager or employer could have retained them.
What are some examples of employee relations?
When managed well, employee relations help eliminate toxicity in the workplace and keep workers at all levels content and secure. For instance, if an employee bullies their teammate, it’s the employer’s responsibility to take action against the perpetrator. If there’s a concern about time off or paid leave, it’s up to management to handle these concerns with care.
Essentially, any activity or initiative to engage and support employees falls under employee relations and can affect workers’ performance and overall workplace culture. Consider these critical focus areas that shape employee relations in today’s workplace:
- Professional development: Helping workers reach their own professional goals in relation to the business
- Team building: Hosting activities that bring workers together
- Workplace safety: Ensuring your office and work environment are both physically and emotionally safe for your employees
- Conflict management: Helping resolve any issues in the workplace, whether they’re between two co-workers or an employee and manager
- Employee appreciation: Positively acknowledging and rewarding team members’ good work
When you engage with your team in these ways, you can prevent or mitigate personnel issues that affect productivity, collaboration and morale.
How can you improve employee relations?
Building stronger relationships between managers and employees requires intentional effort and strategic implementation. These five proven approaches can transform your workplace dynamics:
1. Take advantage of feedback.
Formal and informal feedback is highly beneficial to a company’s internal workings. Not soliciting feedback can make an employee feel like a less vital player in the organization, which can lead to a decrease in their work performance. It’s critical to show staffers they and their opinions matter. Murriner suggests facilitating this by encouraging regular check-ins.
“[Regular check-ins] aren’t just for updates — they’re opportunities for managers to listen, understand, and respond to what their team members truly need and feel,” said Murriner. “Transparency is crucial here; employees need to trust that their manager has their best interests in mind, even when the conversation is tough.”
Instead of making decisions independently of your employees, seek their input. Speak with team members about departmental strengths and weaknesses to gauge how managers are executing their own responsibilities. This makes your employees feel more appreciated and involved, and should ultimately improve their productivity and morale.
Employee input serves multiple purposes beyond simple engagement. When you actively solicit and act on feedback, you create a culture of continuous improvement where team members become co-creators of organizational success. This collaborative approach not only surfaces innovative solutions you might have missed but also builds psychological safety — a key factor that Google’s Project Aristotle identified as the top characteristic of high-performing teams.
2. Promote workplace cooperation.
All managers and employees should understand that work performance is not about competition. It’s about coming together to serve a common purpose; e.g., pleasing your clients or customers. Creating this collaborative environment requires deliberate communication strategies and cross-functional alignment.
“Being a leader requires you to be an expert communicator, and that includes communication across teams and departments,” said Cyndi Wenninghoff, VP of people at Quantum Workplace. “It’s the leader’s job to connect the dots across departments, identify collaboration opportunities, and form close relationships with other leaders in the organization.”
Modern managers must also adapt to diverse working styles and communication preferences. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), 35 percent of the U.S. workforce worked remotely at least part-time in 2023, requiring managers to develop new collaboration strategies that bridge physical and digital workspaces.
“Each employee brings a unique background, strengths and work style, making a one-size-fits-all management approach ineffective,” said Murriner. “To build truly effective teams, managers must focus on understanding these individual differences and tailoring their approach accordingly.”
Providing opportunities for your managers to interact more with other employees will help build stronger cooperation and understanding among leadership while allowing managers to help employees improve their individual skills.
Effective collaboration activities include structured workshops that solve real business challenges, cross-departmental mentoring programs, innovation sprints where teams from different areas work together, and regular “lunch and learn” sessions where departments share expertise. These initiatives break down silos while building the interpersonal connections that fuel productive teamwork.
3. Encourage a healthy work-life balance.
A healthy work-life balance is essential for maintaining job satisfaction and positive employee relations. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey, while 92 percent of employees consider it a priority to be employed by an organization that supports their mental and emotional health, only 78 percent reported feeling valued in their workplace. This gap between expectations and reality can create significant problems. When organizations and managers fail to promote a culture that respects work-life boundaries, employees may begin to resent their supervisors — particularly if they fear negative consequences for taking time away from work. This resentment intensifies interpersonal tensions and accelerates employee burnout, creating a cycle that further damages workplace relationships and overall well-being.
Instead of working employees to the point of exhaustion, create an environment that demonstrates you and other managers care about employee well-being and mental health. Have company leaders not only encourage employees to take care of their physical and mental health but also lead by example by adopting a strong work-life balance personally. This will show employees it’s OK to use their well-deserved PTO days for a little R&R and alleviate the fear of potential consequences.
“Encourage a healthy work-life balance by supporting time off and flexible schedules as needed,” said Wenninghoff. “Part of that encouragement is being an example yourself. Make sure you’re also taking time off to recharge.”
4. Resolve conflict rationally.
Conflict in the workplace is inevitable, but its resolution should always be a top priority. Issues among employees, and especially between employees and managers, can easily disrupt the workings of your company. So it’s crucial to address them in a rational, timely manner.
When responding to conflict, don’t be quick to judge. Jumping to conclusions before hearing multiple sides of the story can be detrimental to the health of your business should the wrong person be reprimanded. Approach each situation with an open mind.
Miscommunication often plays a large role in problems that arise in the workplace. Be sure to ask what was said by each party and whether any effort was made to clear up potential misunderstandings before you were informed of the situation. Companies lose employees all too often over miscommunication.
You can also try to prevent conflicts before they start. Proactive conflict prevention strategies include establishing clear communication protocols, implementing regular team check-ins to address tensions early, creating anonymous feedback channels for sensitive issues, and providing conflict resolution training for all managers. Team-building activities are also great opportunities for managers and employees to strengthen their bonds on a personal level, lowering the risk of conflict resulting from a misunderstanding.
5. Inspire and reward your employees.
Find ways to bring your teams together. Although individual employees have their own unique responsibilities, team members need to recognize they’re in this together. Inform each department of their monthly goals, and offer incentives and rewards for reaching them.
“Celebrate individual and team achievements and milestones to foster belonging and appreciation,” said Wenninghoff.
Some prizes could include corporate-branded swag (T-shirts, hats, accessories, etc.), fitness perks (e.g., gym memberships), gift cards, bonuses and free lunches.
Tackling daily tasks is more exciting when there are physical benefits in addition to a regular paycheck. Employees are likely to accomplish much more and put their hearts into their work when they have control over the extras they receive. They may also be more amenable to working cooperatively with management. If your company tries this, take care to ensure managers aren’t using the promise of rewards to manipulate staffers or even punish those who may be struggling. [Read related article: Creative Perks for Improved Morale]
Strong manager-employee relationships form the foundation of organizational success. By implementing these evidence-based strategies, you can transform your workplace into an environment where both managers and employees thrive together. The investment in relationship management pays dividends through increased productivity, reduced turnover, and a culture of mutual respect and achievement.
Skye Schooley and Amy Blackburn contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.
