Employee Relations

Terminology Evolution

The terminology has clearly evolved in this business functional area. During the 1930s and 1940s, the department overseeing the interaction of the employer with employees was known as the Payroll Department, a central area of interaction. From the 1950s to the 1960s, it came to be known as the Personnel Department, run by low-level staff and with negligible power within the organization. Some have referred to it as the maternal arm of the employer, with mostly women employees, who are primarily clerical, dealing with tax and insurance forms along with payroll. In work organizations with labor unions present, the department often became known as the Industrial Relations Department. If the organization was not in an industrial setting and yet was unionized, the usual term of the era was Labor Relations Department, and the emphasis was on dealing with the union.

The terminology evolution was accelerated by legislation in the 1960s and 1970s. Federal statutes changed the organizational outlook on both the employee as a resource and the significance of the staff function. The staff evolved from clerical work to developing professional and technical skills to cope with the implications of the new statutes. In the mid-1970s, professionalism became a central theme as the American Society for Personnel Administration (ASPA) evolved to meet the needs being expressed. The membership demanded [Page 695]more professional tools to cope with their new responsibilities. The various legislative acts placed penalties on the organization and even on senior management for failure to comply; senior management suddenly needed assistance internally, and providing that competence internally gave the newly minted professionals power within the organization. ASPA has since become SHRM, the Society of Human Resource Management.

Employee Relations Function

Employee relations is usually charged with each of the following functions.