A positive employee relations strategy can strengthen frontline leadership, improve engagement, reduce the risk of union organizing, and strengthen culture over the next 52 weeks.
Most employers do not need a consultant to tell them where the problems are.
They know which department cannot keep people. They know which supervisor gets results while leaving a trail of unhappy employees. They know which policy is applied differently depending on the shift, the manager, or the day of the week.
These problems tend to sit around until something makes them impossible to ignore. A union petition. A walkout. A spike in turnover. Another good employee heading for the door.
Then everyone gets very interested in employee relations.
That is the thinking behind The Next 52 Weeks. Phil Wilson originally developed the program for employers that had won a union election and needed to repair the workplace afterward.
Under Section 9(c)(3) of the National Labor Relations Act, another election generally cannot be held in the same bargaining unit for 12 months following a valid election.
That gives an employer a year. It does not give the employer a new culture.
The supervisors employees did not trust are still supervising. The communication gaps are still there. Employees who supported the union have not suddenly decided management was right because the vote went the other way.
Returning to normal may feel comfortable. Normal was also where the problems started.
Why Wait for a Union Campaign
The same work employers should do after an election can be done before organizing begins, and can go a long way to preventing an election from ever happening.
Start by taking an honest look at the workplace. Annual surveys can be useful, but a companywide score can make an organization look healthy while one department is quietly falling apart.
A real employee relations vulnerability assessment gets closer to the ground.
Where is turnover highest? Which supervisors generate the most complaints? Are policies applied consistently? Can employees raise concerns without regretting it later?
And what happens after employees speak up?
Employers love asking for feedback. Following up is where things get less enthusiastic.
Employees do not expect every request to be approved. They do expect someone to answer them. Keep a visible issues list. Explain what can be fixed, what will take time, and what is not going to change.
Silence is still an answer. It is usually the wrong one.
Frontline Supervisors Are the Workplace
Employees do not experience the company through its values statement. They experience it through the person approving their time off.
Frontline supervisors are responsible for many different tasks daily. They assign work, deliver feedback, apply policy, and decide whether a concern gets attention. One bad supervisor can do a lot of harm to your workplace culture.
All too often, employers promote the strongest operators into a supervisory position and assume the leadership part will sort itself out. Sometimes it does, but if not, employees wind up with a leader who may avoid difficult conversations, apply rules inconsistently, and blame corporate whenever employees dislike a decision.
That supervisor may still hit every production target, but that doesn’t mean they are leading effectively.
The Cultivating Performance episode of our video podcast The Left of Boom Show examines the supervisor’s role in feedback, conflict, and performance. The message is straightforward: supervisors need coaching, practice, and accountability.
Training alone will not carry the load.
More Than 10 Hours of Free Video Content
LRI has made the complete Next 52 Weeks video series available free to everyone.
The series includes 13 expert episodes and more than 10 hours of video content covering vulnerability assessments, action planning, approachability, workplace conflict, employee advocacy, performance management, and communication when things go wrong.
The episodes do not have to be watched in order. The page includes learning paths based on the problems an organization needs to address. HR teams can use individual episodes during planning meetings. Supervisors can watch an episode and discuss how it applies to their own teams.
There is no paywall. There is no registration fee. Just more than 10 hours of practical employee relations guidance available to anyone willing to use it.
The Next 52 Weeks Have Already Started
A year from now, the workplace will be different.
Employees will have learned whether leaders mean what they say. Supervisors will have built trust or spent it. Small problems will have been fixed, ignored, or promoted into larger ones.
No union campaign is required.
The clock is already running.
