 Today, in this session, we are going to look at basics about building positive employee relations. Till now, we were focusing our discussion on various HR processes and systems. In this session, we are going to talk about the final outcome or desirable expectation of mature HR processes and systems as experienced by the employees and employers. So, this is mostly about the subjective experience of the employees about their organization. What is the meaning of employee relations? So, employee relationship management is the set of activities that involves establishing and maintaining the positive employee-employer relationship. And when we can say it is positive, when it contributes to satisfactory productivity, it contributes to the employee motivation and morale, discipline and which results into maintaining a positive, productive and cohesive work environment. As a management and HR students, you might have heard about great place-to-work service or Forbes, World's Best Employers Survey, etc. These are the examples of the surveys which are conducted in the industry which tell about the positive employee relations in various organizations. They give a benchmark. They also present a comparative account of what is the state of employee relationship? What is the status of employer-employee association and relations in various organizations? So, great place-to-work looks at employee perception and manager's perception. It looks at employee perception on credibility, respect, fairness, pride and camaraderie. And they also conduct a survey about manager's experience. The manager's experience about whether organizational objectives are being achieved, whether employees are giving their best or whether employees are working or the people in the organizations are working as a team or as a family. Every year, they conduct surveys and come up with the list of the best, top 10 or top 20 and across the industries and within the industries. And then many organizations consider this a great honor to be part of, to be in the list of the great places to work. Rightly so, because it gives them a good reputation in the market. It builds their employer branding. It also builds their reputation across the different stakeholders, including suppliers and if they are outsourcing companies, including their partners or clients. Similarly, Forbes also conducts surveys. Initially, it started in USA and then they expanded their survey to various economies in various countries. In India also they conduct surveys. In the Forbes survey, they ask very simple question from the employees and that is sent to lakhs of employees belonging to thousands of organizations or at least hundreds of organizations. So, this survey is sent to lakhs of employees belonging to hundreds of different organizations. They ask a simple question, but it is a very powerful question. They ask whether they whether and they ask it to the all the employees whether they will recommend their friends and family members to join this organization or not. Depending on the employees willingness, respondents willingness to positively recommend their organization to their friends and family, they come up with the ranking. That is the very important perhaps the most significant aspect of the survey, but it is not the only question based on which the comprehensive list is prepared. They also look at image, economic footprint, talent development, gender equality and social equality related aspects of management and employees or respondents are also asked about these aspects. There is the list of the recently acknowledged as great place to work, great places to work and Forbes best employers. You can read about these organizations more on the great place to work website or Forbes best employers website, you can also get information about these organizations and their HR processes in the various sources on internet. The field of management which studies the positive aspect of employer employee relationships and positive aspects of the workplace is known as positive organization scholarship or in short form it is called POS. POS arises from the branch of positive psychology. Positive psychology as we know is a study of human potential and positive characteristics of human personality. Positive psychology looks at positive strengths, positive emotions and also has started looking at positive institutions and positive events in the human life. Arising from this fundamental field of positive psychology, positive organization scholarship also studies positive organization behavior that includes positive practices. The effect of positive practices, the impact of positive practices on the employee behavior and as it is primarily studied in the business organizations, it looks at the impact of these positive aspects on the business results. In the positive organization scholarship, they look at various positive practices like respectfulness, treatment with the integrity, care and we will be looking at the list of several practices being studied in the POS. The linkages that these practices results into positive feeling or positive effects on the employees. That positive effect result into employee commitment, satisfaction and well-being. There are lot of research studies which have established these linkages. When there are positive effects in terms of the commitment or well-being or satisfaction, that naturally results into positive individual behavior. Positive individual behavior meaning employee would like to stay with the organization for long time, they will try out new things, they will be taking more initiatives, they will be more cooperative, they will be keeping organizational benefit for whenever they are making any decisions, they will not be consciously harming the organization or will not indulge into theft or indiscipline which hurts organization and its productivity. Naturally, that will result into better organizational performance and that will be reflected in the profitability or the efficiency or more robust and sound processes being followed in organization. We need to recognize that this linkage is a long term process and it requires a conscious efforts and investment by the employee as well as employer to reach to its fusion.