Managing Global Employee Relations: Top 10 Strategies For Success in 2025 — 1-5

Hello. I’m Alan Wild and welcome to the Wild side podcast Managing employee relations in global and millennial times … 10 minutes, or so, at a time.  Today’s episode takes stock of the Wild side podcast series to date and sets out ten strategies for success in managing international employee relations today …. and going forward.  I wanted to make this podcast the first in 2025 … but the impact of the US election and the likely strategies abroad of the now President Trump obviously took precedence. A little late maybe, but 10 New Year resolutions for the global ER leader.  I soon discovered as I worked through this my top 10 had to be split two episodes of “five” each so here friends are my first five for starters. Visibility and Trust; Engaging Early; Assured Rapid Response; Risk Mapping and Prediction; and Creating an Event Calendar. 

More of all that in a moment …  … as you know, I’m Alan Wild, senior adviser on global employee relations for the HR policy Association … the leading voice of CHRO’s today.  

Let’s start with establishing visibility and trust with the company’s most senior leadership.  Leaders can only support the function if they understand and value its role. To point out the obvious here, this can only happen if the HR and Employee Relations leaders are clear themselves on their role and accountabilities.  The ER leader has two roles. One - to provide an employee relations superstructure or framework where business leaders can implement decisions quickly and flexibly – let me come to that in a moment. Two - employee experience … providing a framework where people are motivated and able to do their best work, This means assuring high levels of people management skills in leaders; removing blockages that get in the way of flexibility; and ensuring where individual employees have issues they are dealt with quickly and fairly. Union recognition, the establishment of works councils and collective protests often start from one individual decision that is perceived unfair and gets broader workforce traction.   

Most ER people are primarily involved in collective issues … on the one hand avoiding them … or on the other, managing them. Business leaders need to understand and buy into how to build and sustain a positive employee relations climate, with or without unions. Here is where understanding and trust problems often start. Particularly in the US, business leaders are frequently polarized into “anti-union” and - let’s say - “union tolerant” companies. For a global leadership team this is a dangerous hypothesis to build and employee relations strategy and can result in horrible business consequences. This applies equally to US companies that choose to wage war with German works councils or Swedish unions … or Swedish leaders that see American trade unions as social partners.  

There is no single approach. In fact there are three alternatives - and most companies will adopt a different one in the various countries they operate in around the globe.  The way I look at it is this; 

• The first is simple and leads little explanation. In operations where it is possible and/or in the business interest to remain union or works council free then employee experience and union avoidance practices come to the fore.   

• Second. … most of the world does not share the 50% +1 rule for employee representation. Trade unions must be recognized with extremely low membership thresholds, not just in Europe but also countries like Japan. Works councils have very low or even “zero” thresholds for establishment … and these bodies enjoy significant influence over workplace change …  to the point of veto rights over many issues in Germany. In these circumstances companies need to establish and maintain constructive relationships with representative bodies that genuinely represent the interests of the company’s workers.   

• Finally, where management decisions are obstructed by unrepresentative and disruptive minority activists in powerful committees, ER leaders and line managers need to take action. This means active engagement in elections to assure those at the table are voted in by all employees, not just a minority of activist voters. There are no quorums in works council elections … and low participation in elections are not normally in the company interests. Where bad actors already occupy important roles the company must make sure that they are held accountable for positions they take with the workforce.    

That is a long way round to the subject of trust. Senior leaders need to understand not just the risks of getting things wrong … bad news travels fast enough… but the business opportunities associated with getting it right.  My experience is that business leaders are interested in labor relations and willingly engage when they understand and buy into the approach and understand the role they themselves play. After all it’s not employee relations people that typically “do” employee relations. It’s done every day in every location. What ER leaders can do is assure that employee relations activity has senior management visibility and support and the leaders of the ER function are sought out trusted to be engaged in key business decisions.   

Everything flows from visibility and trust … and strategy number two is “engage early”. I well recall the IBM elevator doors opening for me and inside already were Ginni Rometty and Lou Gerstner. We did the “hi’s” and Gerstner held out his hand and asked “so what do you do?” …  Ginni immediately responded “Oh he’s in the middle of everything that goes wrong around here”.  When I joined IBM that was pretty well true.  The unions in Latin America had discovered the IT industry and made IBM the poster child for their recognition campaign.  If they could get Big Blue the rest would follow. We had burning tires in the streets of Buenos Aires, water cannons in Santiago, protests in Brazil. We also had strikes in China, union recognition claims in Singapore and Turkey and union protests in Japan … the usual works council issues across Europe including activist capture of the EWC. Sorting this lot out over a year or so made me some kind of folk hero with leaders and built trust, but the real victory was earning the right to sit around the big table early when the plans were being laid. My proudest moment was not a strike resolved, but reducing the company’s restructuring budget by $500m … not by cutting down on separation packages but by planning the process so that the departures were executed quickly and smoothly. When he looked at the results, I became the CFOs BFF and the first “go to” person for change programs.  For country leaders I moved from “the last person on earth they wanted to see” in their operations to a “let me run this idea by you” colleague. That opened the door for my teams to have the same level of influence locally. 

Visibility, trust and influence are the holy trinity of successful ER management.  I talk often about shift from “fixer” to “influencer” but ironically that only comes when you have a track record of jumping in and resolving things when they go wrong … and they do. So, number three on my list is preparedness for effective rapid response. In my consulting role I receive pretty regular calls asking for advice to resolve critical issues. Workers in China  or Korea have walked out on strike,  the French works council has called in health and safety inspectors and they have closed an operation down; a German works council has refused to agree the distribution of the sales bonus plan; Spanish gig contract workers have been declared employees; a recognition petition from inspectors in Kalamazoo; a shareholder proxy demanding a formal human rights based review of trade union management practices around the world  … you know the story. You live it every day. Something happens that shifts the employee relations function from invisibility to top of the C suite agenda … often not in a good way … and the round of “blame-storming” begins.   

My “consultant” answer is always … “of course I can help … let’s understand what’s going on” … typically followed by “this would have been easier to manage three months ago when the issue actually started”.  I have rarely come across a sudden and immediate ER crisis that could not have been predicted and planned for.  The crisis may be a surprise to corporate HQ, but for sure people on the ground saw pressure building and failed to deal with it at source or could have (and maybe did) warn HQ that a global decision would result in major local issues.  Issue number four is about risk mapping to minimize surprises and assure contingency plans are in place … but things do come out of the blue and the job of the ER leader is to defuse or fix them fast.  Employee relations crises do not respect the traditional hierarchy that is set out in the grievance procedure.. They escalate from ground zero to the C suite in hours … sometimes minutes. As an example, in IBM a routine employee  performance dismissal in India made the Washington Post headlines the following day saying “Bloodbath at IBM. Workforce axed and humiliated” … and that headline  suggesting massive layoffs in India put a dent in the company’s stock price. The essential element is speed of issue reporting and trust.  Speed of reporting is obvious, but trust is key.  Local leaders may well want to avoid escalation at all costs in the hope that they can fix an issue locally and avoid HQ scrutiny.  We all know the feared words “I’m from HQ and I’m here to help you”.  With this in mind, rapid response mechanisms will be counterproductive if the outcome is blame-allocation and taking the problem away from local teams.  The global ER leader is there not as negotiator of last resort but as coach, supporter and facilitator of local managers.  For even the largest companies this does not involve massive increases in headcount, simply fast access to a small number of influential experts with two roles. First, coaching local managers and second, facilitating decisions at the most senior levels of the business that create the space for the issue to be resolved. 

So, if fixing stuff fast is table stakes for the ER leader, real and sustainable influence comes from risk mapping and prediction. When I joined Amazon four years ago I was introduced to their “nothing happened” award.  I took this to heart and made sure that in my team, celebrations for those people who stepped up and resolved crucial issues were matched by celebrating those in challenging businesses or geographies where there were few or no damaging escalations.    

Getting ahead of the game means mapping risk and I always recommend two approaches.  First identifying country risk to make sure that the company’s most skilled people are in the places where they are most needed.  Country risk has two elements … external and internal.  External risk is that which applies to all companies in the geography.  For example inflation, political stability, employment legislation, unemployment and general standards of living. These issues affect the employee relations climate but there is little in the short term that a company can do about it … other than take it into account in location decisions and contingency planning. Internal risk is something the company can do influence. Examples include pay to market, manager skills, spans of control, unwanted attrition, proportion of contractors to regular employees, employee tenure and workforce skill levels.  This dual analysis will allow the company to focus attention on the countries where risk is highest and not spread the “competence peanut butter” too thinly.   

The country analysis is fairly static and does not need revision more than once a year. Looking within each country it is more important to look site by site not just at a  static indicator of risk but how the employee relations environment is evolving. The local employee relations climate is much more volatile. Identifying the highest and lowest performing sites from an employee relations point of view is important, but identifying early the sites that are improving or deteriorating facilitates interventions at a time when they are easier to resolve.  Most companies look at the employee relations environment through periodic general or issue specific pulse surveys examining employee engagement or experience. This is useful but it is not enough. In Europe it is quite possible to combine high levels of employee engagement with a poor employee relations environment based on the state of relations with works councils or trade unions.  

It is not difficult to build a practical employee relations dashboard … and most of the elements of it are readily available and are a part of regular management reporting.  Putting together survey or pulse scores with data on absenteeism, quality, productivity, attrition, social media chatter and grievances gives a dynamic portrait of the real state of employee relations and points to solutions in a way that makes sense to line managers. This dashboard should be regular part of more general monthly management reporting. 

Number five is probably the simplest, and perhaps most impactful piece of work to get ahead of the game.  This is the development of an employee relations calendar. The occasions when the employee relations environment is most vulnerable and where opportunities arise to make major improvements are not hard to predict. If you don’t have a calendar yet .. 1Q 2025 would be a good time to do it.  This is not about micro-management or intrusive central control … it is about providing the right level of support and contingency planning to predictable local events.  So, what should your calendar include.  Include the dates of any collective bargaining agreements and build in time before the date for planning and agreement of negotiating parameters. Likewise, if you are covered in Europe or South America by sectoral or national agreements build those in too. Bear in mind that the application of these agreements is rarely the implementation of a single figure across the board award … and if this is what you do, you are probably wasting money. The dates of national minimum wage awards are also key … and again your response it not straightforward. As we have seen recently in Mexico simply implementing the minimum wage increase has destroyed the skill differentials that encourage people to seek more skills or a promotion.  Next are the dates of works council or employee representative elections.  In countries like France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands works council elections are held nationally and with intervals of four or five years.  If you have disruptive works councils this is the time to plan to ensure employees vote for the people they believe will best represent them. Likewise if you have constructive relationships … maintaining those are important. Remember you have to live with the outcome over the long term. Finally you might add into the mix known business plans that will impact employees and may require multiple consultation processes. 

As you can see, going for all ten would have been a tall order. The next episode will  cover items 6 to 10.  If you want to learn more about what we do, participate in one of our formal programs or have a question on an issue we have, or have not yet, covered … you can get me on awild@chro.org(Opens in a new window) or on Linked In.  

I’m Alan Wild, and you’ve been listening to a walk on the wild side.