Employee Relations Practices and Firm performance: A Conceptual Model Proposal

Employee relations management has become an important topic in management sciences, for practitioners and theorists. Also, it's an aspect of human resource management that has an impact on the performance of SMEs and large firms in the 21st century due to increased competition, changing customer needs, technology and globalization in an ever-changing business environment. In the same context, global and local firms are challenged to build good relationships with their employees in order to improve their performance (financial and non-financial performance) in a changing business environment. Aspects of employee relations that can affect firm performance include employee engagement, employee expression, and employee involvement. When it comes to performance, this is a polysemous concept that is difficult to define. However, there are several researchers who have increasingly focused on the criteria for evaluating firm performance, which are based on the financial and non-financial conception of performance, and which have a relationship with social factors. This paper aims to shed original light on a subject that is still little addressed in management sciences. Our goal is to study the contribution of employee relations practices to firm performance. Through a critical and in-depth reading, we will be able to propose a new research model to explain the impact of employee relations practices on firm performance. The model developed states that employee relations practices indirectly influence the level of firm performance. Moreover, it shows that the variables related to human capital (job satisfaction), without forgetting justice at work (organizational variable) fill a central place and favor the contribution of employee relations to firm performance.