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Morale is usually impacted when the flow of the organizational hierarchy falls apart. For example, working 12 hour shifts and the people who are hired to relieve you do not show up, when it is your day off and you get called in because they are severely short on CNA's, you need approval to get a certain medication even though you meet the employer's halfway for medical benefits, when you have a problem and you go to the appropriate people for help and you get shifted down the line with answers of "I do not know" and in the end you still do not get an answer. On the flip side of morale some could see matching dollar for dollar in a 401k, great health benefits, one free 15 minute massage each week, occasional tickets to the opera or a sporting event, and one extra day off during the month for working extra hours during the week. Morale is predicated to the individual. What an employer may see as workforce morale may or may not be good for the individual.

If you look at the turnover process there is "psychological, individual, organizational, and environmental" (Abelson, Landau, 2002) factors that can persuade and individual to stay with a company or possibly leave a company. There is also functional turnover and dysfunctional turnover. With both of these functions there is a fine line between them. Functional turnover indicates how a company can withstand a loss or need to decide on a loss of employees, dysfunctional turnover indicates more of a catastrophic or impaired loss due to the importance of these individuals and or job status. Then we have the issue of what factors employees and employers control in leaving or being dismissed. Sometimes we have unanticipated events in our lives that can change us in many ways such as "death of a family member or severe illness" (Abelson, Landau, 2002). With these events the employer has no control over. The employer does have control over "dismissal, layoffs, and forced retirement" (Abelson, Landau, 2002). Other indicators that are beneficial for the employee to leave a company are as follows, "better pay elsewhere, better working conditions, better organizational reputation" (Abelson, Landau, 2002). Issues employees do not control when leaving a company are "spouse moving to a new location, mid career change, taking care of a family member" (Abelson, Landau, 2002). The audit process allows the organization to see on paper the functional, dysfunctional, intraorganizational movement, interorganizational movement and shows the trend in the current organizational structure.

Barriers to employee relations include working conditions, new educational training (lack of); loss of advancement opportunity, earnings; not complying with the ADA, family or medical leave; performance reviews, positive feedback or recognition; unemployment benefits, complaint of discrimination; personal growth and development, holiday pay and or being off on a holiday; wanting his or her own personnel file, lacking policies and procedures; misclassifying employees, at-will documents, etc. All of these issues are barriers that can be rectified or worked through. The company itself needs to ensure the employee will be happy and satisfied with the job and or career and HR needs to go through everything at the interview stage and also when hiring to reinforce company standards and or employee misunderstandings.

Reference

Abe lson, M., Landau, J. (2002) Recruitment and Retention. Retrieved August 16, 2006 from the University of Phoenix website: https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/se cure/courseList.asp

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