“Employee relations is a common title for the industrial relations function within personnel management and is also sometimes used as an alternative label for the academic field of “industrial relations”. The term underlines the fact that industrial relations is not confined to the study of trade unions but embraces the broad pattern of employee management, including systems of direct communication and employee involvement that targets the individual worker.” (Heery &ump; Noon, 2001)
From this definition, the researcher is able to determine that Heery &ump; Noon are stating that, employee relations involves the bulk of work that focuses with maintaining employer and employee relationships within the organisation and contributes to upholding satisfactory productivity, employee motivation and work morale. Nevertheless, Heery &ump; Noon’s employee relations definition is understood by the researcher that, it focuses on preventing and resolving problems which may arise within the workplace regarding employees and also gives individuals at work some involvement in the organisation rather than it being more based around industrial relations. Trade unions also embrace employee management patterns but also have restrictions in interacting with employees. Heery &ump; Noon mention that employee relations is a common title for the industrial relation functions, but in some case, employee relations has different perspective and approaches than industrial relations and can also be used differently, this difference can be seen from Blyton &ump; Turnball (2006). Blyton &ump; Turnball’s definition regarding employee relations believe that “industrial relations have became inevitably associated with trade