Top 12 Employee Relations Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume

In a workplace that never sits still, the Employee Relations Manager steadies the pulse. The resume that lands interviews doesn’t just list tasks; it shows proof of trust-building, pattern-spotting, and dispute navigation. Skills that turn tense moments into forward motion. Skills that keep people heard, safe, and thriving.

Employee Relations Manager Skills

1. Mediation
2. Negotiation
3. Conflict Resolution
4. Employment Law
5. HRIS (Human Resource Information System)
6. SAP SuccessFactors
7. Workday HCM
8. Performance Management
9. Employee Engagement
10. Diversity & Inclusion
11. ADP Workforce Now
12. Oracle HCM Cloud

1. Mediation

Mediation is a confidential, voluntary process where a neutral facilitator helps people in conflict talk, understand each other’s interests, and craft an agreement they can both accept.

Why It's Important

It keeps dialogue constructive, prevents escalation, and preserves working relationships—vital fuel for productivity and trust.

How to Improve Mediation Skills

Level up with deliberate practice and structure:

1. Formal training: Complete accredited mediation or dispute-resolution coursework; refresh annually.

2. Case preparation: Map stakeholders, issues, positions versus interests, and possible trades before the room fills.

3. Listening discipline: Use summaries, reframing, and clarifying questions to surface what matters beneath the surface.

4. Neutral posture: Park assumptions; set balanced ground rules; document agreements in plain language.

5. Follow-through: Schedule check-ins, track commitments, and adjust terms if realities shift.

How to Display Mediation Skills on Your Resume

2. Negotiation

Negotiation is the structured back-and-forth that aligns different interests—employees, managers, unions—into workable agreements that hold up under real-world stress.

Why It's Important

It shortens disputes, reduces cost, and secures outcomes people can support, not sabotage.

How to Improve Negotiation Skills

Sharpen both mindset and method:

1. Prep the map: Define must-haves, nice-to-haves, walk-away points, and alternatives for all sides.

2. Active listening: Seek the underlying need, not just the stated demand; test understanding out loud.

3. Clear framing: Use concise proposals, neutral language, and options that invite trade-offs.

4. Emotion regulation: Notice triggers, slow tempo when heat rises, and reset the tone deliberately.

5. Package deals: Bundle issues to expand value and move past single-issue deadlocks.

6. Post-mortems: Debrief each negotiation to codify tactics, phrases, and data that worked.

How to Display Negotiation Skills on Your Resume

3. Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution turns friction into forward motion by diagnosing root causes, facilitating fair conversations, and closing with practical, monitored agreements.

Why It's Important

It safeguards culture, protects focus, and prevents churn. Teams move faster when tension is addressed, not buried.

How to Improve Conflict Resolution Skills

Be systematic without being rigid:

1. Surface the core: Distinguish facts, perceptions, and impacts; confirm consensus on the problem statement.

2. Empathy in action: Validate feelings without taking sides; make space for quiet voices.

3. Communication hygiene: Ban accusations; invite “I” statements; track agreements live.

4. Option generation: Co-create multiple fixes—process tweaks, behavior shifts, or guardrails—before choosing.

5. Agreement design: Set owners, timelines, and measures; define escalation if commitments slip.

6. Aftercare: Check back, measure outcomes, and refine any brittle terms.

How to Display Conflict Resolution Skills on Your Resume

4. Employment Law

Employment law sets the guardrails for hiring, pay, safety, leave, discrimination, accommodations, discipline, and separation. It’s the rulebook for fair work and defensible decisions.

Why It's Important

Compliance prevents liability, builds trust, and anchors consistent practices across managers and sites.

How to Improve Employment Law Skills

Keep pace with a shifting landscape:

1. Continuous learning: Track updates on wage and hour, pay transparency, leave expansions, noncompete changes, AI-in-hiring guidance, and remote/hybrid safety rules.

2. Policy currency: Audit handbooks and procedures twice a year; align multi-state language and add jurisdiction-specific addenda.

3. Manager fluency: Train leaders on documentation, accommodations, retaliation avoidance, and consistent discipline.

4. Issue intake: Stand up confidential reporting paths and SLAs for response; log and trend issues.

5. External perspective: Schedule periodic counsel reviews or third-party audits to stress-test practices.

6. Documentation rigor: Timestamp decisions, cite policy, and retain records per legal retention schedules.

How to Display Employment Law Skills on Your Resume

5. HRIS (Human Resource Information System)

HRIS is the system of record for people data—hiring, org structures, comp, time, performance, and more—woven into workflows that keep HR running cleanly.

Why It's Important

Accurate, accessible data powers fair decisions, quick responses, and trend spotting across employee relations.

How to Improve HRIS (Human Resource Information System) Skills

Make the system work for people, not the other way around:

1. Needs assessment: Gather use cases from HR, managers, and employees; map pain points to features.

2. Configuration first: Fix fields, workflows, and permissions before considering new modules.

3. Data hygiene: Define owners for data quality, run audits, and automate validation rules.

4. Security posture: Tighten role-based access, MFA, and audit logs; review quarterly.

5. Enablement: Create short, role-based guides and in-app tips; measure adoption and iterate.

6. Reporting cadence: Build standard dashboards for case trends, attrition, and time-to-resolution.

How to Display HRIS (Human Resource Information System) Skills on Your Resume

6. SAP SuccessFactors

SAP SuccessFactors is a cloud HR suite that centralizes core HR, performance, learning, and analytics—useful terrain for tracking relations issues and reinforcing development.

Why It's Important

It links day-to-day people data with performance and engagement signals, letting you act sooner and smarter.

How to Improve SAP SuccessFactors Skills

Unlock more value with targeted configuration:

1. Tune Employee Central: Standardize fields and workflows for grievances, investigations, and outcomes.

2. Performance & Goals: Align objectives, embed feedback loops, and tie coaching to documented cases when appropriate.

3. Learning: Serve bite-sized training on policy, conduct, and manager conversations based on needs.

4. Workforce Analytics: Build dashboards for hotspots—turnover, absences, low-engagement clusters—and intervene early.

5. Keep current: Review quarterly releases; adopt features that reduce clicks or improve visibility.

How to Display SAP SuccessFactors Skills on Your Resume

7. Workday HCM

Workday HCM brings core HR, talent, time, and analytics together, offering a clean backbone for employee relations processes and insights.

Why It's Important

One source of truth, configurable workflows, and robust reporting help you resolve issues faster and with consistency.

How to Improve Workday HCM Skills

Shape Workday to fit your ER playbook:

1. Workflow tailoring: Configure case intake, approvals, and notifications that mirror your investigation steps.

2. Analytics: Use dashboards for case volumes, cycle times, and recurrence; publish monthly trends to leaders.

3. Security design: Limit sensitive details to need-to-know roles; audit access quarterly.

4. Manager enablement: Build guided tasks and learning content for coaching, documentation, and feedback.

5. Feedback loop: Collect user input, prioritize quick wins, and ship iterative improvements.

How to Display Workday HCM Skills on Your Resume

8. Performance Management

Performance management aligns expectations, feedback, and growth so that daily effort actually serves the strategy.

Why It's Important

Clarity reduces anxiety. Feedback fuels improvement. Fairness strengthens retention.

How to Improve Performance Management Skills

Make it continuous, not ceremonial:

1. Clear, measurable goals: Use simple, time-bound outcomes that ladder to team and company priorities.

2. Regular check-ins: Replace annual surprises with monthly or quarterly touchpoints.

3. Coaching culture: Teach managers to give specific, behavior-based feedback and ask forward-looking questions.

4. Development plans: Pair stretch goals with training and mentoring; track progress visibly.

5. Recognition: Celebrate impact in real time; vary forms—public praise, growth opportunities, spot bonuses.

6. PIPs done right: For gaps, define expectations, supports, timelines, and objective measures.

How to Display Performance Management Skills on Your Resume

9. Employee Engagement

Engagement is the energy employees choose to invest—sparked by purpose, fairness, growth, and a voice that matters.

Why It's Important

It moves the needle on productivity, quality, retention, and customer experience—often all at once.

How to Improve Employee Engagement Skills

Design experiences that feel human and fair:

1. Open channels: Encourage two-way communication through forums, Q&As, and pulse surveys.

2. Recognition that lands: Mix peer-to-peer shout-outs with manager recognition and tangible rewards.

3. Growth pathways: Offer courses, stretch projects, and mentoring; make development visible and accessible.

4. Team rituals: Use brief standups, retros, and periodic offsites to bond and align.

5. Action on feedback: Close the loop—share what you heard and what will change.

6. Balance: Normalize flexible work where possible and model healthy boundaries.

How to Display Employee Engagement Skills on Your Resume

10. Diversity & Inclusion

D&I means everyone belongs and can thrive—equitable access, respectful culture, and systems that reduce bias, not reinforce it.

Why It's Important

More perspectives, better solutions. Stronger trust, stronger teams. It’s both principle and performance lever.

How to Improve Diversity & Inclusion Skills

Build inclusion into daily operations:

1. Education: Run regular sessions on bias, inclusive communication, and cultural competency with practical scenarios.

2. Inclusive hiring: Use structured interviews, diverse panels, and bias-checked job descriptions; expand sourcing channels.

3. Mentorship & sponsorship: Pair employees with mentors; hold leaders accountable for sponsoring underrepresented talent.

4. ERGs with impact: Support Employee Resource Groups with budgets, executive sponsors, and clear charters.

5. Measure and publish: Track representation, promotion, pay equity, and sentiment; share actions tied to results.

6. Policy and accountability: Embed inclusion into performance goals and leadership evaluations.

How to Display Diversity & Inclusion Skills on Your Resume

11. ADP Workforce Now

ADP Workforce Now centralizes payroll, benefits, talent, and compliance, giving ER teams a unified place to manage cases and communication.

Why It's Important

With cleaner data and integrated workflows, response times drop and patterns emerge faster.

How to Improve ADP Workforce Now Skills

Dial in the features that matter for ER:

1. Announcements: Use the built-in feature to broadcast policy updates and timelines.

2. Self-service: Configure employee and manager access so common needs don’t bottleneck HR.

3. Learning: Assign targeted modules on conduct, policy, and coaching; track completion.

4. Pulse checks: Run brief, anonymous surveys to spot morale dips and hotspots.

5. Performance tools: Standardize reviews, goals, and feedback to reduce inconsistency.

6. Analytics: Monitor trends in case types, turnover drivers, and response SLAs.

How to Display ADP Workforce Now Skills on Your Resume

12. Oracle HCM Cloud

Oracle HCM Cloud is a full-suite platform spanning Core HR, talent, payroll, and learning—with strong workflow and analytics capabilities for ER work.

Why It's Important

It connects signals across the employee lifecycle so you can intervene early, document well, and standardize resolutions.

How to Improve Oracle HCM Cloud Skills

Turn features into outcomes:

1. Advanced analytics: Build reports that track grievances, cycle time, outcomes, and recurrence; share trends with leaders.

2. Workflow automation: Standardize intake, triage, approvals, and closure with task owners and due dates.

3. Targeted communication: Use role-based messaging to clarify policies and next steps.

4. Learning integration: Connect case themes to training and coaching paths.

5. Continuous feedback: Incorporate goals, check-ins, and surveys to keep a live read on sentiment.

6. Release readiness: Review new features each cycle and adopt those that reduce friction or add visibility.

How to Display Oracle HCM Cloud Skills on Your Resume