As most employers know, a happy employee is a productive employee. If employees feel good about their jobs, they will likely care about the type of work they perform. Of course your customers will then be satisfied and hopefully purchase additional products, resulting in that ever more important increased revenue to the bottom line. The key here is your happy employee. Are your employees happy? Have you asked your employees how they like their jobs? The company itself? Was this a recent discussion? If you haven't, what do you think they would say?

If you aren't talking to or listening to your employees, someone else soon will be - the UNION. With the looming Employee Free Choice Act, unions will be more active than ever, talking and listening to employees all across this nation. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow unions to organize with simple card signatures of the majority of a particular workforce. The current process includes both card signatures and a secret ballot election, technically two steps to solidify unionization. The new act makes the election step optional, meaning that unions will more easily be able to organize with simple cards. And in most instances, employers will not even know these card signatures are taking place.

When taking a look historically at unions, the country faced different workforce challenges relative to employee safety, child labor, consistent/fair treatment and equitable wages and benefits (including pensions). Going back to the 1950's, unions served a valued purpose to employees, ensuring workforce populations were treated with dignity, respect, and fairness. Then came the passages of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), etc, etc where the government ensured employee protections in the workplace. Union purpose therefore declined and membership soon followed suit.

Unions today still play a key role in organizations that fail to reach or support their employees. Employees feel a "benefit" from being a bargaining unit member, whether that is lower health care premiums, higher wages, a safer work environment, fair treatment or a secured pension. If the union and company management are "friendly" and "bargain appropriately", the employees take notice and feel even more satisfied with membership.

Knowing this, unions utilize several millennium tactics when organizing new workforces. Here are three common organizing tactics used by the millennium unions:

1. With today's diverse employee base, union organizers are diverse themselves, many speaking several languages and/or dialects. This way the organizer can connect much more deeply with the employees and offer something most employers don't or aren't able to do "communicate"!

2. Union organizers also take the time to conduct research regarding particular employee dissatisfaction within a company culture. He/She may ask employees why turnover is occurring and what is going wrong internally? The organizer will then point out how the union can specifically help with that particular issue and how the employee may benefit from union membership. However, if the issues surround higher wages or reduced benefit costs for example, the organizer may not acknowledge that these areas need to be bargained for and not automatically provided if the employees become union members.

3. Another popular organizing method is to talk with employees where they may be more relaxed, like at their homes, their children's sporting events, even their places of worship. Union organizers will find a way to reach employees, wherever might be the most convenient.

The moral of the story is, if you aren't talking or listening to your workforce, someone else soon will be! Employers need to be prepared as the stakes are high. In the end, the best defense is a healthy work environment, solid leaders and most importantly, an open door policy that allows for healthy two-way communication with your most important asset, the employees.