Nowhere is systems thinking more evident than in employee relations. Open systems thinking and empowering clients to have the ability to be self-reliant have certainly become operationally pragmatic. In systems thinking, the focal point is empowerment.

Interdependency is the natural result of systems thinking and empowerment. The employee organization is primordial. From it spring the component resources of human power, inspiration, influence, and cooperation. This is the backbone of employee relations especially when imbued with the holistic frame of reference of systems thinking.

Systems thinking takes a different direction from the old modes of employee relations. It does not take the system as an autonomous process but puts it in the context of the larger environment. It views, studies, and evaluates the role it plays as a subset of the larger whole.

More specifically, it can be illustrated as such: a single employee is part of the whole human resources pool of an organization, and these human resources, in turn, are part of the entire supply chain within the organization in its process towards accomplishing its tasks and achieving its goals.

Human resources is one of the best bases to showcase systems thinking because multidimensionality is one of its more potent principles and strengths. For human resources and employee relations to be successful, there should be a method by which to identify behavioral patterns so as to effectively revise undesirable behavior. This method is systems thinking.

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Via Systems Thinking