Good Morning

I’m sure all of you have had a good vent about work at some stage, and my friends are no different. Yesterday my friend, James, who’s a junior manager at a large company, had a good rant to me about his HR department!

It seems a disgruntled employee sent an email about all the managers “being useless” and doing nothing all day. Naturally the HR department can’t just let something like that go.

So what did the HR representative do?

He started ranting and raving at the managers instead of conducting a formal investigation...and thinks he’s done his job. Now, I’m by no means saying managers should be protected game when it comes to discipline, but a proper investigation would’ve revealed if there was a problem with all the managers, or if the employee in question was just disgruntled because of something that had happened.

What would you have done in this situation?

It’s extremely serious when your employee lays a grievance, even if it turns out to be petty, and you must act on it correctly.

Ensure all parties, including you as the person in charge of HR, follow the grievance procedure...and do things by the book!

To get things right from the outset, make sure your grievance procedure contains these seven elements.

Checklist: 7 elements of your grievance procedure

It should:

1. encourage people to lodge grievances as soon as the incident arises;
2. have an exact description of what may be lodged, giving examples. For example, it could state that the grievance procedure cannot be invoked where an employee is unhappy about disciplinary action that has been taken against him/her;  
3. include a statement that complaints should be lodged as close to the source as possible. A failure to do so undermines the authority of your managers and leaves them severely disillusioned;
4. have clear-cut deadlines for the resolution of grievances;
5. ensure a hierarchy of reporting grievances, so that employees can lodge complaints against their immediate line managers;
6. have clear forms, designed to facilitate proper lodging of grievances; and
7. include a statement that the decision of the MD (the final step in lodging a complaint) is binding.

Now that your procedure is correct, and everyone’s aware of it...make sure you follow it. This way you won’t be the ineffectual HR representative who moans at the accused party without getting to the root of the problem.

Get the step-by-step guide to resolve a grievance

For all the information you need on dealing with employee grievances, turn to your Practical Guide to Human Resources Management. There’s no chance of you being ineffectual with this tool, that deals with every employee issue you will ever face on your side!

Until next time...

Kind Regards

Sarah-Jane Bosch
Managing Editor: Personnel Division

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