Every employer expects satisfied employees who are able to perform optimally and excel in their job roles. Happy employees who abide by the company laws, policies and workplace culture tend to deliver high productivity and choose to align their growth prospects with the company’s long term vision.
However, not every employee is satisfied with what employers provide in the workplace. Some of them do report complaints and grievances due to many factors such as policies, lack of cooperation among colleagues, leaders, working environment, workloads, demands and many more.
While there are some others, who are not quite proactive in expressing the complaints and reporting issues. These silent employees rather prefer to keep the burning issues to themselves, until things get out of control someday.
There is then again, highly proactive workforce who voice out their concerns, complaints and grievances at every other opportune moment they happen to steal – both publicly and privately. This also shows these employees are highly dissatisfied with their jobs.
HR Managers and employers should provide an open working environment wherein everybody is allowed to express their views, argument on a subject with differences in opinions, either positive ones (constructive feedback and suggestion) or negative ones (critics, complaints and other grievances).
Encouraging the democratic workplace will make employees feel secure and accepted. They will further feel assured that their employers genuinely care about how they feel at work and allow room for any complaints and grievances to be expressed to find the best solution.
Allowing open culture wherein employees are encouraged to opinionate and share, employers could find valuable critical comments and suggestions to make improvements on the company procedures, processes and other kinds of policies. This would result in creation of an ideal workplace environment, where everybody feels happy and satisfied at work.
See also: Managing Cultural Diversity at Work
Dealing with complaints of employees should be done carefully, and if wrongly-done could lead to employee’s distrust and dampen their morale at work. Here are some ways by which, HR managers and employers should complaints and grievances at work with their team:
Lodging complaints through a systematic approach with certain procedures would provide more encouragement for employees to proactively convey any complaints experienced at work.
Reporting complaints and grievances should be further recorded, monitored and made sure they are breaching the legally abiding code of conduct in the employee handbook. It is important to maintain accurate records about employee complaints, to help them meet the desired resolution collectively through teamwork.
HR Managers could further provide a special email address dedicated for complaints, blogs, and set up face-to- face session to accommodate critical feedback from employees in a more effective manner.
Complaints from employees most often are a mix of facts and opinions. Hence, the information received should be cross-verified for accuracy, to understand the hidden truth. Post which, HR managers can present the case to the senior management, during times needed.
Things experienced by employees are often conveyed from a single individual perspective, which could mean it can be relatively subjective and untruthful. Being detailed should be supported with a cross-check activity, wherein HR Manager should directly communicate (perhaps a face-to-face communication works well here) and resolve the reasons timely.
While it’s unfair expectations thrusted on HR managers by the organisation and the employees to play the dual role of a psychiatrist and business advisor at work, who can offer solutions promptly to every problem without delay. But this is not always possible. However, HR managers can talk to employees involved in an issue or responsible for the complain to spring up and seek valuable input before arriving at a conclusive resolution to the problem at hand.
HR Manager should inform employees that their reports will be processed in detail by their immediate supervisor or members from the top management. This will make them feel appreciated and satisfied, as their concerns are handled seriously.
However, HR Managers should selectively opt the type of complaints that needs to be processed under the guidance, monitoring and supervision of the top management. Small issues such as misunderstanding, complaints against a co-worker should be resolved at the HR manager desk, and not routed to the top board.
HR Managers and employers should work together to seek for the best solutions toward handling complaints, without compromising or superseding company’s principles and legal guidelines.
This would make employees feel appreciated for their contributions and satisfied in their job role. On successful resolution of complaints and grievances of employees by the HR manager, they feel freed of the mental chaos and are able to perform much better with improved efficiency to boost productive business outcomes.
Next read: 4 Team Building Ideas for Your Next Event!
