How to Deeply Understand Employee Grievance within Your Organisation?

The best approach towards grievances is to anticipate them and take steps to tackle them before they assume dangerous proportions.

An ordinary manager redresses griev­ances as and when they arise. An excellent manager anticipates and prevents them. A manager can know about the simmering grievances even before they turn into actual grievances through several mean. They are:

Employee Grievance

1. Observations:

A manager supervisor can usually track the behaviour of people working under him. If a particular employee is not getting along with people, spoiling materials due to carelessness or recklessness, remaining absent etc., the signals are fairly obvious. Since the supervisor is close to the scene of action, he can always find out such unusual behaviour and report promptly.

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2. Opinion Surveys:

Surveys may be conducted periodically to elicit the opinions of employees about organisation and its policies.

Group meetings, periodical interviews with workers and collective bargaining sessions are also helpful in knowing employee discontent before it becomes a grievance.

3. Gripe Boxes:

A gripe box may be kept at prominent locations in the factory for lodging anonymous complaints pertaining to any aspect relating to work.

Since the complainant need not reveal his identity, he can express his feelings of injustice or discontent frankly and without any fear of victimisation. Gripe boxes are different from suggestions with names written on them.

4. Exit Interview:

Employees usually leave their current jobs due to dissatisfaction or better prospects outside. Exit interviews, if conducted carefully, can provide important information about the employee’s grievances.

If the manager tries sincerely through an exit interview, he might be able to find out the real reasons why the employee is leaving the organisation. To elicit valuable information, the manager must encourage the em­ployee to give a correct picture so as to rectify the mistakes promptly.

It should be remembered that those employees who believe in keeping their relationship cordial, because they never know when their paths may cross again, will not like to burn their bridges behind them by speaking about their grievances.

If the employee is not provid­ing fearless answers, he may be given a questionnaire to fill up and post the same after getting all his dues cleared from the organisation which he is leaving.

5. Grievance Procedure:

A systematic grievance procedure is the best means to high­light employee dissatisfaction at various levels. Management, to this end, must encour­age employees to use it whenever they have anything to say. In the absence of such a procedure, grievances pile up and burst up in violent forms at a future date.

6. Open Door Policy:

Some organisations extend a general invitation to their employees to informally drop in the manager’s room any time and talk over their grievances.

The manager can crosscheck the details of the complaint through various means at his disposal. This policy is useful in keeping in touch with employee feelings. At first glance, this policy may appear very attractive but it has the following limitations:

(a) This policy is workable only in very small organisations.

(b) The frontline supervisor is bypassed.

(c) Top management is unfamiliar with the work situation.

(d) The doors may be physically opened but psychological and social barriers prevent employees from actually entering them.