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Top 8 Methods of Knowing About Employee Grievances

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A rational HR manager always anticipates employee grievances in advance and take the step to tackle them before they become damaging and dangerous to the organizations. An average manager redresses grievances as and when they crop up. But the right approach is to anticipate and prevent them.

methods of knowing about employee grievances
methods of knowing about employee grievances

Grievance handling can be real or imaginary, legitimate or ridiculous, stated or unvoiced, written, or oral. It finds expression in some form or the other.

An HR manager should make efforts to know about the latent grievance e before they turn into action serious dispute.

How to Identify Employee Grievances

There are various means and methods to know knowing about employee grievances. They are as follows:

1. Observations

A supervisor or a manager can usually anticipate the anticipated by their carelessness, absenteeism, wastage of materials, or damaging tools.

Supervisors work very close to the scene of actual operations.

Hence, they can easily find out the unusual behavior of workers and can take action promptly.

2. Opinion Surveys

Surveys can be conducted to know the opinions of employees about the working environment, behaviors of the supervisor’s managers, policies, and personnel matters.

Related: 10 Steps to Follow in the Disciplinary Action Process.

3. Gripe Boxes

These are boxes in which employees can drop their anonymous complaints.

They are different from the suggestion boxes in which employees drop their named suggestions with an intention to receive rewards.

These boxes do not reveal the identity of employees.

An employee can express his feelings, complaints, discontent, or injustice very freely without any fear of punishment.

4. Exit Interview

Many employees leave their present organizations due to some discontent.

By conducting “exit interview‘ managers can find out the real reason due to which the employee is leaving the organization.

Employees can be encouraged to give a correct picture of the firm so that lackings can be removed.

Employees can give fearless answers to the questions asked. He may also be given a questionnaire to fill up and answer the important questions.

Thus, exit interviews can provide valuable information about the poor side of the firm.

Related: 11 Indicators of Low Morale in the Workplace.

5. Grievances Procedure

A powerful systematic grievances procedure is the best means to highlight employee dissatisfaction at various levels.

In the absence of such procedures, grievances pile up and burst up in violent forms at a future date.

6. Work Environment

The best way to know about grievances is to know your work environment in which grievances occur in the first place.

how to identifying employee grievances
how to identifying employee grievances

Hone your ability to recognize, diagnose, and correct the causes of potential employee dissatisfaction (such as unfair appraisals, inequitable wages, or poor communications) before they become grievances.

Related: Things to Know When Designing an Employee Training Program.

7. Open Door Policy

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

At first glance, this policy appears both suitable and workable.

Experiences have shown that, except in very small firms, it is rarely workable.

In large concerns, however, where there are several levels of management, it is organizationally unsound to invite employees to take complaints directly to a member of top management.

8. Other Methods

Group meetings, periodical interviews with employees, collective bargaining sessions are some other means through which one can get information about employees’ dissatisfaction.

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11 Need and Importance of the Grievance System

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A grievance is a compact that the employee is serious enough to justify some types of formal submission and action. A grievance refers to toa any form of discount or dissatisfaction with any aspect of the organization. It is a sign of employees’ discontent with the job or its nature.

need and importance of grievance system
need and importance of grievance system

An effective grievance system is an important and integral part of human resources management.

Importance of Grievance Handling System in Industrial Relations

The importance of the existence of a grievance system in an organization is discussed below:

1. Provides Useful Data

Grievances provide useful data on the basis of which the management can diagnose the problem and can initiate corrective action.

2. Expression of Dissatisfaction

There are several ways in which employees express their dissatisfaction ranging from apathy tona more aggressive reaction of hostility or even violence.

In fact, grievance provides a channel to release the employee’s discontent.

Without the system of grievance, unexpressed dissatisfaction may lead to harmful effects and destructive activities.

Due to the grievance system, managers can take corrective action before discontent gets expressed undesirable behavior.

Related: What are the responsibilities of a training manager?

3. Index of Organization Health

DIsstisfactions felt by employees, if they were all made known to management, might be the most significant index of organizational health.

4. Improve Mutual Understanding

A complaint and grievance procedure may provide an opportunity for mutual understanding and solution of genuine complaints, or it may worsen existing relationships.

The way in which it is used is often a reflection of the philosophies of management and union representatives.

5. Affects Morale

A suppressed grievance may be more damaging to morale and productivity than one which has been aired through an orderly procedure.

The purpose of both a line manager and a personnel administrator in analyzing complaints and grievances is to help raise employee morale and to increase operating efficiency.

How to Identify Employee Grievances?

6. Vehicle for Administering the Contract

It is the vehicle for administering the contract on day by day basis.

importance of grievance handling in industrial relations
importance of grievance handling in industrial relations

The grievance process allows both parties to interpret and give meaning to various clauses and transform the contract into a living organism.

7. Other Benefits

  1. It brings grievances into the open so that management can learn about them and try corrective action.
  2. It helps in preventing grievances from assuming big proportions. The management cates and solves a grievance before it becomes a dispute.
  3. It helps in establishing and maintaining a work culture or way of life.
  4. It acts as a check upon arbitrary and capricious management action.
  5. It serves as an outlet for employee groups, discounts, and frustrations. It acts as a pressure valve on a steam boiler.

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10 Steps to Follow in the Disciplinary Action Process

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It’s necessary to foster high morale that makes for self-discipline in every employee and group. and to gain willing acceptance of the rules, regulations, standards, and procedures.

employee misconduct and disciplinary procedure
employee misconduct and disciplinary procedure

There is no rigid or specific procedure for taking disciplinary action.

What are the Steps to Follow in Procedure for Taking Disciplinary Action?

The disciplinary procedure followed in industries usually consists of the following steps:

1. Preliminary Investigation

A preliminary investigation is held just to find out whether a prima facie case or misconduct exists or not.

Only when a prima facie case of misconduct exists, the management should proceed further for taking disciplinary action.

Otherwise, the case can be dropped.

18 Innovative Ways To Keep Your Employees Motivated And Ultimately More Productive.

2. Put the Problem in Perspective

There is a wide range of problems that might require disciplinary action.

Analysis of decision problem can be done on the basis of the following factors:

  1. How severe is the problem?
  2. Duration of the problem?
  3. Frequency and nature of the problem.
  4. Employees’ work history.
  5. Extenuating factors related to the problem.
  6. History of the organization discipline practices.
  7. Implications for other employees.
  8. Management baking.

3. Issuing a Charge Sheet

The management should issue a charge sheet to the worker if it is a cause of misconduct.

Charges of misconduct or the case of indiscipline should clearly and precisely stated in the charge sheet.

There should be a separate charge for each allegation. Charges must not relate to any matter which has already been decided upon.

The charge sheet should also for an explanation for the said act of indiscipline.

The employee should be given sufficient time for answering this.

4. Considerations of Explanation

On getting the answer for the letter of charge served, the explanation furnished be considered and if it is satisfactory, no disciplinary action needs to be taken.

On the contrary, when the management is not satisfied with the employee’s explanation there is a need for serving a show-cause notice.

Different Types of Disciplinary Actions Applied by Companies.

5. Show Cause Notice

Show cause notice is given to the employee when there is sufficient evidence of employees’ misconduct or serious indiscipline.

This gives the employees another chance to account for his misconduct and rebut the charges made against him.

6. Notice of Enquiry

In a reply to a charge, the worker may admit the charge. In such a case, the employer may award punishment without further inquiry.

But if the worker denies the charge, the employer must hold the inquiry by first serving him a notice of inquiry indicating clearly the name of the enquiring officer, time, date, and place of inquiry, etc.

7. Conduct the Enquiry

On a predecided date and time, a full-fledged inquiry must be held.

According to the principle of natural justice, the employee concerned must be given an opportunity of being heard.

The inquiry officer is a judge. hence, he must be impartial and qualified to act in that capacity. Employees charges should be explained with both side witnesses.

8. Recording of Findings

When the process of inquiry is over, the findings of the same are recorded.

9. Making a Final Decision and Awarding Punishment

At the conclusion of the inquiry proceedings, the inquiry officer should decide as to whether the charges made are valid or not along with reasons for his findings.

steps to follow in the disciplinary action process
steps to follow in the disciplinary action process

Disciplinary actions are taken when the misconduct of the employee is proved.

While awarding punishment, the employee’s previous record, precedents, effects of disciplinary action another employee, etc, have to be considered.

Top Need & Importance of Discipline in an Organization.

When the employee feels that the inquiry conducted was not proper and the action taken is unjustified, the employee must be given a chance to hear an appeal.

The letter of the ward should contain a reference to the charge sheet and findings of the inquiry. It should also contain the date for which the punishment is to be effective.

Depending on the gravity of the misconduct, management may initiate the following punitive actions against the employee who is found guilty:

  • Dismissal.
  • Discharge.
  • Discharge simpliciter.
  • Suspension.
  • Demotion to an ower grade.
  • Withholding of increments.
  • Fine or.
  • Warning or censure.

Of these, suspension, suspension, discharge, or dismissal are major punishment.

The suspension means prohibiting an employee from attending work, preventing him from discharging the duties assigned to him, and withholding the wages payable to him.

The suspension does not imply terminations of services of an employee, it only means denial f work to him. When the act of misconduct of an employee is considered serious, he is suspended (called procedural suspension) and an inquiry is ordered to find out whether he is really guilty or not.

10. Follow Up

After taking the disciplinary action, a proper follow-up action has to be taken and the consequences of the implementation of disciplinary action should be noted and taken care of.

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10 Types of Disciplinary Actions Applied by Companies

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Discipline in the broadest sense means orderliness, the opposite of confusion. it does not mean a strict and technical observance of rigid rules and regulations. It simply means working, cooperating, and behaving ina normal and orderly way, as any reasonable person would expect an employee to do.

types of disciplinary actions applied by companies for employees
disciplinary actions applied for employees

It’s necessary to encourage employees to behave sensibly at work, which is adhering to rules and regulations. and to develop a feeling of cooperation among workers.

Types of Disciplinary Actions Applied by Companies for Employees

The following disciplinary measures are applied by companies. The penalties are listed in the general order of severity, from mild to server:

1. Oral Reprimand

In most cases, an oral reprimand is sufficient to achieve the desired result.

The supervisor must know his personnel in determining how to give a reprimand.

The oral warning is the mildest form of disciplinary action. When a man fails to maintain standards or has broken a rule, a clear oral warning that repetition may eventually call for discipline is in order.

2. Written Reprimand

Written warnings are the first formal stage of progressive discipline.

Psychologically. perhaps, they are not different from the oral warning, but they are made part o employee’s records and they can be presented as evidence if more serious penalties follow or if the case is taken to arbitration.

Related: Top Need and Importance of Discipline in an Organization.

3. Loss of Privileges

For such offenses as tardiness or leaving work without permission, loss of various privileges can be used.

This includes such items as good job assignments, the right to select machines or tools, and freedom of movement about the workplace or company.

4. Fines

This means a small penalty imposed on employees by way of punishment.

5. Punitive Suspension

The punitive suspension is different from suspension pending an inquiry.

The punitive suspension is inflicted on the workman as a punishment for some misconduct threads suspension pending an inquiry is only an expedient action which a manager may find necessary to take the following commission of a grave and serious misconduct.

10 Steps to Follow in the Disciplinary Action Process.

6. Withholding of Increments

Withholding of annual increment of an employee on a graded scale is a major punishment.

The cumulative effect of losing an increment is considerable.

7. Disciplinary Layoffs

These layoffs should be distinguished from layoffs caused by lack of work. usually, they are for several days or weeks.

types of disciplinary actions for employees
types of disciplinary actions for employees

These are some employees who pay little attention to oral warnings, but to whom actual punishment, such as loss of income, is convincing proof that the company means business.

For them, a layoff may be the shock that serves to bring them back to their sense of responsibility.

Related: Ways to Measure the Effectiveness of Employee Training.

8. Pay Cut

Another alternative, also rarely applied in practice, is cutting the problem employees pay.

Certainly, this approach usually has a demoralizing effect on the employee, but it has been suggested as a rational action by management by advantages to saving the hiring and training costs incurred with a new employee.

This can be done by cutting the pay of the problem employee and saving the investment the organization has already made in that person.

9. Demotion

In demotion, an employee properly qualified for a job and position is placed unfit for the position occupied by him.

The use of demotions for the employees is properly for the present assignment.

Demotion should be used only in a case where an employee does not meet the present job requirement.

10. Discharge or Dismissal

Management’s ultimate disciplinary punishment is dismissing the problem employee.

Dismissal should be used only for the most serious offenses.

Yet it may be the only feasible alternative when an employee’s behavior is so bad as to seriously interfere with a department or the organization’s operations.

A dismissal decision should be taken after a thoughtful consideration due to the following reasons:

  1. For almost all employees, being fired from a job is emotional trauma.
  2. The expense of training a new employee makes the loss of an experienced man very costly to the company.
  3. Many arbitrators and unions increasingly unwilling to permit its use. Many arbitrators, indeed, refer to discharge as industrial capital punishment, and for good reason.
  4. A dismissed employee can take legal action to fight the decision.
  5. An employee faces all the winds of economic misfortune.

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Top 9 Importance of Discipline in an Organization

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Discipline is the orderly conduct of affairs by the members of an organization who adherer to its necessary regulations because they desire to cooperate harmoniously in forwarding the end which the group has in view and willingly recognize that to do this, their wishes must be brought into a reasonable unison with the requirements of the group in action.

importance of discipline in an organization
need of discipline in an organization

Discipline means working, co-operating, and behaving in a normal and orderly way, as any reasonable person would expect an employee to do.

It informs and reminds employees about accepted standards of work and conduct.

Importance of Discipline in the Workplace 

The significance of discipline in an organization can be discussed under the following headings:

1.Creates Awareness

Discipline brings awareness to do the job effectively and with good cheer.

Strauss and Sayles observe that discipline helps our better selves win out lazier selves.

2. Removes Organizational Problems

Many discipline problems grow out of management’s failure to inform employees what is expected of them.

Discipline helps employees learn the requirements of their job.

It also increases respect towards the supervisor.

Related: Techniques of Motivating Creativity of Employees.

3. Good Employment Relationship

Discipline builds a good employment relationship.

Disciple ed employees respond to leadership in a positive way.

It also builds good teamwork and cooperation.

4. Positive Attitude

Disciplined employees realize the meaning of punctuality.

They understand corporate purpose and policy in a better way.

5. Strengthens Self Discipline

Many managers see the primary purpose of discipline as being to supplement and strengthen self-discipline within individuals and within each workgroup.

10 Types of Disciplinary Actions Applied by Companies.

6. High Morale

It is management’s intention to foster, at all times, and throughout the whole employment relationship, the high morale that makes for self-discipline in every employee and group discipline within every work team.

7. To Observe Rules

Discipline is the force that prompts an individual to observe rules, regulations, and procedures that are deemed necessary to the attainment of an objective.

what is discipline in organization
what is discipline in an organization

It is the force of fear that restrains one from doing things deemed destructive.

8. To Meet Challenges

Disciplined behavior of its workforces a precondition of efficient and effective performance for any enterprise.

Only disciplined employees can meet the various environmental challenges and contribute to organizational goals to the best of their efforts.

9. Harmonious Human Relations

Maintenance of harmonious human relations in an organization depends upon the promotion and maintenance of discipline.

No organization can prosper without discipline.

Discipline has been a matter of utmost concern for all organizations, There are some people who believe that maintenance of discipline is the concern of only higher echelons of an organization.

But in actual practice, discipline s concerned with employees at all levels.

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11 Essential Characteristics of Successful Career Planning

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Career planning is identifying and matching the needs of individuals and organizations. It is not an event or end of itself. It is a continuous process of developing human resources to achiving optimum results.

essential characteristics of successful career planning
essential characteristics of successful career planning

It helps individuals to develop skills required to fulfill different career roles, within or outside an organization.

Career planning assists in finding those employees who could be groomed for higher-level positions, on the strength of their performance.

Characteristics of Successful Career Planning

Effective career planning can be ensured through the following measures:

1. Support for Top Management

Full support and cooperation are essential for effective career planning.

Top management must develop enthusiasm among executives for this purpose.

2. Clear Goals

The firm must determine its goals for the next five to ten years so that it can decide about the changes required in its activities, technology, materials, and procedures.

This will help develop the HRD system which is required for career planning.

3. Motivated Personnel

An organization can provide complete resources required for the development.

But it is the willingness and motivation of employees to make use of available opportunities and resource that makes career planning effective.

If the employees are not satisfied with the present facilities, they will not take interest in career planning.

4. Selection of Right People

The selection of the right for the right jobs is essential for career planning.

In addition to their talents and abilities, people should also have enough potential and urge to develop themselves and grow in their careers.

5. Proper Age Balance

Maintenance of proper age balance in career planning is necessary to avoid rapid promotions and promotion blocks caused by an age structure.

Related: Key Features of Employee Training Program.

6. Harmony

Effective career planning requires harmony between the growing needs of the organization and the aspirations of individuals employees.

7. Growing Business

Career planning is feasible in constantly growing organizations.

effective career planning
effective career planning

Only in expanded business and dynamic enterprises can exist ample opportunities for vertical mobility.

8. Equitable Policy

There should be a just, open, and fair promotion policy.

In addition, there should be ample facilities for training and for learning higher skills.

9. Career Counseling

Stress at work is harmful. It may take arise due to blockage of career or lack of control over one’s career.

It may hamper career planning.

Thus, career stress management programs and career counseling can be helpful in carer decisions.

10. Wide Publicity

A career plan should be given proper and wide publicity within the firm.

Employees should be informed about the career paths, training and development facilities, and other HRD facilities.

11. Continuity

Career planning is a long-term process, hence it should be carried out on a continuing basis.

As a constant process, it can take care of the changing needs of both the individuals and the organizations.

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