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.
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.
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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.
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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