EMPLOYEE GRIEVANCE HANDLING

Employers are, often, bombarded with grievances of various kinds from workers almost on a daily basis. The employer might be the target in most cases. At other times, workers may target the supervisors and even their co-workers. Such grievances may be real or imaginary, valid, or invalid, genuine or false. They might look silly and completely baseless at times.

It is the duty of HR managers to look into such grievances without prejudging anything in an objective and unemotional manner. As the famous Hawthorne Studies indicated, from the workers’ point of view, it is important to allow worker to ventilate his grievances freely and listen to everything showing patience and restraint. There is no use dismissing the contentious issues on hand as trivial or unworthy of critical attention. The old adage is worth recounting here. “Beware of small leaks.

A small leak can sink a great ship”. When the worker gets a feeling that his voice is not cowed down by brute strength and gains the confidence to place the facts before management in a bold fashion—management will be able to put out fires quickly and effectively. If the petty grievances are not attended to promptly, they may erupt in volcanic forms at a later stage.

All in all, it is in the best interests of management to encourage workers to blow the whistle whenever they see things going off the track. Organisations that have empowered employees this way would definitely reap the dividends of a healthy work climate in the long run.

Employee Grievance Handling – Meaning and Definition

In an organization, employees have complaints against their employers such as dissatisfaction from the quantum of wages, mode of payment for overtime work, working conditions, promotion, transfer, dismissal or discharge, poor quality of food in the canteen, etc. These types of complaints should not be allowed to aggravate.

An HR manager should try to identify and resolve them as they come to his knowledge. Identification of grievances and their proper handling is necessary for maintaining harmonious industrial relations. A grievance can be any discontent or dissatisfaction, whether expressed or not, whether valid or not, arising out of anything connected with the company that an employee thinks, believes or even feels is unfair, unjust or inequitable.

This dissatisfaction may be stated or unvoiced, written or oral, legitimate or ridiculous, but the only thing is that the discontent must affect performance. A grievance is anything that an employee thinks or feels is wrong and is generally accompanied by an actively disturbing feeling. It is not to be justified. There is a difference between the word ‘grievance’ and ‘complaint’.

A complaint is a discontent or dissatisfaction that has not, as yet, assumed a great measure of importance to the complainant. Complaints are more in numbers than grievances at the workplace, e.g., it is too hot in the shop; a colleague is not cooperating, etc. Often, the complaints are submitted in a very informal way. But a complaint becomes a grievance when the employee feels that an injustice has been done. When the supervisor or manager ignores the complaint and thereafter dissatisfaction that grows within the employee usually assumes the status of a grievance. A grievance is always expressed whether verbally or in writing.

A grievance may be submitted by a worker or several workers. Where a grievance is transformed into a general claim either by the union or by a large number of workers it falls outside the grievance procedure and normally comes under the purview of collective bargaining. In other words, where the issue is of a wider or of general nature or of general applicability then it will be outside the purview of grievance machinery.

Broadly speaking, a grievance is any dissatisfaction that adversely affects organizational relations and productivity. As such, the discontent or dissatisfaction can be either stated or unvoiced, written or oral, legitimate or ridiculous. As far as basic managerial philosophy is concerned, this broad definition of a grievance has its value as it is the basis for a sound approach to the development of good morale.

However, in practical situations, the term grievance is more restricted in its meaning. Pigors and Myers” while explaining the meaning of grievance use three terms dissatisfaction, complaint and grievance indicating the three stages of employee dissatisfaction. They define employee dissatisfaction as “anything that disturbs an employee, whether or not he expresses his unrest in words”.

A dissatisfaction which is orally made known by one employee to another is known as a complaint. A complaint becomes a grievance when this dissatisfaction, which is mostly related to work, is brought to the notice of management.

    Dale S. Beach defines grievance as “any dissatisfaction or feeling of injustice in connection with one’s employment situation that is brought to the attention of management”.

    Richard p. Calhoon defines a grievance as “anything that an employee thinks or feels is wrong, and is generally accompanied by an actively disturbing feeling”. This point is very well explained further by Jucius as- “….and discontent or dissatisfaction whether expressed or not, whether valid or not, arising out of anything connected with the company that an employee thinks, believes, or even feels is unfair, unjust or inequitable”.