Question

Imagine you are HR Manager and you need to educate your management staff on your grievance procedure. Tell the managers what they should do at each step and which level of management is involved at each step. Also give them pointers for keeping it from progressing past the first step.

Answer 1

Answer: Grievance process has some general steps which are essential. These may be followed either formal or informal ways. Usually it is submitted in the written form with the specified timeframe by having any of the outcome such as- no grievance, grievance is resolved, if it is not resolved then the grievance is moved to the further step. In the next step, the supervision is done based on the organizational structure. In this, employee may be included in the review process. The unsuccessful process leads the next step where the grievance process is reviewed by top management or senior managers. It is like higher level of representation based on the agreed terms and conditions. In case of no resolution for the grievance then the arbitration process is executed by having the arbitrator from outside and involving the senior managers. Thus, grievance procedure helps employer to resolve the employee related issues. Generally, steps followed by managers are such as –

-          The efficient management of grievances: In this step the purpose of the grievance, minimum needs are discussed with employees and the written statement is provided within the initial few months of the employment. Also, the grievance procedure is structured in such a way by explaining the basic principles and recording all the grievances in the form of documents to have all the related information such as purpose, interviews, employee’s reaction, reasons, outcome etc.

-          Dealing with grievances: It is very important for a manager to understand the grievance constructively in order to resolve issues at workplace by discussing the matter in positive ways, acting promptly and having the grievance hearing to discuss in detail and resolving the grievance.

-          Statutory grievance procedure: It is followed based on the employment law where all employers and employees are bound to follow step by step process and comply with the basic requirement of the procedure.