Employee Grievances: Common Issues and How to Address Them

Being an HR manager can be a rough and oftentimes thankless job. You’re the middle manager who stands between the company and the employee. It’s your job to make sure that the rules and regulations of the workplace are being enforced. However, you also need to make sure that the issues being raised by employees are being handled. Because of your role in such a matter, the upper management thinks you’re not doing a good enough job, and everyone despises you as a mouthpiece for the company.

This can result in a whole lot of friction between the company and the employee. More often than not, it tends to result in employees raising their grievances in a highly vocalized manner. However, a lot of grievances are pretty common and can be handled with a level head, calm demeanor, and professional manner. Let’s start by looking at the exact issues employees put forward and why they serve as a detriment to the company.

Doing a Disservice

As an employee in corporate, more often than not, you are expected to eschew your soul and become another cog in the machine. This is a given in most places you would look. However, putting aside yourself as a person isn’t exactly an achievable feat. After all, you are human. And even if those corporate gears need to turn with or without you, they still need the proper maintenance. If a company doesn’t keep either of these two factors in mind, then it risks a total collapse of its entire system. However, these issues can be a variety of different reasons and are dependent on both employee temperaments and the overall company culture.

The most common issues employees face at the workplace that flare up their temperaments are

Issues related to their pay and benefits
Working conditions and/or hours
Amount of work
Harassment and bullying in the workplace
Violation of the law

Let’s go over each issue one by one and see why they would crop up in the first place.

Pay and Benefits Issues

When an employee comes to work, they don’t expect to do it for free, unless they’ve been explicitly told that they’re not going to be paid. Disputes surrounding pay usually crop up when an employee feels as if they’re not being paid enough or on time. Sometimes this issue can be raised if an employee wants a raise and doesn’t seem to be getting one, no matter how hard they work. And no one wants to feel the grievance of being paid improperly.

A helpful tip to avoid this issue would be to make sure that employees are satisfied with their pay and that they are informed about how much they’re being paid.

Working Conditions and/or Hours

Issues related to workplace conditions mostly have to do with safety and equipment. Sometimes a piece of equipment may be hazardous to use. Or there may be issues relating to a smell on one floor of the building. These are, of course, valid concerns being raised by employees and should be addressed promptly. When it comes to work hours, however, the issue is far more difficult to address. Issues with work hours mostly have to do with overtime or work hours being in difficult time slots for employees to join in.

A helpful tip to avoid this is to make sure everyone at work is not only getting the right equipment to work but is also clocking in and out of work on time.

Workload

While people come to their jobs to work, they don’t want to feel overburdened. It can become quite an issue if an employee feels like the work they’re getting isn’t something they can easily manage, as it piles up constantly. That piling up contributes to a very heavy mindset that eventually collapses under the weight of the pressure being put on it. This type of grievance isn’t something that employees would raise, but it is something that they will quit over.

A helpful tip to avoid this issue is to make sure employees do not feel overencumbered and that they get an adequate amount of work.

Workplace Harassment/Bullying

Out of all the issues raised so far, this issue is the one that’s the simplest to pinpoint. Bullying and harassment exist in all aspects of social life. It’s not entirely avoidable. However, it is an issue to be addressed by company culture and management. The sooner a stop is put in place on harassment, the quicker it will be eradicated.

A helpful tip to avoid this issue is to make sure that your company has a proper anti–bullying policy and that employees are given a background check before being hired.

Violation of the Law

This grievance is the most damaging. If a corporation is seen to be violating any laws relating to labor, like wrongful termination or failure to pay minimum wage, then an employee will take their grievances not to people working at the company, but rather to the proper authorities. This poses legal trouble for the company and should be nipped in the bud before the issue has a chance of blossoming.

A helpful tip to avoid this is to simply follow the proper laws and regulations before making any decisions about work, if applicable.

How to Address Issues

A lot of the issues we’ve brought up until now can easily be addressed through simply communicating properly on the part of HR management. However, communication itself isn’t something you get up and do; sometimes, asking employees may work, and they will air out their grievances. However, there are times when employees feel as if they don’t owe anything to the company, and that includes their feelings. Hence why it’s important to take some necessary steps to assure employees that what they say will be heard and understood.

Acknowledging

Before an issue can even be given a glance, it must be acknowledged. To do so, an HR manager can either go to employees directly or host a meeting with them. If your company has a lot of employees, then a handy tip is to set up a system that allows employees to send in their issues.

Employees should be informed that their issue has been acknowledged. And assured that what they share with HR is completely confidential.

Investigating

When a grievance has been heard or found, HR must do a diligent investigation in order to validate the issue. This process is similar to detective work. It will require a lot of inquiring and questioning from other employees or security to make sure what HR is being told is true and the measures needed to address the issue.

Once the investigation concludes, the parties involved must be addressed to confirm to them that they are being heard.

Decision Making

Once an HR manager collects the necessary information, it’s their job to make sure all relevant parties are informed of the decision being made. Employees must also be informed of the actions being taken to address their grievances and whether or not they would like to appeal the process.

Appealing

Not everybody will be happy with the final decision being made, and they have the right to appeal the decision being made. This is to ensure that the decision is impartial if a dispute between two parties has been raised and to show employees that even if they don’t like the steps being taken, they will be heard.

Reviewing

When any decision has been made, it’s always important for the decision maker to reflect on the decision they made. This way, in the future, they can do better in terms of addressing issues. A handy way to make sure that reflection is simple is to file the entire process and keep it on hand if anything similar happens.

Uprooting

Finally, HR must uproot the issue. The goal should not be a band-aid solution that temporarily solves the grievance, but rather a method through which issues of a similar sort don’t arise afterwards as well.

Why Do All of This

Employee grievances are indicative of employee attitudes at the workplace. They exist as a means to dispute issues and to handle things maturely. If an employee doesn’t feel satisfied, their attitude reflects on other employees. This, in turn, reflects the company culture.

Dissatisfied employees also have a higher tendency to either stagnate in terms of their workflow or be more prone to cause conflict at the office. Addressing grievances can do a lot for employee satisfaction. It can reduce the turnover rate of a company, and it avoids creating a toxic environment.

With all of that being said, we hope you were able to take away some valuable information upon reading this article. Remember to communicate with your managers about any pertinent issues and to create a company culture where everyone can feel as if they’re being heard. For more similar blogs, visit EvolveDash today!

FAQ

I feel like I’m not being heard at my company. What do I do?

If you feel like you’re not being heard at your company, try talking to fellow employees if they’re facing a similar issue to your own. Management may put off the issue until more employees raise their concerns.

As an HR manager, what else can I do better when it comes to talking to my fellow employees?

It’s important as an HR manager to listen. Make sure that when an employee is speaking to you, they aren’t being interrupted. They should feel like they’re being heard instead of being talked down to.

If I’m having problems with upper management, should I take my grievances to HR?

If you have an issue with upper management, it’s advised that you take said issues to management and resolve them that way. HR exists to address issues between employees; their authority does not exist above that level.