Lately we have been seeing many examples of complex, painful and protracted organizational processes associated with the handling of grievances. Most of these have been grievances against managers.

All of these processes have been very stressful for the people involved and extremely costly to the organizations. With one of our clients, we calculated the direct costs of the process to be $32,000 over the months it took to resolve. This did not include the problems caused by the stress leave and work cover issues or the detriment to people’s
work performance while the process was going on.

In any organization you can expect formal grievances to be made from time to time. However, what we are noticing is that often the managers involved do not have the necessary level skills to prevent some of these getting to the formal grievance stage, or to handle them well when they do become formal.

We also see examples of some very poor processes being used. Sometimes this seems to be because the organization’s processes are not adequate. Sometimes other managers get involved at various levels, and act unwisely. This can quickly make a bad situation much worse.

There are now stronger and wider definitions of OH&S which include issues around ‘bullying’ and ‘harassment’. These are important. However, we do see examples where this is misused or misunderstood. Some grievances, which eventually prove to be unfounded, start when a manager attempts to deal with a work performance issue. The staff member involved feels, for one reason or another, ‘harassed’ or ‘bullied’ and makes a formal complaint.

The rights to a proper grievance process are essential to maintain. In addition however, we need to further manager’s skill in all aspect of these processes.

Below are a few pointers that may be helpful:

• Know, and clearly understand, your organization’s grievance process in detail - before trouble strikes.
• Understand the definition of ‘bullying’ and ‘harassment’
• Develop, with your team, a clear process for addressing differences and conflict as a step prior to grievance processes. Make sure staff understand this in detail and have the skills to use it.
• Talk to the team about how it would be best to handle issues they may have with you as their manager, so that formal process might not be needed. Consider building in a regular ‘how are we going?’ review so issues can be caught early.
• Address any work performances you have with staff very early! Unattended, small performance issues get bigger. As managers we become more exasperated and angry!
• Prepare well for addressing a performance issue with a staff member.

Some useful steps are:

• Clarify the issue in you mind; what is the behaviour you are concerned about? Don’t focus on your judgments (they don’t care; they’re lazy etc).
• How does this behaviour relate to their performance expectations?
• Are they clear about these expectation? Are these written?
• What are the things the person does do well?
• What might be causing the underperformance? This may not ‘excuse’ the underperformance but when acknowledged it does make your message more ‘hearable’.
• Make sure you have prepared emotionally for your discussion with the staff member so you can act from a clear but compassionate place and not be driven by your anger or exasperation.
• Understand and acknowledge that receiving criticism is hard for all of us and some defensiveness is normal.
• Make a follow up time soon after you initial discussion to see how the person is going after having some time to digest your discussion.

Finally, make sure you get support from you supervisor or another appropriate place. Performance management is challenging. But handling it early and well can prevent some very costly and stressful grievance handling mistakes.