Grievance – Importance and meaning

A grievance is a complaint raised by the employee to the management regarding dissatisfaction towards work environment, economic reason, HR policy, lack of work satisfaction, overworked or exhaustion, getting along with peers, etc. It is a formal complaint and is raised when the employee or a group of employees are having negative feelings about the management or workplace. The issue can be raised either directly to the management or via HR. Once, the issue is raised it is up to the management whether they want to consider and correct the suggested concern or they may ignore and carry on the way it is.

Maximum times, the management listens to the affected employee and tries n solve their grievance.

This glossary on employee grievances further uncovers:

1. What is a grievance?
2. What causes employee grievance?
3. Tips to effectively handle employee grievance
4. Grievance Procedure in HROne
5. Let’s look at them one after the other.

What is a grievance?

To understand what employee grievance in the workplace exactly is, let’s start by understanding the literal meaning of the word and then connecting it with the work environment.

Grievance Meaning

Whenever someone dislikes, disapproves of some behavior, happening, or thing, they express their unhappiness and reasons for it so that it can be changed. Basically, something you dislike and want to complain about.

This is grievance meaning, now, let’s look at it in terms of the workplace.

Employee Grievance Definition-

In an employee’s context, the grievance can be understood as the gap between the expectation of your employees and what you deliver. Some of the grievances are quite sensitive and must be handled with extra empathy and care. Changed behavior and performance is one of early signs of a grieving employee.

What causes employee grievance?

The most notable causes of employee grievance are as follows-

• Change in anything work-related without informing
• Discouraging action taken like a demotion, transfer
• Change in policy like overtime, leaves, promotion
• Change in health insurance, safety, and other amenities
• Unpleasant work conditions 
• Poor employee-employer relation
• Favoritism at workplace
• Bad boss, toxicity
• Lack of discipline and order in company/ team

Tips to effectively handle employee grievance

To handle employee grievance effectively, we suggest you follow the below-mentioned tips-

1. Set a grievance redressal system. The best way is to digitize it using the helpdesk module in HR software
2. Once the grievance is received, begin by acknowledging it
3. If need be, investigate the grievance. How true are the claims being made? How worrisome is the concern? Is it impacting more people than the individual?
4. Involve the right people required in a formal meeting to discuss the grievance 
5. Propose a solution in writing. Talk to the employee about the proceeding solution, what you accepted in the grievance and what you didn’t with your reasons.
6. Now look at if the employee accepted the solution or rejected it and appealed again
7. Revisit the situation in detail
8. Try to share a solution that’s long-lasting and solves the root cause of the grievance so that no other employee raises the same issue again

Grievance Procedure in HROne

How to file a grievance in HROne HR software? How is it a better way to handle grievances?
Below we share exactly how. Take a Look.

1. HROne Helpdesk module is a conversational ticketing system that lets the employee raise his concern to the right department and person 
2. The module lets employees define the turnaround time so that they get resolution in time
3. Meanwhile, the department- HR, IT, Admin, or any other gets time to manage their tasks and investigate the grievance in their own time
4. This way, not every grievance is raised to the HR department. They barely have employees standing right beside their desk with the concern every now and then
5. The best part is that the productivity of the employees and the department concern is raised to doesn’t get hampered
6. There is also a chat option within the ticket raised for better clarity to the department involved and a solution to the employee on the concern.