What is an Employee Grievance Policy?
An employee grievance policy states the correct process through which any employee can file a complaint regarding their workplace, coworkers, or manager or about a conflict or any other issue regarding the workplace, such as unsatisfactory working conditions. Every company provides and implements a grievance policy that helps employees follow the proper protocol and address their concerns.
It is crucial that employers understand the grievance policy’s gravity and treat it seriously and with complete fairness and caution. This professional and legitimate behavior shows that your complaints matter to you as an employer. This helps you create a transparent procedure and creates an environment where the company takes mandatory steps to resolve the issue.
Reasons Behind a Grievance Policy
1. Harassment of an employee is of multiple sorts from mental, sexual, personal, verbal, and more
2. A situation where their health and safety have been compromised.
3. Unacceptable working conditions result in poor relationships with the manager and an unsafe working environment.
4. Their employee agreement has been changed to unfair terms.
5. The organization has violated the employment policy guidelines.
How to Follow the Grievance Policy Procedure?
- Deal with the matter informally
You can informally deal with the issues related to grievances if you feel comfortable. Reaching the specific person and letting them know their particular behavior is causing a problem. The problem can be of any cause, like their behavior could be discriminatory, unfair, offensive, etc. This person could be completely unaware of the situation they are causing, and by telling them, you are giving them a chance to right their wrong.
- Speak to your manager
If you are uncomfortable talking to the person with whom the problem is related, you can directly reach out to your manager. After having a conversation with your manager, he will be able to provide you with different options. Once your manager has heard about your situation, he will directly approach the person responsible for the particular situation. There is formal action that can take against the person, but these actions will entirely depend on your approval.
- Make a formal complaint
The third option is to write or compose a formal complaint against the person you want to complain for. You can write a complaint against your manager or any other senior person in your firm. The written complaint should mention the particular incident and person regarding the complaint, date and time of the incident, witnesses if any, and at last, your signature and the date.
