Grievances at Work

Grievances in the Workplace

Grievances at work can be time consuming.

There are two approaches that may be used to handle grievances in the workplace.

1. Prevent grievances from happening, by eliminating their causes.
2. When grievances do occur, handle them effectively.

Let us look at the two approaches and build two methods.

Prevention is better than cure.

Grievances are usually caused by one of four things.

1. What someone did.
2. What someone failed to do, or
3. What someone said.
4. What someone failed to say.

If you can improve the quality of the performance, and especially the language, of the key members of your management and leadership team, then the incidents of grievances will be reduced.

If there are certain people whose behaviour or language tends to generate problems, then you may want to train them.

Train them on personal effectiveness skills and ask them to stop doing the things that cause the problems, (which is often the way they communicate to colleagues).

If you want to prevent the grievances, then send your managers on our two-day leadership programme.

What if you cannot prevent it and you have an existing grievance?

Six-Step Method to Handling Grievances

These six steps will help you handle grievances effectively:

1. Listen without interruption.
2. Empathise (without implying agreement).
3. Question to get the facts (apart from the feelings).
4. Answer: Logically evaluate the facts and formulate your answer.
5. Confirm: Ensure they understand your answer.
6. Close the conversation or change the subject, when understanding has been reached.

Summary: How to handle grievances in the workplace

If you want to learn more about how to effectively handle grievances at work, please take a look are our Conflict Management training course.

It is worth memorising this list and remember the method, next time you need to handle a grievance.

1. Listen.
2. Reflect.
3. Question.
4. Answer.
5. Confirm.
6. Close.

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