Grievances At Work

Important: GDPR Email Preferences

As you may already know, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be coming into effect on 25th May 2018. We take your privacy seriously and we are working hard to ensure we comply with the new data protection laws. You can find out more about how we're doing this in our privacy policy on our website.

We want to make sure you continue to receive the latest newsletters, blogs, special offers and more.

As someone who has opted-in to receive our emails in the past, we’d like to give you this opportunity to confirm what you wish to receive:

Just so you know, if you don’t let us know what kinds of emails you want to receive from us, we’ll stop emailing you on the 24th May 2018 - you'll be missing out!

You are of course free to change your mind at any time – just follow the link at the bottom of any of our emails.

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.

Conflict Management

Conflict Management Training

Conflict is inevitable, because people disagree. Therefore, you must be able to handle conflict situations effectively. You must know how to be assertive, clear and professional (not emotional, upset and angry) whilst in conflict. If you want to learn more on how to achieve this, please click here to see our conflict management training.

Blogs by Email

Do you want to receive an email whenever we post a new blog? The blogs contain article 5-10 minutes long - ideal for reading during your coffee break!

Your Comments

Further Reading in Conflict Management and Handling Difficult People

• Handling difficult people
  Handling difficult people Some of your managers are not very good at handling difficult people. Sometimes they mismanage the situation and make matters even worse. You need to be able to handle difficult people correctly. But how? Here are some tips: There are three fundamental ways for people to be...
  Read Article >
• Conflict Resolution Training - How to Manage Conflict
  Conflict is inevitable since we all have our own ideas about what is true, fair and good. How we handle conflict is important.
  Read Article >
• Handling difficult people skills
  Handling difficult people skills Handling difficult people skills is an important part of your leadership-management skills. If you develop and refine your abilities to handle the difficult people that are at your place of work, then, each month, you will save yourself many hours of painful, fruitless effort. As a result...
  Read Article >
• Eight causes of conflict
  Eight causes of conflict Conflict management training courses Conflict is a broad term that covers many themes. Conflict based upon the clumsy use of over emotionalised and highly judgmental language. Conflict based upon the lack of proper appreciation and praise. Conflict based upon the Misuse of humour. Conflict based on the...
  Read Article >
• Grievances at Work
  Grievances at work are generally caused by what someone said or didn't say, or what a person did or didn't do. Obviously, prevention is preferable to trying to sort out a grievance. But what if you already have an issue. Try this six-step method...
  Read Article >