Personnel Management

Grievance Handling

Meaning of Grievance

 

Broadly speaking grievance means  any real  or imaginary feeling of dissatisfaction and injustice which an employee has about his employment relationship. A grievance is a specific, formal  dissatisfaction expressed through  an identified procedure. A complaint, on the other hand,  is a dissatisfaction that is not expressed through  the formal  grievance procedure.

Definitions

According to Michael J. Jucious

A grievance is any discontent or dissatisfaction, whether  expressed or not,  whether  valid or not, arising  out of anything connected with the company that an employee thinks,  believes or even feels, is unfair, unjust  or inequitable.

According to Dale S. Beach

Grievance is any dissatisfaction or feeling of injustice in connection with one’s employment situation that is brought to the attention of management.

Features of Grievance

1. A grievance reflects dissatisfaction or discontent or a feeling of injustice.
2. The discontent may be expressed of implied. Expressed grievances are comparatively easy to recognize and are manifested in several ways e.g. gossiping jealously, active criticism, argumentation, increased labour turnover, carelessness in the use of tools and materials, unitidy housekeeping, poor workmanship etc. Unexpressed grievances are indicated by indifferent to work, day dreaming, absenteeism, tardiness etc.

• The dissatisfaction must arise out of employment and not from personal or family problems.

1. The dissatisfaction may be valid and legitimate or irrational and ridiculous or false.
2. A grievance arises only when an employee feels that injustice has been done to him.
3. Grievances if not redressed in time tend to lower morale  and production    of employees.

Grievance Management Procedure

A grievance management procedure is a graduated series of steps arranged in a hierarchy of increasing complexity. The number of steps in a grievance procedure varies with the nature, structure and size of organization.

It goes under steps and number of steps vary with the size of the organisation. In small organisations, it may be handled in just two steps, whereas, in the large organisations it may take following steps :

1. In the first step, there is discussion between employee and supervisor regarding the dissatisfaction and supervisor true of understand the reason of his grievances. According to code of discipline adopted by the Indian labour conference m 1957, the officer must give his answer within forty eight hours of the complaint.
2. In the second step, grievances are fully traced and inked on the paper and the issue is addressed by union, steward and supervisor. This step will be necessary in case of unionised company and to satisfy the ego of trade union representative. The departmental, head should furnish his answer within three days according to the code of discipline.
3. In the third step, the human resource officer or some middle level executive along with a higher level union officer put their effort to tackle the grievance more effectively as there are certain problems which are beyond the scope of the supervisor in terms of their authority and competance. In case of dissatisfaction, employee may approach to grievance committee within seven days and the authorities must answer within three days.
4. In the fourth step, the top management and top union leader sit together to settle grievances, considering, company’s wide issues. In most of the cases, redressal of grievances is one till this step when the case is handled by the top management.
5. If the committee fails in satisfying the aggrieved customer then top management look into and is supposed to communicate its decision within seven days.
6. In the extreme cases, where the solution has not been found out even by the top personnel then the case is handed over to an outside arbitration. The case is to referred to voluntary arbitration within a week of the receipt of management’s decision by the aggrieved employee.

Significance of Grievance Procedure

• It is not unnatural to have grievances rather it is very obvious and therefore it is quite important to have an effective grievance procedure in any organisation. It has the following benefits in enhancing the organisational effectiveness
• It traces the grievances and only after this the redressal of grievances is possible.
• It helps in treating the disease well in advance before it takes the shape of huge problem. The well defined procedure provides us with an orderly and expeditions means for redressal of grievances.
• It also gives an idea about the framework of policies, rules, regulations and code of conduct and enables the management to know about the feelings of employee concerning them. If there is any need to make certain changes, then the changes can be made.
• It helps in boosting the morale and building confidence of the employee as their pent up emotions are vented out in this procedure.
• It also leads to cordial relationship among employees as they feel significant and get communicated that they are important and organisation needs them.
• It also acts as the monitoring system as in this procedure manager’s actions are reviewed and challenged. Therefore, the managers will be more careful and without any biased opinion.

Ways to Find out Employee Grievances

There are following ways to know and understand grievances

(i) Exit documents are prepared on the basis of exit interview; when the employee is leaving the organisation. At that point of time, employees feel free to speak about their bad experiences without any fear and hesitation. Sometimes those experiences can be the major cause of their leaving the organisation.

(ii) Opinion surveys A general survey by the leaders may be conducted to get an idea of the mental state of their team mates. It will be very good to trace the discontent before it gets ripened into grievances. Group meetings, periodical interviews with team members and collective bargaining sessions are the major ways of getting the opinion surveys done in any organisation.

(iii) Complaint boxes In these boxes employees can drop their complaints without mentioning their names to maintain the secrecy, to that employees come out with their genuine problems without any fear. They are different from the suggestion boxes where names and designations are also written.

(vi) Open door policy In this case everybody is welcome to come and discuss about his/her grievances without following any .hierarchy directly with the top management. In this policy immediate boss is by passed and feels ill about it and later on may find ways to ridicule the employee. It may be considered good in small organisation or under some extreme situations.

Requisites of Grievance Handling

(i) Understanding the cause It is very important and essential to understand the problem well in advance. It is quite dangerous and effects adversely to the organisational effectiveness. In the advanced stage, the situation may become too difficult to control.

(ii) Understanding the level of problem It is not

enough to understand the problem but the level of problem to get the solution. It will be very easy to handle the grievance, provided it has been traced at an early stage as compared to advanced stage.

(iii) Communication with employees The problem can only be sorted out by structured communication. Innovative ways are to be found out to remove the authority trap and have the smooth flow of communication.

(iv) Developing better feelings in employees

A leader must find ways to interact with his team; by which only better feelings can only be created among employees. Proper flow of communication will definitely help in making them feel that they are quite significant for the organisation; will be motivated; will vent out their ill feelings about the task, individual or organisation. It may show excellent results if conducted by some outside agency as the employees will express themselves freely without any fear or hierarchical issues.

(v) Assessing training needs The above interaction will lead to assess training needs for the employee. It will help the leader to take prudent decision in solving the problem and handling the grievance of employees.

(vi) Creating effective organisational culture There cannot be any organisation where there is 0% of grievance, so it will be just an imaginary situation but definitely proper measures discussed above may help in reducing the level of grievances in any organisation and handling them effectively. The level of grievances will be detrimental in building up an effective organisational culture.

 

Grievance Redressal in Indian Industry

1. The Industrial Employment (Standing orders) Act, 1946 According to this Act, every organisation employing 100 or more than 100 employees should frame standing orders which should contain provision of redressal of grievances of employees within stipulated period of time frame.
2. The Factories Act, 1948 According to this Act, a special executive designated as welfare officers has to be employed to handle the grievances of the employee in the organisations employing more than 500 employees.
3. The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947

This law provides:

(i)   The employer in relation  to every industrial establishment in which fifty or more  workmen  are  employed shall  provide  for  a  Grievance Settlement Authority for  the  settlement  of industrial  disputes connected with  an industrial workman employed in the establishment. The provisions of this Authority shall  be in accordance with rules  made  in that  behalf.

(ii) Where an industrial dispute  connected with an individual workman in an  establishment referred   to above, a workman or  any trade workmen of which such  workman is a member  may refer  such  dispute to the  Grievance Settlement Authority for settlement.

(iii)  The  Grievance  Settlement  Authority shall   follow  such  procedure  and

complete its proceedings within  such  period  as may be prescribed.

(iv)    No reference shall  be made  to Boards,  Courts  or Tribunals of any dispute referred   to in this  section  unless  such  dispute   has  been  referred to the Grievance settlement Authority concerned and the decision  of the authority is not acceptable to any of the parties  to the dispute.

Essentials of a Sound  Grievance Procedure

An effective grievance procedure should  contain  the following characteristics:

1. Legal  Sanctity

The  procedure  should  be in  conformity with  the  existing law. It should be designed to supplement the statutory provisions. Wherever possible, the procedure should  make  use  of the machinery provided under  legislation. The procedure  may  be  incorporated  in  the  standing  orders   or  collective bargaining agreement of the organisation.

2. Acceptibility

The grievance procedure must be acceptable to all and should, therefore, be developed with mutual  consultation among management, workers  and the  union.  In order   to be generally acceptable, the  procedure  must  ensure

(a) sense  of fair  play and  justice   to workers;

(b)   reasonable exercise  of authority to managers: and

(c) reasonable participation to the union.

3. Promptness

The  grievance procedure  must   aim at  speedy  redressal  of grievances.  This  can be  ensured   in the following ways:

(a)   as-far-as  possible  the grievance should  be settled  at the lowest level;

(b)  there  should  be only one appeal;

(c)time limits should be prescribed and rigidly enforced at each level; and

(d)  different types of grievances may be referred  to appropriate authorities.

4. Simplicity

The procedure should consist of as few steps as possible. Channels for handling grievances should  be carefully developed. Employees must  know the officers to be contacted at each  level. Information about  the  procedure should  be communicated to the employees.

5. Training

Supervisors and union representatives should be given training in grievance handling. This  will  help  to  ensure   effective working   of the  grievance procedure.

5. Follow-up

The working of the grievance procedure should  be reviewed at periodical intervals. Necessary improvements should be made to make the procedure more  effective.