How to deal with employees complaining about managers?

“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace”, quite rightly said by Doug Conant. Every company faces a lot of ups and downs in the employee relations aspect, and during these sensitive times, their response to that particular situation counts a lot. The HR Department plays a significant role in this by intervening and coming to a certain conclusion to avoid any bitter situations further.

The most important thing that needs to be taken care of is that the decision should never be biased or based on any favouritism since it can badly hamper the image of the management and company. Therefore, the process of investigation should involve unbiased people and evidence-based hearings. But there would also be a lot of situations where apart from verbal accusation, very little evidence is available, and these situations are the toughest ones. Usually, the accusations or complaints can either be on a personal level or it can be on a professional front. The personal complaints can get to a situation where the legal team gets involved, and the matter becomes serious, or at times, it can just be resolved with the involvement of the HR department. Apart from this, professional complaints usually require individual discussions with the employees involved and coming up with solutions that give an unbiased impression among the employees.

Let’s discuss the points that can be taken care of from the very beginning to the end and can help maintain stability in the organization altogether:

• Hear out both sides of the story: Chinua Achebe once said, “if you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.” The management needs to give equal importance to both the accused and the one who accused, so that there is no table for confusion and biased decisions. After lending your ear to the victim and hearing out their side of the story, we can then reach out to the manager and listen to their side of the story as well which will eventually make us come up with a fair judgment. It can so happen at times that a lot of aspects are unnecessarily added or removed from the story, here we should always connect to employees that closely work with them or have been a part of the whole situation. They can give a certain clarity in that case.
  
• Be unbiased: The employees always expect the management to be unbiased and fair in every decision they make, but the cases that are quite sensitive and include complaints regarding anyone in the company who holds a significant position or is having a well-known face in the company, the expectations rise even more, and the pressure of taking a fair decision rises. Choosing an unbiased personality for handling such cases is important. The investigation should be completely independent of the employee’s designation and seniority since that might also affect the work culture on a long-term basis. After a conclusion is finally reached, the action taken on the accused person should also be completely unbiased and irrespective of whatever position he/she holds in the company, the accused person should be dealt with in the same manner as any other employee.
  

• Write everything on paper or make it documented: These days it has become extremely important to have written proof of everything that can be questioned during or after the investigation. We should therefore prefer to write even the minor details down so that confusion is avoided. The written information is also significant in a way that people cannot back out or contradict what they have already stated before, this avoids a lot of confusion and false statements.
  
• Meet with the people who have witnessed the situation: The team members and the employees who are closely working with the one who has been accused and the manager can give their observation or any personal opinion in that particular case which may prove to be very beneficial for management and make the investigation easy.
  
• Keep the investigation evidence-based: The management should never keep the investigation based on just statements and claims since this might prove to be unfair in the long run. Evidence can be in the form of camera footage, voice recordings or statements of people who witnessed the situation. As much of the investigation is based on facts and evidence, it makes the decision-making easier and creates a less professional fuss.
  
• Take immediate action: You must have come across this proverb of “Justice delayed is justice denied” once in your lifetime. This stands for almost all situations and circumstances altogether. Therefore, it’s important to actively carry out the investigation and not let the employee feel that he is not heard.

There are a lot of different challenges that the management faces in such cases, one of which is the case of false accusation. This is quite difficult to deal with since it requires the management to be very observant and analyze the situation in such a way that it turns out to be unbiased and truthful in and out.

Every organization faces such issues of complaints and discomfort between employees and managers, which results in temporary internal instability in the organization. Since the employees are very much dependent on the management, in such cases, HR Department has a significant responsibility to not disappoint them in any way. Therefore, this also concludes that HR-employee relations should be healthy and comfortable so that they are able to speak about their personal and professional difficulties easily and without fear and distrust.

So, it is important to highlight the importance of good relations between the HR department and the employees, and have unbiased opinions for the employees. Also, creating a healthy working environment should be the utmost priority of the management since it has a direct impact on the company’s reputation in the market, and helps create a better image altogether. Therefore, it is always to be kept in mind that there is no workplace where there are no misunderstandings and complaints between the employees, it depends on the management how well they handle the situation and take relevant actions for the same.