How To Respond To A Grievance - Part 1

Welcome to Manager Tools. Today's cast, how to respond to agreements. Part 1 of 4. The questions this cast answers are, what is a agreement? What are the typical steps in a agreement's process? And what should I do to defend myself from a grievance against me? If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Have you ever privately thought, "My managers just don't have that june se coi?" Well, management is a workplace discipline. Just like being an IT coder, it requires regular behaviors in order to get results and retain the right professionals. And we often hear from people who get promoted, just because they were the best whatever. And then don't get trained on what it means to be an effective manager. Well, let us bring manager tools into your organization. Either on-site or virtually, such that you can learn how to be effective. You have good people. Arm them with the right tools. Contact Maggie by emailing her at customer [email protected] to schedule a call so that she can discuss how to support you, your organization, and your managerial growth. If you are being grieved, responding to be stressful, if you've never had the experience, you need to know what's going to happen and how to ethically protect yourself. Okay, we don't get to do this very often, or you manage your tools together. This is one of my all-time favorite casts I've ever written. It's been on the manager tools list of casts to be delivered, which is now down to about 2,500 for years. And it was only bumped up to the top of the list when one of our community members said, "Hey, I'm being grieved." And I think I wrote 4,000 words about grievances, so that we could cover this completely, although there will be a couple of other casts about the aftermath of a grievance. And also, we're going to do something for executives and their role when perhaps a manager in their organization is being grieved. So, we've got an outline with five parts. First, we're going to talk about what is a grievance. A lot of people don't know, and it's a bit of a gray area. People use grievance, and they don't really mean it in the formal sense, and so you have to be able to navigate that. We'll talk about how grievances work. There is a fairly standard process across most first world countries. There are some slight differences, but not enough that an individual listener couldn't find the information about how his or her grievance process is slightly different. We'll then talk about what you do first, and it's important, and then how to respond to the process itself. You're role in the process and what you're supposed to do. And that is going to be a big part of this guidance because most managers are not ready for the distinct role that a grievance process has, and it's risk for managers. There's all kinds of people who will talk about, "Oh, this is not a big deal. Don't believe them. It's a very big deal." And then lastly, we have to make a point about, "You cannot assume, despite the fact that people will tell you this, you cannot assume confidentiality or fairness in the process at all. Do not be a lamb to slaughter." You have got to recognize that you are defending yourself, and this idea that everything will be okay because HR says it's confidential and fair, not true, absolutely not true. In fact, the confidentiality thing is a joke. You should assume it's common knowledge among everybody who's being grieved and who grieved them and what they grieved about, and I wonder what's going to happen. So those are our five points. Starting with what is a grievance? Yeah. So we're going to define it formally, but then we're going to get into some of that gray area that I mentioned. So a grievance is a formal complaint, lodged by any employee, and hypothetically even contractors, I've heard that too, although legally it should not be done, and it's complained lodged against virtually any other employee, often a direct manager, or it could be a process that, in the employee's mind, unfairly negatively affects that employee, or a decision like somebody didn't get promoted, and they thought they should. And so they're grieving the promotion process, but of course you can't talk to a process, so if you're a part of the process, you could be part of the grievance. Or the company's practices themselves. There have been several famous cases of people grieving environmental practices of companies, which then leads to who actually takes the brunt of the grievances, because it always is a who. A grievance can be filed by an employee at any level, but the vast majority of them are filed by individual contributors. Now, that said, it's a common misconception that only individual contributors can file a grievance, because anybody can. It's not strictly true, even though the odds are overwhelmingly, it is from individual contributors. On the other hand, it's also assumed that front line managers will not file a grievance. And the reason for that is there, you know, as managers, we're expected to have better relationship with our peers and bosses, and that we can work with in normal channels, right? Go talk to your boss, or if need be, do an open door policy to your boss's boss. And if you need it, folks, we have ample guidance on open door policies. And for the record, I'll say it again, I always get asked this. Well, I tell my people, my door is always open. Isn't that an open door policy? No, folks, it's not. Having an open door is a good thing, but having an open door policy is something different. Yes. The other side that makes managers much more likely to file a grievance is, managers represent the organization. If you're grieving somebody above you, you're essentially grieving the organization, and there is a representative of the organization, that person whom you're grieving personally, but you both, even if it's your boss, are the organization. You know, I think we have a cast years ago, Kate, called Welcome to They. Yes, we do. The classic example is individual contributors are like, "Oh, they said this, or they want us to do that, or they're planning this again," right? And so we tell managers, because the manager's first responsibility is to the company, and not to their team, despite the popular management guidance that your job is to take care of your team. Nothing could be further from truth. Job of a manager is to deliver results and retain people, but managers work for the company. So when we say Welcome to They, the moment you become a manager, you're They. You're the one they're talking about. You may feel close to your team, but you still are a representative of the company. Roll power is the right, literally, the legal right to speak for the company. When managers speak, it can safely be assumed by everybody they're speaking to on their team, of course, that they are speaking for the company. And the reason you're given that roll power from organizational theory and structure 101 is the company can't speak to everybody all the time about everything. There have to be representatives actually in the legal term. It's called an agent and the company is a principal. And you have the authority to speak for the company. So that therefore means you are the company. So the idea that one member of the company, the leadership, the management structure of the firm, is grieving another part of the company is a little bit misleading. It can be done, but generally speaking, it's much more rare. Right. Managers are granted agency. Yes, exactly. And so their position is different. Yeah. And managers don't realize that when they tell an off-color joke, it is as if the company CEO told an off-color joke. And it's unfortunate because the common wisdom in management is like, well, you're really kind of a part of your team, but you're not. No, you're really not. You're no longer a part of the team. Now, for the record, grievance is actually a term of art. It's a specific thing. And when somebody says there's a grievance, that by definition implies that there is an organizational process in existence for complaints like this to be formally adjudicated. Here's the problem with that, though, when we get into the gray area. Grievance is often used, particularly for people who have had experience in union workplaces, where if you're in a union workplace, which we'll talk more about that, they're much more common. The use of processes like this are much more common. Grievance is used incorrectly to refer to any sort of complaint made by any employee. Now, a complaint is not necessarily a grievance. A grievance by definition is a complaint. It's essentially legally a cause of action against a person or the organization or its process or practices as we mentioned. But as I mentioned, some HR professionals, super well intentioned and good solid, great HR people. But if they've worked previously in an organization, that did have a grievance process, often because they're in a union shop, they'll refer to any complaint they get in a workplace, even though the workplace doesn't have a formal grievance process, grievance process, as a grievance. And that is clumsy and misleading, and for those managers who have been around others, or they themselves have been grieved, it's scary, frankly. We really shouldn't, people shouldn't say, "Oh, there's a grievance," when in fact the company hasn't established a standard protocol. And again, the protocols are very similar and we'll go through all that. They shouldn't use that language. It's like the difference between saying, "I complained to my neighbor about something in a neighborhood," or, "I called the police." Yeah. I mean, there's a difference, right? Yeah, talking to your neighbor about something is different than. Yeah. investing in the authority, right? Yeah. or engaging with the authority. Exactly. and grievances have a process and an authority involved. It's formalized. Yeah. And what's funny about that is, some people use it intentionally to imply an extra level of risk and process and so on. And I hate to say it, but many of the people who are interviewers or the investigators of the grievance, again, will get into all that, they like that power. They really do. And so they use it to, frankly, send shivers down people's fines if they know. Now, I will say this. We're lucky. Managers' community managers are very unlikely to be grieved. But unlikely is not zero. And if you're in a union organization, you are much more likely to be grieved, partially because they always have well-documented and involved processes, you're much more likely to get a grievance if you're in a union shop, because that's the way complaints are handled, mainly because the union can be involved. As a general rule, and be careful, because it's not perfect, grievance processes almost always exist in organizations with union employees and only unionized employees or union leadership, either on their behalf or separately, can file a grievance. And the grievance process and its use is another of the reasons that managers does not favor unionization in organizations. The formality of the process, which we'll get into, and it's inherent adversarial nature, while at the same time proclaiming fairness, can be an enormous distraction from the actual work of the organization. And by that, I mean the manager in this case, let's say Kate's my manager and I'm an employee, and I file a grievance against her. For the next two or three weeks, the most significant thing both of us are going to be doing is handling the grievance. Riding up the grievance, me talking to people about who were there for the incident, and so on, and then Kate responding as the person being named the person I'm grieving. What's interesting about that is most managers don't know, and that's the reason for this cast, what a grievance is, and they don't think that they should basically drop everything. But as you'll see in our guidance about the process, you've got to nearly drop everything and focus on defending yourself. It's an interesting situation that managers find themselves in more, I think, than they imagine they will of personal conflict. Not always between themselves and a direct rather, they're directs having personal conflicts, etc. And I know many people, I think, who really their first experience, truly adjudicating personal conflict, is it work? They haven't really had in their lives friendships or other places where they've really had to work at that. Right. And it is an adult skill, which, of course, many professional skills are also adult skills. And I don't know that it's obvious though that many adults do not spend a lot of time in their lives developing the skill. I agree. Certainly, it's unfortunate that we have to create processes. Then we haven't developed it enough. Absolutely. And so therefore the company has to come up with a process. Yes, the organization has to create a process in order to support, to begin it, regular adult behavior. Yes, exactly. And it speaks to the fact of unions, that of course the unions would be the first place that this happens. Sure. Rather than in an organization where people strive to work together well, because unions, I believe, to some extent create factions. Mm-hmm. They do. In a place where people strive to work together well without factions as much, it is less likely to happen. Yeah. Now folks, to be fair, you may be in a union organization. You may be surprised we're talking down about unions. But there are many unions that are incredibly well-run, and they have incredibly great relationships with their corporate leadership. And that's a good thing. Yes. There's nothing wrong with that. We just happen to think that unions create an interesting third party, three-party economic system within what is supposed to be a two-party economic system, the individual and the organization. Also, the three-party economics of it makes the grievance process a little bit scarier, I think. Oh, I read completely. It has a larger impact to the two people involved. Yeah. Because the backing of the union for the grievance, it's almost like you have two sides, and now they have all these people behind them, what in a fact? Oh, no. And you don't. Yes. You as the manager, don't. Yes. The company doesn't come to your defense at all. Yes. It inflates the effect of the insult or whatever. Or whatever the incident, I believe, not the grievance because that's a formal contained. There's that kind of thing. But wow, to be confronted with a grievance and to know that the entire union is backing the other person would be intense, overwhelming. Yeah. And there's a double problem there because people don't understand the significance. And part of the reason why this cast, we're going to be so strident in those cast folks and having them been involved in grievances before I was never grieved, but having coach people through grievances, the first thing is that they don't understand the seriousness of it. And it's already serious. And then that makes it worse because now they're back footed and that's not good. If it exists, it's serious. Yeah, exactly. And so we need you to know. Yeah. There is an exception to the rule of union organizations only. We didn't say that, but I know some of you probably think, oh, I'm not in a union. It's fine about the fact that union organizations have grievance processes. If there's a union, there's a grievance process. But that doesn't mean if there's not a union, there's not a grievance process. There are national governmental institutional in some cases, industrial standards, which say, yeah, if you're in that industry, there's a grievance process. For instance, generally most UK and UK Commonwealth and EU governments require a grievance procedure as a function of law, even for non-unites work forces. Even if you're a small startup company, you are required to have a grievance process. That means if you're in those countries, all companies, again, are required by law, not just internally. They're doing to make things efficient relative to conflict negotiations or resolution, but they're required to have it regardless, a grievance process. And they're usually standardized to the laws of your country, but I can tell you the laws across virtually all first world countries that have governmental requirements. The processes are very much alike and we've created, we'll walk you through that here in just a minute. Now, regrettably, some companies that aren't required to have it apply fairly standard union grievance processes to non-union employees. Now, to be honest, guys, this is a bit of a quibble because other than the unionized standards, assuming union support of union employees in the process, and again, as we mentioned earlier, a non-union employee would not have that support. Our view, the managerial's view is the use of grievance in a non-union environment, is an unnecessary use of the more harsh term assuming your company doesn't have a process. And grievance, by definition, implies legal implications that often don't exist, but the use of the word would cause an intelligent manager to go, "Oh, okay, this is quite serious." And if there's not a process, then you're probably not being grieved. Now, in the US, grievance procedures are only applied to union employees and private companies are not required by law to have one. So, that means generally, if you're in the US in a non-union workplace, it's unlikely you will be grieved in the formal sense. since the word unless your company has as a grievance process. Now, US governmental workplaces, even those without unionization, also have grievance procedures. Many places in academia, higher learning universities, colleges, and so on also have grievance procedures. Now, going back to the difference between a complaint and a grievance, that doesn't mean that complaints can't be lodged against you or your company by somebody. Often complaint procedures amount to someone going to HR with a complaint or using an open door policy and so on. So if that seems a little marquee, it is, but you should be able to use what we just said to say, okay, I know, first of all, I had to go look to find out whether this is a grievance process. - Certainly, it's no a problem. - I agree with grievance, right. It's easily knowable. But if you're in a non-union environment and somebody says this is a grievance, you've got to find out whether this is a process and if there's not a process, it's probably not a grievance, but quite frankly, we would recommend you still apply this guidance because if somebody's using that word, they may think that they have more power than the company has actually allowed them to have as the person running the process and it'd be better for you to be safe rather than sorry. - If you have a good relationship with someone in HR, you could probably call and say, hey, just wondering, learned about this thing, do we have this process here? What does it look like? - Yes. - Certainly something that managers could do to educate themselves. - Yeah. - To understand their organization. - Right. And in our guidance here in a little bit, we're gonna tell you the first thing you do is find out, right, immediately after you notify your boss. - We're hosting so many virtual events in September, covering a ton of our content. Come to our effective manager event, starting September 16th at 10 a.m. Eastern, or there's an effective communicator event on September 18th, also starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. And on September 25th, we don't do this often, but we've got a remote manager event starting at 1 p.m. Eastern. And we're so excited to tell you that we are planning to host an EMC in October for Tui with Spanish translation. You can sign up for these events at manager-tools.com/training. - So next on the agenda is how grievances work. And despite the differences in industries and cultures and countries and so on, grievances are handled in a fairly standard way. And here's how it generally goes. Okay. Most grievances follow a three or four step process. The first step is an employee, usually unionized, but not always, files usually a written request for assistance with a complaint they have with the organization, policies or procedures, or an individual. Typically, the person or office they file their grievance with is published in a grievance process and standards document that you can find as we mentioned on your internet. It might be, for instance, an argument that somebody was unfairly punished, or they were denied a raise or a promotion. Although there are often exceptions for the performance evaluation system trumping the grievance process, although this tend to be pretty rare. Or maybe they were exposed to unsafe working conditions. Now, it may be that you as the manager responsible for the working conditions would be grieved, but in fact, it might also be that they're grieving the entire company. It would be involved, but there may not be as much risk to you in that situation. And certainly the professionals like I says having conversations about who is held responsible for what an organization does. And remember, we already said the manager. Well, yes, and recently France has decided that CEOs, in some cases, are responsible for the companies and those lines get blurry. And so it is not without surprise that a manager would find themselves in this position. Exactly. And unsafe conditions historically include physical danger as things have changed a bit. That has expanded in a lot of cases to include feelings of fear or mistrust or mental health issues, such as anxiety or worry about repercussions or lack of professional progression. Grievances have expanded over the years as employees mistakenly believe that they have a right not to be stressed by too much work or even have to face negative performance feedback in their environment. Yeah. And it's unfortunate that a formal process with legal implications could be called upon to handle the stress of a working situation. Right. And that it would be something that you would then have to be involved in. If Kate and I worked in a company with a grievance process and she was my manager and I felt mentally stressed by the fact that she gave me negative performance feedback, she could grieve me. Now, this creates all kinds of problems for companies because companies are constantly saying, you've got to, as a job as a manager, you've got to get feedback, you've got to be professionally, you've got to be polite and so on. And we'll give an example of that here in a little bit. People who experience burnout, who feel that they are experiencing burnout could make a grievance. Yeah. And as a person who has in the past felt that I was near capacity and then realized that was actually only a feeling I was not truly near capacity. Right. I can see negative implications of this being based on someone's perceptions. Yes. And just some perceptions, not all perceptions, specifically ones where you believe your situation is caused by another person, which to be frank, I would suggest being at capacity or not managing your capacity well, is also upon the employee. Individual. Yeah. Certainly. So we have to just think. Organizations run with that very principle as an assumption that of course everyone is responsible for their own workload and so on. Yeah. And your own ability to do it. Right. So first we have the written. Right. Generally the filing of a written-- The filing, right. 95% of the cases I've been involved in, it's in writing. And I'll just mention it might take a couple of weeks from the incident for them to take the time to talk to other people and to write it all up and draft it and then finally decide are they going to go through with it or not. Which is dangerous in that perceptions change, especially when you're talking to other people. There's not just your lack of memory of the incident. There's the way other people, when presented with your story respond. Their perception of it leads you to believe it's worse than it was or better than it was. Wouldn't hurt, right? Yeah. And their perception of it, their response affects-- if you're talking to a peer, if I'm talking to Mike, Mike, my peer, and both of us were hard to Kate, that affects Mike's relationship with Kate as well. Because now Kate is, I think, she's going to be grieved. And just by saying that, in most organizations, just by saying that, you can talk about fairness and confidentiality, or you want, but I can assure you, the assumption is the manager was wrong. And that doesn't just affect how the peer feels about the manager. It would affect then how the grievance process is going to go. Yeah. Because there is then no one without an opinion about it. Right. Exactly. OK, so we have the filing of the written. Then the next step is the organization has a time-limited period to respond. It's actually usually pretty quick, one to two weeks. So a lag time at the beginning, probably for the person to put everything together, get it all written and filed, then a one to two week time frame for the organization. Right. This response is usually accompanied by an investigation by the receiving office. In the case where you, as a manager, or specifically, this would mean you being notified of the grievance and being interviewed, often by HR, to determine facts of the situation. Yes. Facts is a strong word. I use the word interviewed purposefully there. Because that's what they'll say. I need to interview you about this. I'd like to have a conversation with you about this. But the better word is investigate. Because this person has police authority. They are granted as a function of the process, if you're in a grievance process, to decide who was right and who was wrong and what the punishment will be. They are judge, injury. And of course, in the first world, judges aren't juries. And judges aren't judges. But in this case, it is. And in many cases, regrettably, the HR person who knows the process, because anybody would know the process from looking in company policy manuals and so on, they know the process, but they have no experience investigating. Yeah. And again, the bias tends to be toward the manager being wrong, which is deeply unfortunate and a fundamental problem, a fundamental flaw in organizational responses these symptoms situations, based on the number that I've been involved in, coaching someone who's going through it. Yeah, so they interview them to determine what the facts are, right? Yes, and regarding notification, it's not necessary that you have you would have any notification of the grievance before it was filed or received and the process of response was Yeah, yeah, you're it's already filed They're down the path without you Yeah, sometimes you'll know usually you will not know unless you are contacted for a response If your manager's was manager as you said it's unlikely that this would happen And if it did I would suggest some manager tools managers would find out from their team or somebody before they buy the way Hey, by the way from H.R. I think he's gonna get ready to file a complaint I heard a story that kind of thing. Yeah, by the way be on the lookout. Yeah, yeah So you might not get notified and then you're gonna get investigated if The investigation is not satisfactory to the person filing the grievance There are possibilities for appeal or request for further arbitration investigation and arbitration. I would have said yeah usually with an external qualified arbiter Whose decision would then be final? Yeah, and this is rare But it does happen is possible something to be aware of yeah now folks I'll tell you something if this sounds dangerous If you haven't gotten that from our introduction so far and we haven't even gotten to the meat of the cast It is If a union employee is grieved you they will have their union representative and resources supporting the claim Irrespective of those people and resources lacking first-hand knowledge of the details of what happened And you will likely have no support not even in your chain of leadership And then union leadership has experience in the process and you likely do not Reading about the process is not experience with the process the process relies on an investigator talking to the person Formerly filing the grievance as well as anyone else they name and talking to you again Usually the form of what we're calling an interview And to anyone else you may choose to name exactly so there is many conversations yes, and Yet yours will be hypothetically the last And you will probably provide less input because as you'll see your input can be circumscribed To only the questions you get asked you don't necessarily in the process It's not obvious in most processes you get to present your case They got to present a case and they made it as persuasive as possible But now you're just getting to answer questions so you can see where the bias is Which is weird because the company ought to be thinking about protecting their employees, but as we have said before while we Don't hate HR. We'd love great HR, but there's a lot of inexperienced HR people they recognize the power they have and their bias will be toward Taking care of the employee because there are people in HR who believe that HR's unofficial role is to sort of be even in a Non-union environment the union rep for the employee and I hate it But I've heard conversations about people saying in HR said I got a scalp You know a manager I showed them the grievance went against them and so they're not up for promotion during the next cycle or whatever and the process is essentially enormously flawed but you could still be in it and so you have to play the game even if the rules aren't fair and that's why we're here. Yeah That's it for this week folks come back next week for a continuation of this topic