Employees are human beings and they have certain expectation, assumptions, norms, values and represent their culture. If the management or organization doesn’t respect their human aspects they become dissatisfied and it may turn into grievance of employees. And type of inhuman or injustice behavior can cause grievance of the employees. Apart from this, , lack of appropriate motivation, unnecessary or unscientific cannot system and ineffective leadership can also be the reason for grievance.
Employees may be grievant due to the existing policy, rule, work procedure or dissatisfaction due to the certain behavior. If the level of dissatisfaction goes on increasing then they put the written complaint about it to the management which is known as grievance. Grievances are concerns, problems or complaints that employees raise to their employers. The Employment Relations Acts gives all employees the rights to pursue a personal grievance if they have genuine complaints.
Employee grievance has negative effect in the organization. If it is not solved in time, employees may participate in the unfavorable activities like protesting, strike and lockout. This will reduce the productivity of organization and the dispute or conflict between the management and employee may arise. Capable, experienced and genuine employees may leave the organization. Production cost may be genuine employees may leave the organization. Production cost may be increased and the quality of products and services may deteriorate.
Causes of Employee Grievance
Employee’s grievance not only reduces the productivity of employees and organization, it may put the existence of the organization in a danger situation. Therefore, the grievance has to be solved as quickly as possible. For this, the reason has to be identified. The reason for grievance may vary according to the situation. Some of the important reasons are as under:-
- Unfair Management
Employees want to be treated equally as other employees. But if management treats differently to the identically performing employees then the grievance arises.
- Poor Communication
Open and two way communication makes a healthy relationship and motivates the employees. Policy, directives, information and other notices have to be received by each employee in a similar way according to their job responsibility. One way and controlled communication makes them feel inferior and this will create misunderstanding among the employees and the management. This misunderstanding will slowly turns into the grievance. Thus, poor, controlled and one way communication is also a reason for employee’s grievance.
- Different interpretation
Different in the understanding and the interpretation between the employees and the management also causes for grievance. If employees understand the policy, rules and terms and conditions, directions and guidelines determined by the management differently then they become negative towards the management and whole organization. Organization with ineffective communication has high chance for grievance.
- Personality traits
Some employees have habit of being grievant even in minor and small cases. They needle or point out other employees even in their minor mistakes. This will create grievance to the employee himself/herself and other employees as well. Therefore, a personality trait is one of the reasons for the grievance.
- Culture of Organization
In some cases, the wrong culture of organization creates grievance in the employees. Bad culture adversely affects the organizational environment and it dissatisfies the employees. This dissatisfaction grows on increasing into the grievance.
- Weak leadership
Leader must be present as a guardian of all employees. If the leader is weak, then employee’s enthusiasm may go down and employees do not follow and ignore the leaders. Serious in-disciplinary activities may be carried out in the organization. This will increase the employee grievance.
- Personality clash
Sometimes, some employees may have personality clash with the colleagues, management and other people’s thought, concept and work style. They may take it as a challenge when their idea is not accepted and a feeling of revenge may take place. Feeling of ego may create anger, miserable or dishearten to an employee that will create grievance among the employees.
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