Complainer Trainer

Kampus Production. (2021, June 16). Woman in White Suit Discussing Stock Market Data To Her Colleagues [Photograph]. Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-white-suit-discussing-stock-market-data-to-her-colleagues-8353802/

Complaints in the workplace

Whenever human relations are involved, specially when people lack good communication skills, issues and clashes are prone to happening. And the workplace is no exception, which is why handling complaints is one the main tasks of both Human Resources departments and managers.

Some of those complaints can be very specific and situational but some of them are shared by most workplace environmets and companies. Let's have a look at those.

The most common complaints

The Interact/Harris poll (Solomon, 2015) asked 1000 workers what were the communication issues that were preventing businesses from being more effective, and these were the results:

Faced with these results, Solomon (2015) proposes in this article from Harvard Business Review some solutions that may help leaders improve their relationship with their employees, such as:

• Letting them know what they appreciate about them and their work;
• Thanking them for their contributions;
• Asking for their opinion;
• Being transparent about their future and expectations for them;
• Giving feedback continuously;
• Showing vulnerability;
• Addressing everyone by their name.

These simple actions can go a long way when trying to build a good environment, free of complaints. (Solomon, 2015)

Discrimination in the workplace

Even though discrimination in the workplace is illegal, the amount of complaints for it in the past decades is concerning.

"From 1997 to 2018 (the last year data was available), there were 1,889,631 discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Comission (EEOC). In 2017, a majority of these complaints were categorized as retaliation (49%), race (34%), disability (32%), or sex (over 30%)." (PayChex, 2019a)

The following figure illustrates the evolution of dicrimination complaints from 1997 until 2018.

But the biggest issue regarding these complaints is how hard it has been to solve them.

"Discrimination in the workplace may not be uncommon, but it can be very difficult to prove. According to the AARP, nearly 2 in 3 employees between the ages of 55 and 65 cited age as a barrier to employment. Despite the high volume of complaints surrounding ageism, just 16% of cases focused on age discrimination merited a resolution for the charging party. At most, 22% of cases focused on equal pay led to a resolution, and fewer than 16% of cases that focused on color and race experienced similar results." (PayChex, 2019a)

All done? Let's do some exercises!

References

Kampus Production. (2021, June 16). Woman in White Suit Discussing Stock Market Data To Her Colleagues [Photograph]. Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-in-white-suit-discussing-stock-market-data-to-her-colleagues-8353802/

PayChex. (2019, August 1). Employment and Discrimination: Exploring the Climate of Workplace Discrimination from 1997 to 2018. https://www.paychex.com/articles/human-resources/eeoc-workplace-discrimination-enforcement-and-litigation

PayChex. (2019b, August 1). Historical Employment Discrimination Complaint Reporting from 1997 to 2018 [Graph]. https://www.paychex.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/image/2020-09/A06-updated.png?itok=di5gDh3X

Solomon, L. (2015, June 24). The Communication Issues That Prevent Effective Leadership [Graph]. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2015/06/W150521_SOLOMON_COMMUNICATIONISSUES.png

Solomon, L. (2015, June 24). The Top Complaints from Employees About Their Leaders. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-top-complaints-from-employees-about-their-leaders

The Communication Issues That Prevent Effective Leadership. (2015, June 24). [Graph]. Https://Hbr.Org/2015/06/the-Top-Complaints-from-Employees-about-Their-Leaders. https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2015/06/W150521_SOLOMON_COMMUNICATIONISSUES-1024x426.png

Supplementary Materials

Exercises