Complaints from employees are a cost effective and easy resource for any business entity to dip into in order to gauge how the business’ culture is forming, what possible behavioral risks there can be with employees, and even to identify and rectify possible business sensitive issues.
Collection
Collecting complaints from employees, should be enlisted to the Human Resources department.
That being said, not all Human Resources departments are capable of collecting complaints on the fly, nor do they know where and how to seek out complaints in order to understand what risks and fallacies are happening within the business’ culture and between employees.
This is why it is so important to set up a collection method that all individuals within the business entity have equal access to – regardless of job title and workstation setup. This means that collection of complaints should be done in a manner that is accessible to all, easy to use, and allows for anonymity.
Anonymous complaints
Employers often demand that complaints are logged under a name. Laws are cited on how the individual who is complained against should be able to defend themselves and therefore has the right to know who the complainant is, and employers tend to ignore anonymous complaints as “it isn’t possible to investigate an anonymous complaint”.
On paper this looks all good and proper, but in practice this will mean that the employer is setting up a culture where employees will refrain from sending in complaints in fear of retaliation. And not just retaliation for complaints about conduct from their superiors, but from their peers, and even business sensitive situations.
Filing complaints
Even if complaint forms are easily accessible and can be handed in without the complainant ever revealing their identity, it is also important for the complaint form to be set up in such a way that the Human Resources department is able to investigate the complaint without having personal information about the complainant.
A complaint form should allow Human Resources departments to investigate incidents without set presumptions on all persons applicable to the incident(s) in question.
This means that complaint collection form should include a place for the employee to include their name – should they choose to complain under their name – but not make it a requirement. And the complaint collection form should also encourage listing all applicable person(s), without identifying which one of them is the complainant.
This can make investigating incidents confusing for Human Resources personnel who aren’t accustomed to handling such matters, but in reality the investigation into the complaint goes just like when the complainant is know – the Human Resources department just doesn’t have a name of an individual, instead a set incident report list.
The Human Resources department should also refrain from going on a witch hunt, trying to find who initially filed the complaint, as well as only focus the investigation on the supposed culprit.
This goes both ways, as a focus on either the complainant or the supposed culprit should be avoided in order to collect unbiased data.
This allows for the investigation to follow a more general trajectory allowing for logging general cultural information to gauge if there are issues within the employer, department or team that need to be addressed, as well as one individual’s mishandling or abuse against another.
Reporting the complaint
For employees to feel free to send in anonymous complaints is one thing, the reporting of the complaint is the most important step, a step that should always be in the hands of unbiased Human Resources personnel.
Where the Human Resources personnel is unable to remain unbiased, or if the complaint is about an individual who has power over the Human Resources department, the complaint should be handled by a third party that can remain unbiased despite the circumstances.
Even when faced with a complaint that the Human Resources department feels they have seemingly nothing to go on – just simple dates, place, department, or a list of names without properly mentioning who played what role – the Human Resources department should investigate the matter in an unbiased manner, without asking for blame to be placed or fingers to be pointed. No witch hunts should take place either, even if a name on the list is “known to be troublesome”.
But most importantly, the investigation’s main purpose is for the Human Resources department to handle all complaints as possible cultural issues, and look at the business, department, or team as a whole and how there could possibly be a larger issue at hand at all times.
The investigation isn’t to rectify a single incident, but more to make sure that there is nothing within the business’ culture that is allowing for detrimental behavior, and if there is something it should be properly identified and handled.
Dealing with complaints
While investigating a complaint, the Human Resources department will not just learn about the culture, but also the incident(s) listed in the complaint.
As a result, investigations should include information that can be used to deal with the initial complaint. However, there are times that despite an investigation into the complaint, there are no results.
When an investigation has no results for the initial complaint, it can be due to three factors:
- The initial complaint didn’t include necessary information to properly understand what needed to be investigated and/or how.
- The Human Resources personnel who did the investigation didn’t handle it properly.
- No corroborating evidence were found and the results therefore found to be inconclusive.
Should the investigation show that not enough information was included in the initial complaint in order to yield results, it is a perfect opportunity for the Human Resources department to update their complaint form in order for it to better ask for the necessary information without compromising the employee(s) anonymity, as well as up their training for employees on how to use the complaints collection form.
It isn’t just a practice in using the complaint collection form – it can double as a training in healthy communication, how to properly identify necessary information and how to convey them!
Keep in mind
It is important to not use the attached templates blindly, but make sure that all efforts in collecting and logging complaints, along with reporting on the complaints and their findings, are done in accordance with applicable local laws, including laws on whistleblowers.
Should assistance be needed to adjust the templates to maintain legal compliance, please refrain from using the contact form and contact a proper lawyer.