Russell HR Consulting

I have lost count of the times people have said to me recently “Oh, business must be great for you at the moment, what with all these redundancies and all”.

We are busy and, yes, inevitably there are some redundancies, but the trend this year has been grievances and almost every other week I despatch one of my team to carry out an independent investigation, the results of which will then be reviewed by another team member, so we ensure we do a really rigorous investigation and don’t miss anything out. 

Until the statutory dispute resolution regs came into force in 2004, I only ever had to deal with informal grievances.  Since October 2004, a formal grievance has to be raised by an employee before he can go to tribunal.  That’s all he has to do.  Crazily, he doesn’t even have to invoke the grievance procedure.  The onus is on the employer to identify and ask the employee if he is raising a grievance and if he wants to meet to discuss it and et cetera.  It has been the most phenomenal waste of management time. People who want to complain about gripes and nonsense (“he looked at me oddly” was one) have been given air time.  Further, it distracts managers from genuine grievances which should be dealt with in a timely way.  Fortunately the regs will be repealed next year and there will be few who mourn their passing.   It speaks volumes when the review committee could only muster “the regs were well intentioned” in their favour.

Earlier this year I chaired the grievance meeting of a woman who had resigned because she was being taken (quite properly) through the disciplinary process for both poor performance and conduct.  She said that the organization had made her job untenable and that she had been forced out.  On grievance alert, we asked if she wanted to raise a grievance and meet to discuss it and she did. 

So we sat there for two hours, going over matters, some of which she had raised 18 months previously and had been dismissed because on the clearly established facts, she was wrong.  When I, in full Headmistress mode, asked her some fairly searching questions, it was clear that she genuinely believed she had been badly treated, but simply couldn’t see the link between her behaviour and her manager’s need to address it.  It was the most extraordinary litany and the companion, who had obviously spent some time watching Kavanagh (or some such programme), kept “putting it to me” that she had been bullied and asserting that she was an asset to the organisation etc.  He had clearly been brought up in the school of never allowing the facts to get in the way of a good story.

So after I adjourned and had completed the investigation, I wrote my report and was able to conclude quite clearly that there wasn’t a single shred of evidence supporting her complaints of bullying and unreasonable behaviour.  Rather the reverse.  Her employer had been remarkably tolerant in the circumstances, an opinion I did include in my report.  I did say, as gently as I could, that I felt that she should really take the facts on board and learn from them, rather than blame others for managing her shortcomings. 

I do dislike the approach that I regularly come across these days where employees seem to resent being asked to do a job to the standard required by the employer.  Surely, who pays the piper calls the tune?

In the ten years that I have been running my business I have gained a reputation for tackling and resolving tough problems. Managers often call me in for the first time when they have a problem and don’t quite know what to do.  The opening sequence usually goes along the following lines:

New client: Can I sack the b*****d?

Me: No.

A pause while the client furtles around in his mind for inspiration……. and has a light bulb moment

New client: I know!  I’ll make him redundant.

Me: Not unless it’s a genuine redundancy. Redundancy is a dismissal and must be carried out properly. It’s not a get-out-of-jail free card.

Further pause while the client rails against the unfairness of life generally and employment law in particular.  (And he may have a point, but we have to work with what we’ve got.)

So they wheel me out to sort out the problems, confront the barrack room lawyers and tackle the trade unionists (who, with one exception, have all been extremely nice people).

The Headmistress Technique, honed after years of chairing discipline and grievance meetings is to stick my reading glasses on the end of my nose (I have a pair to match every suit!) and beam angelically at the person I’m dealing with.  It may be the specs, the smile or the fact that I have a very direct gaze and am a demon questioner, but I do seem to be able to tackle even the most difficult employee and get suitable results.