If 2013 was the year of the tablet and the cloud, will 2014 be the year they rescue your IT budget?

Never has more bang for the buck been available.  Inexpensive mobile devices running cloud applications are about to change everything for small businesses, non-profits and unions. 

Low-cost tablets have been widely hailed as a game-changer for personal entertainment, with their marketing and media coverage focused squarely in that milieu for obvious reasons.  Less is heard about what tablets can do for small businesses, non-profits and unions.  That’s mainly because the "apps for that" are particular at least to the type of enterprise, and often to the specific organization.  You won’t hear much about business apps on television or major media sites (except for those with very broad reach like Salesforce and QuickBooks), but the personal entertainment market for tablets is quickly educating administrators and managers about the capabilities of their wonderful new toys, with work applications coming to mind more lately with the increasing availability of attachable keyboards.  Add the maturation of cloud-based apps in the past few years, and light bulbs begin to come on.  In fact, 2014 will likely see administrators' and managers' heads glowing everywhere. 

If running your business apps on tablets and clouds sounds a little scary, you're probably not alone.  But once you take a breath and consider, it's actually not scary at all.  First, unlike past crossroads in tech (Windows vs Mac, Iphone vs Blackberry, VHS vs Beta, etc), this time it probably doesn't much matter which brand you buy.  Android, Windows and iOS tablets are all viable for web-based apps.   Second, the new generation of software applications (like our Step One Grievance System) are web-based and designed to work across a full range of web browsing devices.  These applications are generally more reliable, more secure, and more efficient to develop, maintain and customize than traditional enterprise software.  They'll run on any tablet you  fancy, and they'll run just as well on your old Windows XP laptop or MacBook.  

Of course there are still jobs that can only be done - or are better done - on a PC or Mac, but not everybody needs them.  If even a few laptops can be replaced with tablets, your organization saves a lot of money on both hardware and software.  

Tips for getting a perfect fit with grievance software

Over the last eight years building custom coded Grievance Manager applications, and now with the Step One SaaS (software as a service) product, we've see a lot of variety in our clients' grievance software specifications. The apps run the gamut in terms of forms, screen flow, and the actual information requested and required. And while we pride ourselves in being able to meet our clients' demands, we also offer advice based on past experience and feedback from prior customers. Here is advice based on lessons learned.

1. Identify all stakeholders. Make sure everyone who needs to be involved in planning gets involved. Not everyone needs to be in every meeting or phone call, but everyone does need to review documents that result from those meetings and discuss any concerns or omissions. Hint: Staff assistants are VIPs in the planning process.
2. Make a list of goals. Sounds simple and obvious, right? Maybe so, but when your individual stakeholders review that list, it will usually spark some discussion, and the list will change.
3. Assign a project leader - a single individual - to lead the specifications process and direct communications with the software builder or provider. This doesn't have to be the boss, but it does have to be someone who can communicate easily with the boss and everyone. Make sure the software people know that everything goes though your leader, and make sure all your stakeholders know too.
4. Ask for screen prototypes and have everyone review them. This will often bring up issues and opportunities for data integration and contingencies.
5. Require only what's required, and be careful not to tie your staffs' hands. Requiring user input in certain areas can be greatly improve your information gathering, but be mindful of potential situations where staff may want to get some information saved in the record before they have all the information they'll eventually need. You want your grievance app to be flexible enough that staff use it nimbly; they shouldn't have to copy notes into it later.
6. Avoid redundancy. Often you'll want to potentially repeat information, such as between steps, but that only makes sense if the information can be altered between steps. For example, it's often a good idea for a field like Step 2 Issue Description to default to whatever was entered in the Step 1 Issue Description, but to allow users to append or edit that field.
7. Avoid adherence to past practices that aren't helpful. We sometimes see requests for information pages that include legacy fields from other applications, like home phone, cell phone, work phone, primary email, secondary email, etc. But forwarding these into your grievance app will cost data entry time and screen space, and is more likely than not to cost servicing time and cause confusion. We recommend that you take one contact phone number and one email per member (or anyone else). Let them tell you how they want to be contacted, rather than have your staff be responsible for leaving multiple voicemails and hoping for the best.
8. Think carefully about how your staff will benefit from email reminders, and make sure the specifications reflect that. More isn't necessarily better. If your Grievance Director is getting an email from the app every time someone schedules a meeting, s/he is going to learn to ignore them, and may miss the important one on a Step 3 denial.

Hate grievances? Why both sides should lean in.

I haven't seen a study on this, but casual research seems to indicate that HR staff generally don't enjoy union grievances. No surprise there, since most probably view them as a nuisance at best, taking up time better spent on responsibilities they consider more important. Sometimes a grievance can be a power play in a work unit. Sometimes there are hidden agendas. A grievance can be a slacker's attempt to gain cover, or a steward gratuitously building her political base, or serve any number of motivations. Often there are political undertones and implications for the business unit, the union, or both. But does that mean grievances shouldn't be heard?

It's worth mentioning that the same kind of thing happens around grievances (complaints, conflicts) in non-union companies too. Whether the fight is over leadership for the big project, sales territory or where the new vending machines will be located, the grievance is often just the tip of an iceberg representing only a part of a broader power struggle. In many cases, grievances are seen as petty by unaffected observers, including the people who manage their resolution. Hearing them out won't always change that perception, but it's worth remembering that someone stuck their neck out to bring their issue forward, and that's always significant. If he or she had decided to just "suck it up," then the issue - whether a "real" problem or a shot across an opponent's bow - survives and thrives. That's not a good thing.

Union people generally take grievances seriously. HR and other management should too, or at least take a look at this link - 5 Hidden Costs of Unresolved Conflict in the Workplace.

To Deal or Not to Deal

Frost was right.  Grievances are the bread and butter of politics.  It's true in governments, businesses, service agencies, families, bowling leagues and party planning committees.  It's a fundamental aspect of human nature and all human organizations.  Conflicts will happen, and hopefully be resolved constructively - or at least not too destructively.  When they're resolved well, the organization structure is strengthened and processes become more efficient.  When conflicts are suppressed, they simmer and obstruct.

Most successful organizations have some kind of process for dealing with grievances, if not always resolving them.  Any organization where people work together absolutely needs a defined or "formal" process.  The idea that workers should be heard and their grievances addressed originated with labor unions, and unions still lead the way in conflict prevention and resolution by insisting that workers' rights, the rules affecting them, and grievance procedures to address possible violations are all carefully designed and formalized in collective bargaining agreements.  Of course some claim that unions create more conflict than they help resolve, but that's really shooting the messenger.  People don't dream up problems because they're in a union; they're just more free to express them.  Obviously non-union workplaces have employee dissatisfaction too, but grievances are often discouraged and procedures are usually vague and discretionary on the part of the employer, and entrepreneurial and corporate environments often have an "Everything's fine / head-in-sand" culture that discourages people from expressing anything that could put them at odds with management.

But employee conflicts don't spring into existence from the process that represents them.  They arise wherever human beings work together, and if not aired and addressed, they can hurt the entire enterprise. For most businesses that employ people, labor is a top expense, and a certain level of project / department / employee inefficiency (due largely to unresolved conflicts of various types) is considered normal and structural.  For many businesses, this is the "dark matter" of financial loss.

A strong business model looks for ways to reduce social friction in the organization as a means of improving efficiency.  It should address employee grievances by formalizing a resolution process and tracking each case through it.  Don't shoot the messenger.  Deal with the message.

http://steponegrievance.com

Can your database help your overall conflict resolution strategy?

Yes, obviously. When a blog post title is a yes/no question, the answer is usually "yes." So the better question is: How? And the answer has to do with how you see and use your database and software. Most unions and employers use databases by now, because there's really no other time-effective way to stay on top of your work, particularly if you're a union rep or HR associate with a lot of member grievances or disciplinary cases. Databases (and software apps that use them) are so essential for keeping track of details, that they're sometimes overlooked for their most powerful features: aggregate reporting. "Aggregate reporting" is a 50 cent term for what a lot of people would call statistical reporting (except that technically, statistics are from samples). But counts, sums, mean averages and medians, grouped by specific criteria, are even more descriptive of real data, and should be used to identify problem areas. Your grievance software should allow you to look at any non-unique data point and group values. For example, you should be able to see at a glance where your overtime disputes fall by location, and by supervisor. Is one supervisor having more than his share of complaints? Could he benefit from a review of the OT rules? Now add a breakdown by step. Are they getting resolved at step 1, or do you have a bunch languishing after step 3 and destined for arbitration? How about disciplinary issues? With a good database and app, you can create discipline issue buckets and check them in the software on a per case basis. Then run reports to very quickly see what issues are popping up most, and where. Don't forget what the databases can do for you. At Step One we can help you set up all the "buckets" you need, and you can modify them as needed. And our flexible reporting tool will let you group by any non-unique criteria in your database and apply any filter.

Safety and the Grievance Process

On October 19, two track inspectors were killed on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) rail system. The accident occurred during a strike called by SEIU 1021 and ATU 1555 after BART’s last best offer included language that would have eroded past practice work rules. The train that struck the inspectors was being operated by a non-union driver trainee, presumably being trained as part of a rumored skeleton crew for the busy trans-bay segment.

The specific causes of this tragedy are still under investigation by the NTSB, but the incident underscores the importance of work rules, especially regarding safety. Ensuring member safety is the most important job of any union, and rule compliance – whether by OSHA, contract or past practice -is the heart of that effort.

The best tool for ensuring work rule compliance is the grievance process. Of course every union local should audit their grievance process periodically, to be sure that members’ concerns are being heard and acted on in a timely manner. The power of the union is eroded where members don’t feel empowered to file a grievance, or where grievances can "slip through the cracks" because of staffing or organizational issues. This can be a challenge, but the heart of the union's value is workers' willingness and ability to effectively grieve their issues.

Locals should also be able to maintain and review real-time summary data on safety related grievances. (Example: how many "fall hazard" grievances were filed at Location 'A' last year? When you break those down to counts by shift and supervisor, does something stand out?)

Step One offers custom applications to make unions effective in addressing their members’ grievances. The applications can be designed to accommodate work rule enforcement, and to warn of approaching filing, meeting or decision deadlines for each grievance. It can also reveal counts by location, department, and other patterns in safety related grievances.

What's a Grievance Anyway?

It seems that a lot of people, in both unions and management, define a grievance as being a specific violation of the CBA (collective bargaining agreement) between them. That makes a certain sense for those with a mature and well developed CBA, but does it mean that union members without a comprehensive CBA can't use the grievance process? Does it mean that non-union employees can't have "grievances?"

Of course it's a matter of opinion, and possibly semantics. For union members and management who deal with unions, the term grievance may be a specific reference to the CBA, since that's the document that not only defines many worker rights, but also the process for grieving violations.

But then the next question is: Does the CBA confer all worker rights? If it's not in the CBA that a supervisor can't throw ice water on his employees, does that mean it's okay to dump the bucket on them?

I don't think so. And I don't think grievance procedures are or should be limited to unionized workers. The ability to pursue a grievance with an employer is an important tool for conflict resolution, and that makes it an important friction reducing and problem solving mechanism for any organization that depends on team work.

What are your thoughts on this? Comments welcome.

StepOneGrievance.com