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.

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