It has been noted that firms often create Ombudsmen process or Grievance cells to deal with inappropriate behavior of firms’ agents i.e. supervisors/managers within an organization. Especially in difficult environment (read economic) conditions there are more incidents where employees are often exploited by supervisors/managers (and vice-versa as well)… This has typically been dealt with in traditional industries by the employee unions….Unions can be effective or ineffective in dealing with such problem, without causing other implicit challenges to efficient functioning of the firm…(Well you know that I’m hinting at the UAW and their ballooning health benefits and other benefits, that is almost sinking big auto players in US…) Unfortunately in IT industry we do not have registered unions…atleast those that were sprouting due to firms entry in certain delivery locations where worker unionization has a strong political will, has also been rendered toothless due to several reasons attributed directly and indirectly to firms and their agents….Lets stop digressing and look at a simple model to look at the cause and effects of such Ombudsmen/Grievance cell in organizations…
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The above model clearly indicates the causal reasoning applied when the ombudsman/grievance cell is put in place to tackle with inappropriate behaviour..On analyzing the above flow it becomes clear that only very few oppressed employees will complaint through the Ombudsman process as they inherently know the effect of retribution by the supervisor/mgr against whom the complaints are launched, but those who do so are already prepared their exit options when retribution arises….The few employees who do not have exit options remain in the system and vent their feelings, which eventually erodes trust impacting the high performance of employees…(countless books written on trust vs. High performance…I’ve written few book reviews on the same topic, those interested may check out my book review section of blogs site http://insightful-journey.blogspot.com …)..You may be wondering how I know this? Well I’ve experienced it myself and seen countless people seeking my advice as well and how to handle this…(I’m not alone out there you see…J..)
Now if the above system is not effective from a systemic perspective why is this being put in place in the first place…Not all it seems is as negative as what is being portrayed above…It is very clear if you know why the system will break you would also define how to correct them by changing the rules of the game (I’m not going to discuss how strategies can be defined using concepts from Game theory though) like for example moving a complainant immediately out of the specific management & control of the oppressor.. Also, there are very few instances where employees utilize these processes and contribute to the system…as always there is a cost the firm and oppressed employees pay as well (either quitting or sometimes even staying on in the organization)…
How differently can such system be designed so the real problems highlighted above can be resolved? There are few potential, untested ideas I have as an effectual reasoning person….The best is to create a Points system (similar to the rewards system) which is objectively designed…whenever an employee is oppressed he/she raises the issue on the portal site using key pneumonic of issues (harassment, Oppression, favoritism, Integrity, etc.)..Each such reason has a certain points that can get debited from the manager who is also cited by the complainant (we can use techniques like AHP to crystallize on the quantitative points for the pneumonic). This can then effectively feed into the yearly appraisal cycle resulting in penalties and eventually affecting their pay-package/promotions etc….Now this system may create vested interest on employees as they may collude to weed out objective decision…the counter-balance to this is the complaint process that can be effected by the supervisor/manager through points system as well overseen by a neutral third-party (can be within the firm or outside the firm…its better to have an outside agency)…On a systemic level this system may figure out an efficient means to weed out managers and employees with inappropriate behaviors…. What is your opinion on this any other system you think can be devised that is fool-proof and more objective?...
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