Outline the features of a grievance handling procedure and the steps involved in it.

Outline the features of a grievance handling procedure and the steps involved in it. Present a brief report on the existing grievance handing procedures and practices in your organisation or an organisation you are familiar with. Describe the organisation you are referring to.


In any organisation both employer and employee have mutual expectations. When an employee’s expectations are not fulfilled he will have a grudge against the employer because of the disagreement or dissatisfaction it causes. Similarly when an employee’s expectations about an employee are not fulfilled, the employer will have a grudge against such employee. It may be a problem of indiscipline. Broadly, a grievance can be defined as any discount or dissatisfaction with any discount or dissatisfaction with any aspect of the organisation. It can be real or imaginary, legitimate or ridiculous, stated on invoiced, written or oral. It must, find expression in some form or the other.

Discount or dissatisfaction parse is not a grievance. They initially find expression in the form of a complaint. When a complaint remains unattended and the employee concerned feels a sense of lack of justice and fairplaty, the dissatisfaction grow and assumes the status of a grievance. Usually, grievances relate to problems of interpretation or perceived nonfulfillment of one’s expectations from the organisation. Aggrieved employees usually manifest deviant behavior.

Pre-requisites of a grievance procedure

The pre-requisites of a such a procedure may be summed-up as follows:

(i) It gives an opportunity to the workers to express their feelings.
(ii) The management come to know that what the workers think.
(iii) It highlights the morale of the people.
(iv) There may be some complaints, which cannot be solved at supervisory level. They must have been resolved by a systematic grievance handling procedure.
(v) It improves the policies and practices of the company.

Features of a grievance
Grievance means any real or imaginary feeling of dissatisfaction and injustice which an employer has about his employment relationship.

Grievance has the following features:

(1) It reflects dissatisfaction if discontent arises out of employment.
(2) A grievance may be expressed verbally or in writing. Verbal grievance includes gossiping, jealous, argumentation, poor workmanship etc. Written grievance are often called complaints.
(3) The dissatisfaction may be valid and legitimate or irrational and ridiculous or false.
(4) A grievance arises only when an employee feels that injustice has been done to him.
(5) Grievance not redressed in time tends to lower morale and productivity of employees.

Steps involved in grievance handling
Grievance handling procedure is a formal process of setting grievance and it usually consists of a number of steps arranged in a hierarchy.
Following is a typical grievance procedure:

As shown the front line supervisor is given the first opportunity to handle grievance. It company is unionized a representative of the trade union also joins the supervisor.
In the second step the personnel officer along with a higher level union officer attempt to tackle the grievance.
In the third step the top management and top union leader set together to settle grievance involving company’s wide issues. If the grievance remarks unsettled it is refined to an outside arbitrator for redressal.