The New Workplace Complaint: How Employers Can Adapt
Posted on: August 2, 2023
The New Workplace Complaint: How Employers Can Adapt
Today’s workplaces are complicated. There is no “normal.” Having no singular definition of “normal” may be a very good thing, but the shifting environment can be difficult for employers and employees to navigate.
In that context, it’s no surprise that our practice is seeing a growing number of errors in handling worker complaints. We’re fielding complaints about entirely new issues as well, and we’ve observed that higher-level executives or C-suite employees are more frequent targets of complaints.
Much of today’s complexity is unintended consequences of navigating work and the COVID-19 pandemic. Fully remote workplaces, fully in-person work, and all sorts of hybrids now exist simultaneously. We are living in times of passionate, polarized opinions about the “right way” to work. And many employees are both more vocal and less secure. All of these factors make workplaces complicated.
Return-to-work is one of the most visible controversies.
In March 2023, 56% of U.S. remote workers said working from home made them more efficient, and 76% said it improved their work-life balance.[1] Yet companies large and small are mandating RTO; 72% of them, according to one global survey.[2]
Meanwhile, major tech companies are laying off workers en masse,[3] Amazon employees are walking out over in-office requirements[4] and Google is doubling down on RTO.[5] Workers in food service and retail—many of whom never left in-person work—are unionizing at historic levels.[6] Employers and employees alike feel it’s anybody’s guess what will happen next.
Employee Experiences Have Shifted and Stratified
In early 2020, every industry scrambled to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some had just days to transition a confused and frightened workforce to remote work. Others provided essential services, exposing themselves and their families to an unknown virus to protect an alternately grateful and hostile public. Many businesses had to do both at once, creating mixed workforces of essential workers and employees who could work from home. Three years later, workplaces are fractured into those who can work from home—and are allowed to do so—and those who cannot.
Remote-Eligible Workers Face Challenges
About 40% of U.S. workers can do their jobs from home.[7] Of those, 76% work remotely all the time (35%) or part of the time (41%); over half of hybrid workers have mandated in-office time. Remote/hybrid employees tend to have more income and education than those who work exclusively in-person and are more likely to be Asian or White.[8]
Early in the pandemic, most had to work from home, and the transition was rocky.[9] Now the overwhelming majority choose remote/hybrid work, citing better work-life balance and greater productivity.[10] At least 17% have relocated, making a return to the office difficult or impossible.[11] Nevertheless, employers want workers back in the office; many believe employees are less productive at home and are willing to terminate those who won’t come to the office.[12]
RTO policies have potentially significant implications for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Younger workers are 59% more likely than older workers to say they would quit jobs where hybrid work is not an option. Black employees are 14% more likely than White workers to consider leaving if hybrid work is not allowed, as are LGBQ+ workers (24% more likely than heterosexual employees), women (10% more likely than men), nonbinary people (18% more likely than women and men), and disabled employees (14% more likely than non-disabled employees).
There are splits between junior/entry-level employees and senior/professional employees too. Some entry-level employees who are able to do their work from home have been forced back to the office while their senior co-workers remain remote and travel freely, even videoing into meetings from vacation spots, much to the resentment of in-office staff.[13] This has created the perception of a caste system.
In our practice, we also have seen that employees hired over the pandemic who worked remotely feel inadequately trained in their positions, and their managers are noticing performance and communication issues. This problem, on such a broad scale, is entirely new.
Essential Workers are Frustrated
The other 60% of U.S. workers cannot do their jobs from home. Many were essential workers during the pandemic: not just health care providers, but people in the food service, grocery, retail, transportation, energy, and public safety sectors. Essential workers, in general, tend to earn less than remote workers, and Black and Hispanic workers are overrepresented in the group. Some roles, like grocery and retail cashiers, are overwhelmingly staffed by women.[14]
Workplaces were common sources of COVID infection, particularly for non-medical essential workers. In meat packing, grocery stores, emergency services, and corrections, employees were infected at higher rates than the general public; those who had direct contact with customers were five times more likely to test positive.[15] Black and Hispanic people were the most likely to be infected at work and had the highest and second highest per-capita excess mortality.[16]
Emergency sick leave protections also left some out.[17] Even now, 38% of the lowest earners have paid sick leave, compared to 96% of workers in management, business, and financial occupations.[18] As the country celebrated the end of lockdown, some essential workers felt forgotten and exhausted.[19]
The New Workplace Complaint Reflects These Challenges
The impacts of the last 3 years on remote-eligible and essential workers are both profound and unprecedented. To find a new normal—or something like it—employers need to fully understand those impacts and how they show up in today’s workplace complaints.
In addition, the issues we are seeing in our practice today are not just new. They are also compounded by conflicts between the interests of different groups of employees, often within a single workforce. And many are rooted in employees’ sense of loss or confusion, creating perceptions of inequity:
- Many employees want to work remotely, but employers (and some employees) think that isolation and lack of community breed discontent.
- Many remote employees feel work-from-home has improved their work-life balance, but others struggle with lack of childcare or miss the boundaries that in-person work offers.
- Employees who were hired remotely may believe terminations or performance improvement plans are unjust because they did not receive adequate training.
- In-person workers may resent remote/hybrid coworkers and employers.
- Entry-level workers, many of whom are essential workers or returned to the office first, feel a heightened sense of unfairness when higher-ranked co-workers receive better compensation, more paid time off, and more respect.
How to Adapt: 4 Key Actions for Employers
Ideally, workplace changes are thoughtful and measured. The pandemic, however, forced employers and employees to make rapid, fundamental changes, so much so that “back to normal” is an unrealistic goal. But a new normal is possible if employers take steps to adapt.
Step 1. Train supervisors to respond
Employees desperately want to be heard- before making a formal complaint, so supervisors are the first to hear about most problems. But in some sectors, particularly retail, frontline supervisors tend to be inexperienced, and are feeling pressure because of staffing and supply issues. Faced with these tensions, plus a lack of resources and training, their actions can be interpreted as disregard or disengagement.
Providing supervisors with the resources they need, including training them to recognize complaints and respond appropriately, is therefore essential. In turn, management should regularly review the complaints that supervisors receive. The issues employees raise provide a rich source of information that can help leaders develop better policies and workplace solutions.
Step 2. Invest in a speak-up culture
Many companies have excellent anti-discrimination policies, but a policy and anonymous hotline is not enough. Employers must invest in speak-up cultures, in which every person feels their complaints, as well as their best ideas, are heard. It’s important to make sure everyone knows how to make a complaint and to keep the process as simple as possible. This is especially critical in the cases where the supervisor is the cause of the workplace grievance; the employee should have ready access to another avenue of complaint.
Creating clear avenues of complaint and reviewing complaints frequently is another chance for employers to understand why employees are dissatisfied. By staying informed about employee concerns, employers unlock opportunities for incremental yet meaningful workplace changes.
Step 3. Resource complaint systems
Anonymous complaint hotlines and apps have improved accessibility tremendously, but often employers don’t adequately resource the hotline itself. Investigators and intake staff must be trained on current trends in dissatisfaction so they can ask the right questions, get the right information, and analyze policies accurately and fairly. They should be trained in how to approach and respond to a complaint with respect, open curiosity, and independence.
Employers should use the information gleaned from employee complaints in Steps 1 and 2 to regularly update the complaint intake training, so that the intake staff is current on trends in dissatisfaction and better equipped to ask relevant questions. In turn, the intake complaints should be annually reviewed to inform and evolve the supervisor training in Step 1.
Step 4. Follow through with action
For many employees, it takes courage to come forward with a complaint. Many have already experienced a breach of trust in the workplace. When an employer fails to act on legitimate complaints, that trust is broken a second time. Responding appropriately is an opportunity to restore broken trust in the process and strengthen the workplace.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but workplace accountability systems should share a single goal: to “ensure that those who engage in harassment are held responsible in a meaningful, appropriate, and proportional manner, and that those whose job it is to prevent or respond to harassment [directly or indirectly] are rewarded for doing that job well (or penalized for failing to do so).”[20]
Meet Employees Where They Are to Build Resilient Workplace Culture
Workplace complaints look different today, and that’s hardly surprising given the events of the last three years. But novelty doesn’t necessarily mean a concern isn’t serious. Each grievance deserves a fair, impartial assessment followed by appropriate action. By consistently handling complaints with integrity, employers foster cultures of trust. And organizations grow and flourish.
To assist our clients, we have developed TRIBU Inside, a unique program that provides a comprehensive and thorough audit of your organization’s internal investigations protocol, procedures, documentations, and reporting to ensure compliance with best practices, rigor in analysis, and fairness and consistency in results. Our dedicated team will provide a detailed report identifying vulnerabilities, areas for improvement, and recommendations to ensure fairness and trust in the investigation process, and to mitigate risk.
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