Do Business Well

One line of management thinking has it that all employees can be won over eventually with the right word or the right action. And, in many cases, that will indeed turn out to be true. There are times, however, when a lot of real turmoil is going on just beneath the apparently calm surface.

Take this situation one Boston manager finds herself in. “I have one employee who acts very friendly to my face,” she writes, “but other people tell me that he is always trying to undermine what I say or do. For example, he’ll say things like, ‘She should never have handled it that way,’ or ‘I don’t think she should have given him that bonus.’ This goes on not only with the employees in my department, but also with people in management. How can I confront this individual without betraying others?” Continue Reading »

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“Employees now feel they can get a square deal,” says William Blake. “Before, they felt the deck was stacked against them.” What has made the difference at the Borg-Warner plant in Bellwood, IL, where Blake was human resources manager before his retirement, is a peer review system for handling employee grievances.

Under this system, a disgruntled employee takes a complaint to a panel composed of other employees plus members of management. The panels are usually made up of three to six people, with the peers always in the majority. A complainant may bring a fellow employee or someone from personnel to help at a hearing, but not an outside attorney. After listening to the employee and his or her supervisor, the panel votes by secret ballot, and its decision is binding. Continue Reading »

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