When you run a business, you’ll find yourself with a whole lot of work on your hands. No matter what your business is selling – products or services – you’re going to find that you need to jump over numerous hurdles to actually bring your product or service to life, to encourage people to buy it and then to deliver it.
This can range from product development to market research, setting up a website, manufacturing, marketing, order fulfilment, customer service and so much more. It’s not all too surprising, then, that you can’t take all of this work on yourself. Sure, outsourcing may work at first. But as demand grows, you’ll soon have to take on permanent members of staff. Permanent members of staff then come hand in hand with responsibilities on your part. You need to know how to manage them and how to keep them happy in their roles to reduce staff turnover and to keep your business as productive as possible. If staff begin to pose complaints, you may struggle with how to respond to them. Here are a few tips that can help you in this situation.
Genuinely Listen to Team Concerns
When your team express concerns, unhappiness or other forms of complaint, it’s important that you genuinely listen to them. All too many business owners will sweep problems under the carpet, then grow surprised when staff members begin to hand their notices in. Instead, listen from the start. This will help you to see problems developing within your company from an early stage and can help you resolve issues, keeping everyone happy.
Implement an HR Department
As your business grows, you may not be able to manage everyone’s concerns at the same time as running the business itself. This is when you need to start implementing a HR department. HR stands for human resources and these staff will deal with all sorts of tasks in the workplace. One, however, is dealing with employee grievances. They’ll be able to listen to your team, providing them with a confidential place to talk. They can resolve issues from minor discrepancies to major complaints. Make sure that the team have a suitable, private setting with Acoustic Walls where your team can vent in privacy.
Seek Legal Advice
Hopefully, you won’t have to face this, but there may be times where you need to seek legal advice concerning matters in the workplace that an employee may have raised as a concern. This could range from health and safety matters to sexual harassment, so the field is varied. Make sure that you have a competent, experienced and qualified legal individual, agency or company you can reach out to in tough situations. This can help you to make sure that you take the correct steps and protect those who need to be protected.
These are just a few steps that you might like to take when it comes to dealing with employee complaints in the workplace. Hopefully, you don’t have to deal with many, but the information above should help you if the time comes.
