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Filing a Complaint Against an Employee - What NOT to Do
31 January 2023
Are You Sending This Type of Notice to Employees? Here's Why You Shouldn't!
I saw this letter on one of the groups with more technicians than managers/owners, and the comments were hilarious! These techs'
comments mostly involved chestthumping about how if they were ever written up they would quit, or they would never sign it, etc... Bunch of entitled employee crap that does nothing to help their professional image or general life skills, IMO.
That said, there is actually a lot of serious items to unpack here...
- This is a formal complaint notification... not a write-up. What is the functional purpose behind presenting this to anyone?
- The reported violations/misconduct are all over the map, and less than usefully defined for the person in the crosshairs.
- Is the urinating in the bottle the problem, or is it the supposed present left for the coworker?
- Unclear what the processes are that were violated... I am unable to even translate 2.a.
- How is someone even able to get information necessary to run calls when not approved by management? Sounds like a system failure rather than any sort of violation.
- Road rage and/or joking in the realm of sexual discrimination/harassment is honestly a worthy complaint in its own right. Still hearsay without more context, and again, notifying the offender in this fashion is not overly useful.
- Inappropriate comments during meetings MUST be dealt with DURING the meeting itself. Failure to do so sets the precedent that it is allowed and makes it much more difficult to hold people accountable after the fact.
End of the day, just about everything about this piece of paper is just wrong. The final nail in the coffin for me is the fact that the only result from this will be team drama and potential creation of a hostile work environment, given that the person receiving this notice would instantly be able to tell who it was that complained and retaliate... Hostile work environment, anyone?
Get your systems right, and ANYTHING you put in place should be run through the filter of "How does THIS policy/procedure help enhance the Brand?" If the answer is not positive, DON'T DO IT!
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