Complaints - Separating facts from labels

I came across a worthwhile article in HR daily from a few weeks ago. "Handle complaints based on facts rather than labels." Check it out here.

The article focuses on a bullying complaint scenario but the ideas discussed can be expanded upon and used more generally; particularly when you're looking at solid communication techniques or being involved in any type of company investigation. Two points in particular I took from the article were:

1. Call out inappropriate behaviour straight away, when it is small. That way it is much less of an issue for an employee to acknowledge their behaviour and for them to apologise if required. It also helps create a culture where issues can resolve themselves rather than escalate and become much more serious.

2. When 'bullying' complaints to arise, move past the labels and work on the issue. Someone can claim that their being bullied and HR goes into serious formal investigation mode however when you dig down into the core issues of the complaint, it may just be a misunderstanding. The article gives a good example of annual leave being rejected. Jumping straight onto the bullying label can cause things to fester unnecessarily and can potentially sabotage a speedy resolution.

Unless you stay focused, it can be very easy to slip into accepting labels rather than facts, even if you ask clear and concise questions. Take for instance this example below:

Say to the employee: "When you say the person is being inappropriate; what are they saying? What are they doing? How often? How are they saying it?"

"If they say, 'They're rude to me. They always demean me', a lot of those things are labels. Ask, 'What do they do? When did they do it? Can you give me an example?'"

A personal example I can refer to is a complaint against an employee who was allegedly intoxicated. The labels thrown around in this instance were ones like drunk, alcoholic etc. However these were not facts and couldn’t form the basis of an investigation or decision. What could however was the behaviour of the employee, i.e. the facts. How was the employee acting? What did they do? What did they say? As long as you stay focused on the facts, and move past the labels you can be confident you will be making a decision on sound footing.