The Fallout of a Personal Grievance

There’s a lot of digital ink spilt over what happens legally when an employee/former employee raises a personal grievance, or sues for wrongful dismissal.  We talk it about too.  But what are the political implications of PGs in the workplace?  Well I’m glad you asked.

For this article, I’m going to use the term PG (personal grievance), a largely NZ term.  If you’re not from NZ, substitute your term of employment litigation.  It pretty much still makes sense.

It’s personal

Let’s start with the impact on the manager.  It’s very personal to them.  I find it personal and I’m not the person with whom the employee had a daily relationship.  Employees can get on with their boss, can not get on, can like them personally (or at least not mind them), but the lawsuit is a very personal thing to that manager.    For most managers it’s a hit to their confidence, an attack to which their response is typically fight or flight, anger, or indifference. 

It has an impact on the manager’s reputation

For the duration of the PG, the perception of the manager’s management skills will be under a cloud, and what was assumed is now questioned, or the implicit assumption is now more tentative.  The manager now reviews all decisions of whether they have been too harsh, but more importantly- their boss (and the wider management team) now either actively question the manager’s capability, or at the least puts a mental asterisk over them (‘they seem good at leading their team, but they have had that issue with xx..’).

Maybe they needed help, maybe they were out of their depth, but raising the PG turns a spotlight on how well they manage, and contradicts the image they would like to show, that ‘everything is under control’.

Re-evaluating reality

This dispute of reality can be very confronting, because it’s a rejection of a version of reality. If the narrative isn’t true, this can really shake people, more so that you’d think.  This is because we like to build a perception of that things are fine in the wider world, and disruptors to that can disrupting (imagine finding out that your grandparents had a trial separation). 

It changes their management style

This should be a good thing- at the very least, if you’ve done something that led to litigation, learning not to do that again is a lesson worth learning. But this can be simplistic; this can be just avoiding the trigger/the final straw, and not the wider root cause of the friction.

I have a theory on this (with no scientific foundation sorry) that managers have an internal balance of strictness that they need to judge.  Too strict and they hit problems (unhappy team, complaints of bullying etc), too soft and the work doesn’t get done, and the hardworking team get annoyed that others aren’t pulling their weight. 

A PG is a big ‘back off’ signal to them; that they need to relax their management style, that they need to head away from stricter to laxer.  This could be a good thing, or a negative thing, so keep an eye on it.

The employee’s reputation (with management) is trashed

I never say this anything with absolutely certainty, but this is I will:  an employee who raises a PG will be labelled as difficult.  It invariably plays out like this- irrespective of however the relationship was prior; not matter how reliable, productive, loyal or reasonable the employee was prior to the PG, once raised, the employee is categorised as ‘difficult’.

This is protective for the manager; Susan (whom everyone liked) is now a turncoat, and snake in the grass, and any prior positive emotions towards them are cast aside as management flicks an internal switch on her.

But this is for management.  What about co-workers?  Who will have observed some of what has happened, may have listened sympathetically, who may be worried that they are next? 

What does this mean?

Employee litigation causes complex ripples of emotions through the team, which are generally large yet invisible.  It’s not just about the money it may cost.

On the balance, these impacts direct us towards avoiding PGs (duh) but specifically actions that may result in PGs. The impacts above are generally negative, and at best not negative- no one is winning here.  This is not say don’t take risks with your employment decisions, sometimes we need to.  But there is a difference between taking known risks and unknown risks, and these impacts are very likely to be unknown risks should we not stop to contemplate them.