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Complaints can often feel difficult to deal with. Especially when those complaints come from your own employees.
But the good news is your employees’ complaints can help improve your organization. Learn how to handle the complaints that come through your suggestion box system and turn your employees’ complaints into ideas with these 3 tips…
1. Acknowledge Your Employees’ Complaints
Don’t let your employee complaints fall by the wayside. Acknowledge your employees’ complaints to make sure that you are continually improving your organization.
“If you don’t handle employee complaints, you create resentment, low morale, low productivity, and increased turnover,” says organizational and executive coach Linda Talley.
Whether or not you find the complaint to be valid, remind your employees that you appreciate their thoughts. Doing this will show your employees that you are serious about their complaints and will work to find a solution to them.
After you’ve acknowledged your employees’ complaints on a topic, ask them for their ideas on that topic. Here’s how…
2. Understand Your Employees’ Complaints & Ask Them for Their Ideas for a Solution
Employee complaints can often offer you valuable insights on the inner workings of your organization. Take the time to fully understand your employees’ complaints before you take on the task of solving them.
You can do this by having a one-on-one brainstorming session with employees who submit complaints. During the brainstorming session, you should let your employees explain their complaint in more detail so that you can understand it better. Once you fully understand the complaint, ask your employee for their ideas to solve the problem.
“When one of your people complains about something, realize that he or she may have identified a valid problem. Ask him or her for an idea to address it. ” – Alan G. Robinson & Dean M. Schroeder, Ideas are Free (90)
Because your employees came up with the complaint, they probably have some ideas to resolve it. Take the time to listen to your employees’ suggestions and take note of them all. This way, you will be able to transform your employees’ complaints into ideas with their help.
Asking your employees for their ideas for a solution can also increase employee engagement. By letting your employees help come up with a solution to their complaints, you’re showing your employees that you have confidence in them and believe they can contribute to the end result.
3. Publish Ideas and Share Them with Other Employees
Sharing the ideas to fix complaints that stemmed from your brainstorming session with the rest of your employees can be beneficial for both you and your organization.
By sharing your employees’ ideas with the rest of your organization, you can encourage communication and trust within the workplace. Sharing your employees’ ideas can also encourage collaboration between your employees to help expand upon and improve their ideas.
Start Resolving Your Employees’ Complaints
Don’t be afraid to tackle your employees’ complaints. Taking care of them as soon as possible can greatly benefit your organization. So, begin turning your employees’ complaints into ideas that can improve your organization with these tips. Check out our past articles on how to get more ideas in your suggestion box system and whether or not you should allow anonymous suggestions in your suggestion box system.
Suggested Next Steps:
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- Companies of all sizes (from Fortune-500s to growing startups) use IdeaGlow software to build their own employee suggestion programs. IdeaGlow is affordably priced & relatively easy to implement. If you’re interested, you can apply for a FREE 30-day trial of IdeaGlow software.
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