Welcome to Module Two of the course empowering your employees to build use strong. Module Two, addressing employee relations will provide practical tools on what to do when employees have issues in the workplace. We will discuss the different types of employee complaints and distinguish between illegal activity, employee misconduct, and employee conflicts. Knowing these differences will help you to address these issues more effectively. Let's get started. And module two, we will be covering three lessons, we'll be covering difficult conversations, assessing the complaint, illegal activity versus company policy violations or employee conflicts.

And then in lesson three effective counter complaints are really how to file effective complaints. Less than one difficult conversations. In this lesson, you will have the opportunity to reflect upon and assess your initial response and communication style when addressing difficult conversations with your employees. With this slide, we're going to take a moment to reflect on your initial reaction when an employee approaches you to discuss a complaint. But before we do that, I'd like to discuss the general reactions that typically happen based on my experience. Generally, when an employee has a problem to discuss, there is some degree of uncomfortable anticipation.

And let me give you an example of that. Typically, when employees with larger complaint With me or others on the team, the first thing that we would do is notify the leader of the person who the complaint was filed against. So I would send out a meeting notice to the leader, and I would say about 98 to 99% of the time, that leader responded to me so quickly, that I didn't almost even have enough time to finish sending the invite. Oftentimes, it would be a phone call about what's going on now. So that demonstrates to me that yes, there is some level of uncomfortable anticipation. And along with that, there are feelings or emotions such as anxiety, anger, defensiveness, or frustration, that may even come up and very few cases.

On the other hand, there are Some managers that love a challenge, and yes, I want to problem solve and resolve this, but that was to a lesser degree. So let's take a moment here to reflect on what is your initial reaction when an employee comes to you to discuss a complaint? You may be asking yourself, why is it important to analyze my own initial reaction and it is because being self aware is key and how you are responding. In order for you to identify if there are areas you can enhance or improve To help your employees speak up comfortably for an example, oftentimes, defensiveness initially comes up for many leaders. However, once you realize that that may be one of your initial tendencies, then you can adjust and focus on the active listening skills we discussed in module one. How armed do you feel about de escalating an angry employee?

Let's take a look at a few tips that might help when you run across that situation. Here are some key steps to keep in mind when you're faced with having to de escalate an angry employee or for that matter, an employee who is in an emotional state while trying to bring forth a complaint. Now these are not in any specific order. They're just all key points to remember when you're in that situation. Evaluate your own reaction. And we just did that in a couple of earlier slides.

It's so important to not only know that ahead of time, but when you are in the situation, it's best to take a deep breath. That will give you an opportunity to determine where you're at in this thing. Try to remain calm and try to show up calm because that can really help the employee he calm down if they see that you're calm. I'm going to move to don't make assumptions avoidable, assuming you already know what's going on or make judgment Before hearing all of the facts and this includes facts from all involved parties. One person has one side and then you hear the next person and you go, What? So it's important to hear facts from all parties.

Active listening, which we discussed in Module One, I think we're really driving that in. And are you waiting for your turn to talk when you're meeting with this employee? An employee will notice if you are just waiting to talk, rather than genuinely listening. clarifying questions. Again, we talked about this, but it shows you are taking the time to get the facts and details to document properly. The employee He will definitely appreciate that.

And this is also crucial to reliable documentation and it will enhance your ability to address appropriately. I want to go back now to start documenting immediately. Once this employee calms down, let the employee know you will be taking notes to make sure you're getting the issue correct. Now it's important to jot down key phrases while you're talking with this employee he versus trying to write everything down, because that will distract you from having the good eye contact, asking the clarifying questions and the other active listening skills. So directly after that meeting, go in and fill in and summarize the rest of your notes. What week Call that same day summary so that you have it and it's fresh in your mind.

Take it seriously, and I believe most of you do, but sometimes employees may come to you with something that seems so small. However, just remember whether it is small or large, take all of them seriously. Because for what might seem small, may turn out to be part of a much bigger issue. And again, have an open door policy whenever possible, which simply means be open and available for your employees, whether it is good or bad. In this slide, we will explore a brief scenario to help put you into a situation and have the opportunity to reflect on some of the emotions that arise when a difficult company station comes up, especially on scheduled. Remember to refer to some of the key tips that we just discussed, and take a moment to jot them down.

Once we go through the scenario, Maria knocked on her manager's door about five minutes after he arrived to the office that morning. Maria was quiet, but told her supervisor that she needed to have a conversation. This was not a scheduled meeting, and her manager was already swamped with plan calls and meetings for the day. He quickly asked if this was something that could wait and be scheduled for later in the week. Maria looked very serious and quickly said she needed to have the conversation right away to address a problem. Her manager motions her into his office and said, Okay, let's stop Maria is manager knew that Maria has not always seemed happy at work.

And she has had some arguments with co workers in the past. The manager began to think about another meeting he had scheduled in less than 15 minutes. The fact that he had just arrived to the office, and the process of hanging up his coat, and the emails he planned to respond to in those early moments of the day. He then started to think about how Maria seems to complain a lot in staff meetings, mostly about her workload, and how this is probably what she wants to discuss now. This is not how he planned to start his day, and now this unplanned meeting was going to put him behind for the rest of the day. What are some thoughts that come up for you in this scenario, Take a moment and jot some of those down.

Now that you've had an opportunity to jot down some of your thoughts on the scenario, let's cover a few issues that were going on here. There were some potential stressors going on for sure. The leader was taken by surprise first thing in the morning, that's stressful, probably not in the mood to deal with anyone else's issue may have been trying to deal with his own issues before his meeting. That's stressful. anticipation of what the issue might be. That could be very stressful to so you had all those stressors going on.

And then some of the potential biases that came into play. The leader began to wander and start thinking back on her previous arguments with coworkers and of her complaining at staff meetings about her workload, when this may not have had to do anything with that. But he began to make assumptions. How about de escalating? Well, depending on his body language, around his thoughts of her being a complainer, and being argumentative, ah, probably wasn't doing a good job of de escalating, at least based on his body language, if that was in alignment with his thoughts, and the documentation risk, the time that was lost on his reluctance based on his stressors and his biases, and his thoughts could have been spent on at least documenting what her issue was, and then circling back with her after his meetings. So even with all of these things that were in play, some of the key steps that we talked about earlier, could have helped with this scenario.

And I'll just cover them again, briefly. The leader would a step back, take a deep breath and evaluate his own reactions in the moment. Not making assumptions. He made assumptions early on before hearing her issue. And of course, that didn't give him an opportunity to do the active listening the clarifying of questions. This is not to say that the leader didn't take it seriously.

However, when he started to ask clarifying questions right away, it would have appeared as if he was taken it seriously. So all of these things could have made this scenario quite differently than what it was. So following some of these key steps can help when having to have difficult conversations with your employees. In closing for this lesson, you have been able to gain a reflective approach to how you address difficult conversations. And this self awareness of your own initial reactions to stressful situations, and practicing proactive awareness of the potential biases that can creep in will all support you in addressing employee relations issues. In the next lesson, we will be taking a deeper dive into best practices for assessing employee relations complaints