A case study

IT services company Impact IT Co* is a rapidly expanding professional services business with 50 employees. Impact IT turned to Source HR for assistance with challenges they were experiencing within their business.

1. Bullying complaint. The first challenge was a bullying complaint they had received from an employee in relation to their manager. Impact IT wasn’t sure how to deal with the complaint or the potential risk involved in not resolving it in line with employment legislation.
2. Underperformance. The second issue was employee underperformance and decreased productivity across a couple of teams. There was no process in place to measure performance in the business, and only limited accountability for employees, which was in turn impacting on performance.

Source HR solutions

Resolving the bullying complaint

Source HR talked Impact IT through the process of how to deal with the bullying complaint, in line with employment legislation. Communication is key to avoid any escalation and to resolve the issue. The first step is to confidentially discuss the complaint with the employee. Understanding their desired outcome and supporting them to avoid potential health and safety risks is an important part of this. The next steps would be driven by the initial meeting with the employee. Possible steps include mediation, conducting an impartial investigation, and based on the findings, potentially disciplining or terminating the employee that the complaint was made about.

“Impact IT retained both employee and manager, which was a huge benefit given the competitive industry”

In this particular situation, it was very evident from the first meeting that the employee just wanted certain behaviours of their manager to change. Source HR suggested that Impact IT ask the employee to consider a mediation with the Manager, which is a much simpler, positive and less time-consuming way of resolving the complaint. The employee agreed. Through mediated conversations, the manager was made aware of the impact of their behaviour, and both the manager and employee were supported over the coming weeks to ensure positive change. Impact IT retained both employee and manager, which was a huge benefit given the competitive industry.

Continued…

On the back of this, we discussed how Impact IT could mitigate against this situation occurring again. Unfortunately, Impact IT had no policies covering bullying and harassment. As well as this, no management training took place, meaning employees were unaware of the boundaries between reasonable management and what could be deemed as bullying in the workplace.

Source HR created a policy on bullying, discrimination and harassment that was tailored specifically for Impact IT. Additionally, we provided a training session on effective management, how to avoid bullying in the workplace, and created a grievance policy to ensure the right steps are taken in the unlikely case of another employee complaint.

Turning employee underperformance around

After discussing the performance issues in the business, it became clear that Impact IT had no process or policy that outlined standards and expectations. This meant managers and employees had nothing to refer to, and the performance issues were not being addressed.

“Performance instantly improved across the board, as employees were being held accountable to goals and felt supported.”

Source HR implemented a quarterly performance check-in discussion, along with guidance on how to conduct more frequent informal discussions. Managers were encouraged to meet with their staff at least fortnightly for one-on-one to discuss performance, touching on the quarterly reviews, providing recognition or constructive feedback, and lending support where needed. A template was provided for this meeting to assist managers with the conversation and keep consistency.

Additionally, Source HR provided Impact IT with a step-by-step process to deal with consistent under-performance and protect the business against risk, if they were to discipline or terminate an employee due to consistent underperformance.

Performance instantly improved across the board, as employees were being held accountable to goals and felt supported.

*Business name has been changed