If your department or agency has great managers, it can make life much easier.  A manager who understands the implications of their words, actions, and decisions can save HR from headaches, formal complaints, and lawsuits.  The best managers also understand that listening can be even more powerful than talking.

Whereas a bad manager might be the cause of employee complaints, a great manager might be one of your best sources of them.  That’s because good managers are trusted by their employees to resolve inter- and intra-team challenges which would otherwise continue to bubble under the surface, sinking morale and productivity.

One of the best ways to resolve employee misconduct more often and more quickly is to help these managers understand that HR is a resource for helping their direct reports to resolve these issues.  Providing managers with suggestions on how to collect information about alleged misconduct and how to discreetly pass it along to HR is the best way to accomplish this.

Rather than moving directly to resolving the conflict or alleged misconduct, managers have an opportunity to collect great evidence which may not otherwise be available to the HR team.  Compared to an HR investigator, the odds are higher that a manager will hear about an issue closer to when it occurred.  They are also more likely to get the full story, because they already have rapport with the employee reporting the event.

When managers hear about an event that warrants attention from your team, advise them to ask questions about exactly what happened, who saw it happen, and if they’ve ever known it to happen in the past.  Ask if any other employees might know of similar events occurring in the past.  Encourage the employee to share as much information as they know about the event.

Once all of this information is gathered, the manager can work to instill some confidence in the employee that the HR team will work to gather the facts and take the appropriate action.  They can then pass the information along to your team so that you can act quickly on it.  This will make it more likely that the employee will engage with your team for any future questions you may have.

To learn how CMTS:HR can help your agency resolve HRinvestigations more efficiently, call us at 855-636-5361 or email us at Team_CMTSHR@CMTSHR.com.