When Employees Allege Wrongdoing, Tread Carefully

If you lead a large organization, chances are you will at some point receive an email from an employee, addressed directly to you, alleging he or she has suffered some workplace related wrong at the hands of one of your subordinate managers. In some cases the email will seek your intervention, as the boss, to fix it. Ignoring such correspondence isn’t a good idea, but getting personally involved is an equally bad idea.

In an age where transparency, accessibility, engagement and responsiveness are hailed as the hallmarks of sound leadership in public organizations, the notion that everyone in an organization should feel free to communicate with senior leaders sounds quite reasonable. Most senior leaders do care about the welfare and workplace satisfaction of those they lead. So when they receive compelling sounding stories about perceived workplace wrongs, it’s hard to resist the temptation to jump headlong into the conversation, often with a promise to personally “look into” or “get to the bottom” of the allegations. If you find yourself in such a position, resist that temptation.

Demonstrate trust in your organization’s grievance redress process. The rights of federal employees to be protected from all manner of unsafe and or unfair treatment are protected by a comprehensive body of laws, rules and regulations. Virtually all agencies spend considerable energy and resources supporting multiple grievance redress programs because the people leading those agencies are dedicated to the principles of fair and equal treatment under the law for all who serve our great nation, and because such programs are also, incidentally, mandated by statute. 

The procedures by which aggrieved employees seek redress have been meticulously crafted to ensure fairness in the process. Factual assertions made by grievants—and responses made by those accused of wrongdoing—are weighed by reference to evidence and testimony, analyzed for reliability according to uniform protocols and, in some cases, fleshed out in administrative or judicial hearings.  American democracy has long recognized these measures as the most effective tools available for dispassionately sorting out disagreements between people or groups based on the rule of law. 

When senior leaders entertain direct communications from allegedly aggrieved employees outside these established processes, they tacitly admit their organization’s procedures for addressing such grievances aren’t to be trusted, and that personal entreaties to senior leaders are the only way to ensure fair and just results.   That’s a message that’s not only unhealthy for an organization, it’s also a resource-based impossibility.  Busy managers and leaders simply don’t have the time to thoroughly conduct these investigations and inquiries—that’s why they pay professional staffs to do so.

Moreover, there’s almost no good that can come from such direct engagements, particularly if one or more grievance resolution or investigatory processes are already underway. For example, a well-intentioned manager’s poor word choice in a phone conversation or email exchange with an aggrieved employee could easily give rise to an additional allegation of wrongdoing and unnecessarily lengthen the resolution process. More problematically, an imprecise phrase or comment could also transform that manager from a person with no direct knowledge of the case into what folks in the legal business call “a required witness,” who as a result becomes subject to discovery obligations, depositions, and perhaps the full blown unpleasantness of a contentious cross examination on the witness stand.      

In the overwhelming majority of cases, the most appropriate response from a senior leader who receives such a request is an email or letter—carefully reviewed by an attorney prior to dispatch—that reads something like: 

"Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention. Here at XXX we take these issues very seriously. It is for precisely that reason that we expend considerable time, energy, and financial resources supporting a process designed to thoroughly investigate and resolve issues like those you raise. I am therefore forwarding your correspondence to my legal staff with instructions for them to ensure you have all the information you need in order to fully avail yourself of the rights and protections our system provides."  

Assuming there are no other entanglements between the aggrieved employee and the senior leader, this sort of response will almost always keep her or him off a witness list.  More importantly, it basically says to the employee and anyone else who reads it, like an IG, member of Congress or the press, or some investigatory or adjudicatory authority, "we have a good process, which I support and trust."  

In rare cases, deviating from the "I trust our system" response may be appropriate, but using it is typically the best course of action.  Whatever the case, always consult your agency counsel.

Air Force Col. Peter Marksteiner has spent much of his 25 years as an attorney practicing federal sector personnel law. He, holds an LL.M. in Labor and Employment Law, and regularly writes and speaks on the law and policy of the federal workplace. The ideas and opinions expressed in this article are strictly his alone.

(Image via Azaru/Shutterstock.com)