As an HR manager if a supervisor came to you complaining abo

As an HR manager, if a supervisor came to you complaining about an employee who did not respect his or her authority, what would you do?

Solution

This a common scenario in work place environment where supervisors and their sub-ordinates do not get along well. The reasons for such a situation varies from organisation to organisation. In most of the cases, there is an ideological difference between a supervisor and any one of his team member/s. They may also have differences in opinions on a certain project variable or decision. There have been cases where sub-ordinates have even taken the extreme decision of quitting the organisation because of their mismatched opinions with their supervisors or managers.

As a Human Resource Manager, if a supervisor came to me complaining about an employee who did not respect his or her authority, I would have taken the following steps:

- Going to the root of the issue and trying to understand the reason behind such a behaviour of the employee. Conflict resolution is one of the key skill that a resource manager must possess. Understanding the underlying issues and trying to alleviate them would be my priority.

- Conducting direct one-to-one communication with the supervisor and the employee respectively to listen and understand their perspectives of the situation.

- Trying to restore synergy between the supervisor and his sub-ordinate by telling them how important the role of both of them is for the organisation and the organisational goals and objectives can only be achieved by working together as a team and by respecting each other’s work.

- Counselling the sub-ordinate on how it is valuable for the organisation and for his own career to work under a good leader. Often we don’t approve of the strategies or leadership style of the manager but in the long term, they usually lead to desired results that are beneficial for all the stakeholders of the organisation.

- Leaders should also avoid micro-managing their team members. When the employees are given the independence to take their own decisions and a sense of accountability, they tend to perform better.