Interloop Editorial Team
Every company has grievances. The ones that worry us are the companies that say they don't.
When a leadership team tells us "people here don't really complain", we've learned to ask a follow-up question: do they not complain, or do they not complain to you? The answer usually turns up a few weeks later in an exit interview, a Glassdoor review, or a resignation from someone the business didn't want to lose.
A grievance is simply an employee telling you that something at work isn't right. It might be about pay, a manager, workload, a policy that feels unfair, or something far more serious, like harassment. Some complaints will turn out to be misunderstandings. Some will point to a real problem that nobody at the top could see. Either way, the complaint itself is useful information. The real risk is the complaint you never hear.
This piece is about building a grievance process people actually trust, one that surfaces problems early, treats everyone fairly, and closes the loop. We'll also look at where Zoho HR management tools fit in.
Key insights
- Unresolved conflict eats working time. A global study by CPP found employees spend an average of 2.1 hours a week dealing with conflict. In the US, the figure was 2.8 hours, or roughly $359 billion in paid hours in a single year.
- Managers overrate how well they handle it. In the same study, 31% of managers felt skilled at dealing with conflict, while only 22% of employees said their managers handled it well.
- Many people stay silent. The Institute of Business Ethics' 2024 Ethics at Work survey of 12,000 employees across 16 countries found that one in three who knew about misconduct did not report it.
- Fear and doubt are the reasons. 34% of those people feared for their jobs, and another 34% didn't believe the organisation would act.
- Speaking up still carries a cost. Of employees who did raise concerns, 46% said they faced some personal disadvantage or retaliation as a result.
- In India, it's now the law. Under the Industrial Relations Code, 2020, in force since 21 November 2025, industrial establishments with 20 or more workers must have a Grievance Redressal Committee that resolves grievances within 30 days.
Why grievances go unheard
In most companies we work with, the problem isn't a lack of policy. There's usually a grievance clause somewhere in the employee handbook. The problem is that nobody believes in it.
We see four reasons come up again and again.
People don't know where to go. The policy says "raise it with HR", but HR is one person who also runs payroll and sits next to the CEO. Or the policy says "raise it with your manager", when the manager is the problem.
They don't think anything will happen. If the last three complaints disappeared without a reply, the fourth person won't bother. Silence from the company teaches silence to employees.
They're worried about what happens to them. Even in good companies, people fear being labelled difficult, losing a good project, or getting a quiet hit in the next appraisal. The research above shows this fear isn't imagined.
Small issues don't feel worth it. A recurring shift-roster complaint or an unclear reimbursement rule doesn't feel like a "grievance". So it never gets raised, and it quietly turns into resentment.
The common thread is trust. A grievance process works only when people believe three things: it's easy to use, it's safe to use, and it leads somewhere.
What a fair process looks like
Fairness isn't the same as a long policy document. In practice, it comes down to a handful of design choices.
More than one door
People should be able to raise a concern with their manager, with HR, or with someone outside their reporting line. For the most sensitive issues, such as harassment or discrimination, there should be a route that doesn't depend on the person's own chain of command. Many companies also allow anonymous reporting. That's worth having, though anonymous complaints are harder to investigate, so it shouldn't be the only option.
Not every grievance is the same
A complaint about a delayed reimbursement and a complaint about bullying should not go through the same process. We suggest sorting concerns into tiers:
| Tier | Examples | Who handles it | Target time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everyday | Policy queries, roster issues, reimbursement delays | Manager or HR partner, informally | A few working days |
| Formal | Unfair treatment, appraisal disputes, workload | HR with a written record, both sides heard | Two to four weeks |
| Serious | Harassment, discrimination, safety, misconduct | A designated committee, separate from the line manager | Set by policy and law |
The timelines above are a starting point. Where the law sets a deadline, as India's 30-day rule for Grievance Redressal Committees does, the law wins.
Hear both sides, in writing
For anything above an everyday concern, write down what was raised, when, and by whom. Talk to the person raising it and to anyone the complaint is about. Collect whatever evidence exists, such as emails, rosters or approvals. A decision built on one side's story is not a fair decision, even if it turns out to be the right one.
Close the loop
This is the step most companies skip. The person who raised the concern should hear back with a decision, the reasoning behind it, and what will change. They won't always get the outcome they wanted. But they should never be left wondering whether anyone read their complaint.
Protect the person who spoke up
Make it explicit in the policy that retaliation is itself a disciplinary matter. Then check: in the months after a complaint, did that person's ratings, shift allocations or project assignments change? Watching for this quietly is how you make the promise real.
The manager is the first line
Most grievances start as a conversation with a manager, and most could end there. A manager who listens properly, without getting defensive and without promising things they can't deliver, resolves more issues than any committee.
That takes skill, and it's rarely taught. The CPP research found that countries with more conflict training reported more positive outcomes from conflict. We'd suggest giving every new people manager three basics: how to listen without judging, when to handle something themselves, and when they must pass it on to HR. That last one matters. A manager trying to quietly fix a harassment complaint can do real damage.
Where a system helps
A grievance process lives or dies on its records. Who raised what, when, who is looking at it, and what was decided. In a small team, that can sit in someone's inbox. Once you have a few hundred people across locations, it can't.
This is where an HR system earns its place. Zoho People, for example, handles this as part of its wider Zoho HR management features. Its case management works like an internal helpdesk, reached through the same Zoho HR portal employees already use for leave and payslips. Employees raise a case under a category you define, such as payroll, policy or workplace conduct. The case goes to the right person automatically and is tracked until it's closed. Access can be restricted, so a sensitive case is seen only by the people handling it, not the whole HR team. The same system can run short pulse or eNPS surveys, which often surface a problem before anyone files a formal complaint.
No Zoho HR tool, or any other tool, will create trust on its own. But it removes the most common excuses: "I didn't know where to raise it", "I don't know who's looking at it", and "I never heard back".
How we suggest setting it up
- Write a one-page policy people will actually read. It should say what counts as a grievance, the ways to raise one, who handles each type, and how long each stage takes. Put the full legal detail in an annexure.
- Name the people. List the HR contact for each location and the members of any committee. "Contact HR" is not a name.
- Set up tiers and timelines. Use the everyday, formal and serious split above, and check it against the law in each country you operate in.
- Train managers before launch. A short session on listening, escalation and what not to promise prevents most early mistakes.
- Create a single place to log cases. Whether it's an HR system or a controlled register, every formal grievance needs a record with dates, owners and outcomes.
- Tell people it exists, more than once. Cover it in onboarding, repeat it in town halls, and put the link where people will find it.
- Review the pattern every quarter. Ten complaints about one team's roster is not ten individual grievances. It's one process problem.
How you'll know it's working
It may sound odd, but a rise in grievances after launch is often a good sign. It usually means people finally trust the process, not that things got worse. Look at these measures over time:
- Grievances raised per 100 employees, by location and team
- Average days to resolution, by tier
- Share of cases closed within the target time
- Share of complainants who said they were satisfied with how the case was handled, even if not with the outcome
- Repeat grievances about the same manager, team or policy
- Mentions of unresolved complaints in exit interviews
If exit interviews keep surfacing complaints that never reached the grievance process, the process isn't trusted yet.
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