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Establish a System for Filing Complaints

The courts look favorably at companies that establish procedures for identifying and addressing employee complaints. The crafting of such policies reflects how serious the company is about tackling personnel conflicts, and that perception can make the difference between victory or defeat in a legal proceeding.

If your company is large enough, set up a hotline for those employees who want to tell you about an abusive manager or a sticky-fingered coworker but want to remain anonymous. Whether your business is small or large, designate someone like a human-resource manager or a supervisor to retrieve and follow through on the information, which should be kept confidential.

Formalized complaint procedures provide a system of checks and balances for unacceptable behavior. The systems can help you get at a problem before it gets you.