To make a complaint at work?

[Sapphire387]

Hi all,

Firstly I work in an employment rights environment so I cannot believe I am asking but I want to check myself.

Work colleague is consistently not responding to my emails. We have been asked to put all requests for work from her dept through her - she is the head of department. They do our publicity, communications, graphic design-type stuff.

Every single time I put a request for work, she doesn't reply and the work doesn't get done. I am honestly not making unreasonable requests, it's routine stuff and I'm not asking all the time. Several colleagues say they have the same problem. Follow-up emails are also ignored.

I keep having to circumvent her and just ask colleagues in her department who I know well. This feels unfair as she's supposed to be managing their workloads and ensuring stuff is evenly distributed across their team.

Would you say anything or just continue to work around her? I don't want to turn it into a big drama but I am confused as to why this is happening every single time.

YABU - keep quiet.
YANBU - raise this.

You need to raise it with her line manager. Her preferred system isn’t working and so they need to look at it.

I'd raise it with her initially. If no joy her manager, if no joy a complaint.

Of course you raise it! What's she doing all day if she's ignoring all these emails and not doing the work
Stop going to her colleagues and go to her manager.

I would have done this but recently started a new role and one of the managers did not respond to emails. One day I rang her and turns out email’s are just tricky for her, gets loads and it is hard to spot the ones which require attention.

so now I often call first to discuss what I require & follow up with an email with a really clear subject line. It has helped.

It might be better to raise it with your manager, so they can raise it with hers. That keeps it all at arm's length and makes it less likely to be seen as personal. And for all you know, OP, there might be other staff that she's ignoring too!

That's how things like this are handled at the organisation I work for, and it works well. One manager had so many complaints about them that they ended up on a performance management plan, but none of the complainants knew about the others for ages.

I'd frame it so that the system isn't working. Funnelling everything through one person is causing a bottleneck, etc. And if you can suggest a possible solution.

I agree with the suggestion to speak to your own manager in the first instance.

Do you know that she does indeed get the emails? Have you tried phoning her/going to her desk to discuss the work- and then following up with the email?

When raising it, I would be inclined to couch it in terms of how the process is, that it creates a bottle-neck, hard for just one person to cope with being the gate-keeper etc, rather than complaining about her. This makes it a little less personal. A solution might be to have a generic email inbox that numerous people have access to and can action requests.

I would also speak to your manager about it, and if necessary, ask them if it is ok to cc them into the requests you are making. Your manager could then speak to her manager if it needs to be escalated.

If it is genuinely as you say, you should raise it with her or your manager. It might be she has a workload problem. Are others in your org finding the same?

But I have to say that I have some people in my business I've taken to ignoring most of the time. Because I get request after request for stuff that I don't actually need to do and if I answer it comes with multiple follow ups, and unnecessary meeting requests and it's just wasting my time.

I have... and she's always terribly apologetic but it still usually gets forgotten or whatever.

No, I understand this. I probably contact her every 6-8 weeks with stuff that is definitely her remit and I'm not one for unnecessary meetings!

Thanks all, I will find a way of speaking to my manager about it as a 'system doesn't work' kind of thing.

I think in most cases of conflict its best to approach the person first with your concerns and the resolution you'd like. Start off with "Hi Colleague, I appreciate you're busy....blah blah....just wanted to check my emails are getting through because....please let me know if this is a problem/to discuss."....Give it a week then if no satisfactory response each time you send an email that's ignored, re-send with a polite opener "Hi Colleague, just a gentle reminder...". Blind copy her manager in. Get as many of your colleagues to do the same. Start collating evidence of all the emails you've send which have been ignored. Let someone else who's being paid more deal with this.