Employee Relations
The IHS employee relations (ER) office assists in advising, creating, reviewing and enforcing policies that are fair and consistent for employees and management in the workplace and in support of the IHS mission. The ER office also supports management, supervisors and HR (ER/LR) Specialists at the Headquarters, Regional, Area and Service Unit offices on various requests for assistance, guidance and training.
IHS maintains an Administrative Grievance System (AGS) that affords employees who fall within a certain employment category and who do not agree with certain decisions, a process to grieve those decisions. A category of employee could be an employee who is not entitled to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. A decision they are grieving could be the performance rating they received. The AGS is also extended to bargaining unit employees whose complaints are not covered by the negotiated grievance procedure applicable to their unit and provided the complaint meets the requirements and provisions of the IHS grievance system.
Contact information for all ER/LR Specialists who service IHS locations may be found in the IHS Human Resources staff directory, which is organized by location.
The IHS policies and procedures on employee grievances may be found in the Indian Health Manual, Chapter 5: Administrative Grievance Process.
