A friend of mine mentioned an issue they had in their customer service department.
One team member felt she was doing the majority of the call time while another co-worker was doing the least.
She started getting upset. So she raised the concern to her supervisor, and expected the data to prove her feelings correct.
?After pulling the call times, the statistics, numbers, and facts, proved otherwise.
The concerned team member had the second-to-lowest and the person of concern had the second highest.
This story gives two reminders –
1) Facts and figures are there to support feelings, regardless of outcome.
2) When your people tell you something is up, take a look. What they think is happening may or may not be, but you will find out what is going on.
And keep in mind, it is best to use all the resources available to you.
Those resources include both your people and your reporting.
Using both will help you in the short and long term.