- Their terms and conditions of employment
- Their health & safety at work
- Relationships at work
- New working practices
- The working environment
- Organisational change
- Feelings that they are being discriminated against
- Bullying and harassment
If an employee feels strongly enough about an issue to formally lodge a grievance setting out their complaint, clearly there is something wrong somewhere. It therefore makes good business sense to try and resolve the grievance - quite apart from the need to comply with the law and your wish to avoid any Tribunal claims.
If you have a grievance procedure, this must be followed. An employer who has the procedure but fails to follow it is inviting trouble.
In the absence of a grievance procedure (or if yours is inadequate) regard should be had to the ACAS Code of Practice.
It is always advisable to try and resolve grievances informally in the first instance. Often a quiet word in the ear with the relevant people is all that is necessary. If this results in the grievance being resolved, a note should be made on the employee's personnel file.
If the grievance cannot be resolved informally, the formal procedure will need to be followed. There are three essential elements to a grievance procedure:
1. Investigation
2. A grievance meeting
3. An Appeal meeting
1. Investigation
You should ask the employee to lodge the grievance in writing. Having done so, it may be necessary to meet with the employee to discuss it in further detail or to extract any further relevant information.
There may be cases when the employee cannot put the grievance in writing (for example, where the employee has learning difficulties or English is not their first language). In those cases, a note of the grievance should be taken at a meeting.
Once you fully understand the nature of the grievance, you will need to investigate it. This may well involve speaking to other people.
Once the investigation has been concluded, you should write to the employee and invite him/her to a grievance meeting. The letter should set out the employee's right to be accompanied by a work colleague or by a trade union official/representative. There should be a reasonable period of time between the employee receiving the letter and the date of the meeting to give time to the employee to prepare for the meeting.
2. Grievance meeting
This should be conducted in as relaxed and as calm a manner as possible. If the employee becomes upset during the meeting, short adjournments might be necessary.
The purpose of the grievance meeting is to go through the grievance and the result of the investigation. It is usually sensible to adjourn the meeting to consider what has been said. This is not necessary in all cases since the issues may be crystal clear.
The decision should be confirmed in writing. The letter should set out the employee's right of appeal.
3. Appeal meeting
If the employee appeals, an appeal meeting should be arranged. Again, the employee has the right to be accompanied at that meeting.
The appeal can either be by way of a complete re-hearing of the complaint or by being confined to the grounds of appeal put forward by the employee.
The advantage of the former is that it is a more complete process and should be seen by the employee as being more fair. The disadvantage is that it takes up more management time.
The appeal decision should be confirmed in writing.
If the employee is happy with the outcome of the investigation and the meetings, then you will have achieved a good result, not just in relation to that employee but as an employer in general.
If the employee is on the other hand not happy with the outcome even after an Appeal hearing, then further problems are likely to arise - at the very least, you have a disgruntled employee; relationships between the employees in conflict will need to be repaired; someone may leave and need to be replaced and an employment claim may follow.
Much of this can be avoided by nipping problems in the bud - Darbys' Employment team has substantial experience of guiding employers through tricky situations like this, providing practical advice in everyday language, helping you to achieve your commercial objectives.
As we say, we are always there for businesses who are in our BLUE LAW scheme, so we invite you to join BLUE LAW now. Once you have joined, we try to answer any legal enquiries that you have, free of charge. If legal work is needed, we give you a price, and you are then free to "shop around". If you wish to speak to us now, please click on "Please Contact Me Now” or call us on 0800 084 3256. We look forward to always being there for you.
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