We have supported with an increasing amount of grievances recently.
What is a grievance? It’s a way for employees to raise issues with their managers about their working environment or work relationships.
Here are our top tips to dealing with grievances:
– Don’t panic – we appreciate that grievances can be emotive and personal and if you haven’t dealt with one before, daunting. We are here to support.
– Follow your grievance procedure (if you haven’t got one – implement one as soon as possible as this is a policy required by employment law and it must be based on the ACAS code of practice). Tribunals can uplift compensation to employees where the employer hasn’t followed their procedure/ACAS code of practice.
– Appoint a manager to hear and investigate the grievance. Hold a meeting with your employee to understand more about their grievance. They must be given the right to be accompanied at a formal grievance meeting.
– Meet with other employees if an investigation is required. Take formal statements.
– Write to your employee to confirm the outcome – the grievance can be either upheld; partially upheld or not upheld.
– Offer an appeal if the grievance is partially upheld or not upheld. The appeal manager should be a manager who hasn’t been involved with the grievance so far.
– Implement any actions.
– Save the notes, formal statements and the documents on the personnel file, in case of any future tribunal applications.
– Consider grievance training for your managers.
If you have any questions on handling grievances or providing training to your managers, please contact us.