Is it a good idea to raise a grievance? Often the answer depends on what your desired outcome is – do you want to remain in employment, negotiate an exit from your employment or do you want to bring a tribunal claim?
The grievance process is an opportunity for an employee to complain about a workplace issue and to seek an internal resolution without having to resort to bringing tribunal proceedings. Importantly raising a grievance places a legal obligation on your employer to act fairly and not do anything that is retaliatory as a consequence. It also imposes an obligation to deal promptly with your complaints.
Complaints raised as grievances cover the full gambit of workplace problems, from bullying and harassment, changes to your role or terms and conditions, to being unfairly performance managed. Employers are encouraged not only to have a grievance procedure but to make sure that it follows best practice as set out in the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinaries and grievances which you can find here.
If you want to remain at work, the starting point is to try and have your grievance dealt with informally. Is there someone you can raise the issue with during an informal chat? Can you speak to HR and ask them how you should deal with the issue? We understand that there will be times when this might not be possible especially if the grievance is about your line manager. You may need to use the grievance procedure to have an impartial officer of the company look at your complaints.
If you do raise a formal grievance, then most employers simply ask you to send details of your grievance to them in a letter or email; a few employers have grievance forms to complete. It is important to concisely explain what the issues you have are, what happened and who is involved. For example, if you are being bullied and harassed by another employee, you should try and set out a chronological account of the different incidents of bullying and harassment.
But in every grievance you should set out what your desired outcome is to resolve the complaint. You might ask for the person bullying you to be investigated and disciplined and to ask that the employer does not allow them to work with you going forward. If you are being unfairly performance managed, you could ask for your performance to be independently reviewed, for the removal of a Performance Improvement Plan or ask to be moved to a new team. There is no one size fit all solutions, your desired outcomes will be personal to you.
Once the employer receives the grievance, they should investigate it by meeting with you and other employees who are involved. You should be given an opportunity to review the evidence they collate before you have a grievance meeting, so you can respond before an outcome is reached. You will then receive an outcome which will either uphold or dismiss your grievance and/or make recommendations to deal with your employment situation.
If you are unhappy with the outcome, you should be allowed to appeal it within a reasonable time period. The grievance outcome will normally tell you the process for appealing and the deadline but if it does not then you need to ask. You have the right to be accompanied by a work colleague or a trade union representative at each stage of the grievance process.
If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome, then you can consider whether to bring a tribunal claim or negotiate a termination package because your employment is no longer viable. Clients often ask whether there is any point in raising a grievance because they believe the outcome is predetermined and that their employer will never admit any wrongdoing.
Sadly, this might be and is sometimes the case, but if you do not raise a grievance it can impact your subsequent tribunal claim. Damages can be reduced by up to 25% for failure to follow a grievance procedure. Employment tribunals like to see that an employee has tried to resolve their issues through internal processes before bringing a claim. In any event, it may be an opportunity to understand how your employer will defend their actions if you bring a claim when you receive the grievance outcome. Forewarned is forearmed.
Still if you do not want to issue a grievance, then many of our clients ask us to advocate for them to get them a negotiated termination package because they do not see the situation changing. We will tell your employer why you are aggrieved when negotiating, so they fully understand your complaints. You can do this yourself but need to be clear that any discussions are on a without prejudice basis, i.e. that neither side can use anything said in those discussions against the other in subsequent litigation. You need only state this at the start of any conversations or use it on email communications.
We can advise you on what is the best strategy to adopt to deal with your workplace issues. We have guided many of our clients through a grievance process, helping them to draft their grievances and properly articulating their complaints (which is important if the matter ends up in the Employment Tribunal), to getting reasonable adjustments made to the grievance process if you are disabled. We can also assist with dealing with the aftermath if a grievance is rejected.
The best advice I can give is this: before you raise a grievance think about what outcome or solution you are seeking. This will then influence the direction you need to take.
This blog was written by Anita Vadgama, Partner at didlaw.
