5 Common Mistakes When Managing Grievances

Allowing a situation to escalate is a mistake that employers can make BEFORE a grievance is raised but it’s definitely worth a mention.

There are some situations that you simply can’t predict.  Someone making a racist or sexist comment is likely to go immediately to a formal grievance. Besides training your employees properly on diversity, equality, and inclusion, you can do little to prevent this.

However, there are often signs that an employee is becoming dissatisfied in the workplace and ignoring these is never wise.

For example,

• You can see performance start to dip. 
• You can see a change in attitude or behaviour. 
• You can see someone start to withdraw from colleagues. 

Now, seeing these things doesn’t mean you should conclude that something is wrong at work. However, this indicates a problem, and you need to initiate a conversation.

How to avoid a situation escalating…

To avoid issues escalating, arrange a one-to-one with the employee. In the meeting, ask open questions to see if you can get to the bottom of what may be happening.  If they do highlight a problem in the workplace, speak with them to understand the problem fully. Next, think about how to tackle the issue.

Keeping open communication with your employees and having early conversations won’t only prevent grievances but is likely to contribute to lower absence and employee turnover.

There are times when it is obvious that someone is submitting a grievance as they will mark it as such.  There are other times, however, when it is not so clear. You may receive an email that does not explicitly state “I would like to raise a grievance” but it’s clearly from an unhappy employee.  Knowing what to do in this situation can help you to avoid problems.

Clearly, you don’t want to treat every email you receive where someone says they are unhappy about something as a grievance.  Doing so would mean that you spend all day, every day in grievance hearings.  However, you do need to recognise when following a formal approach is the right thing to do or encourage.

Recognising a grievance when it is raised…

Firstly, any email that mentions harassment or discrimination will need to be addressed through a formal process.  If you receive an email that mentions these topics, then you should respond confirming that you are going to treat the email as a formal grievance.  You should then go ahead and start the grievance process.

Another thing to look out for is any issue that seems to be escalating or not resolving despite your best efforts.  If you’re receiving a third or fourth email from the same employee about the same topic, this would be a good opportunity to tell the employee that they have the right to raise a grievance and you should then send them your grievance policy. 

If you ever receive an email with an employee complaint and you are unsure whether the employee is raising a grievance or not, ask the question.  It can be tempting to not do this as you think you will avoid needing to go through the full grievance process but a grievance process is far simpler and less costly than an employment tribunal!

Another common mistake when managing a grievance is to not investigate. Undertaking an investigation is a key step in a grievance process. 

The timing of an investigation is a key difference between a disciplinary and grievance process. In a disciplinary process, you will always conduct the investigation first. You then provide any evidence to the employee and then conduct the hearing.

In a grievance process, you will conduct the hearing first and then conduct the relevant investigation.  The reason for this is that you can explore the issues with the employee during the hearing. From there, you will be able to ascertain what investigation is necessary.

The mistake is thinking that you can listen to the employee and then try to resolve the issue without investigating.  You should remember that what you’re hearing from the employee is one side of the story. You will always need to get the other side. 

How to ensure you’re doing a proper investigation…

It is important to get evidence from an appropriate range of sources whilst investigating a grievance. This could be through conversations with colleagues, managers, witnesses. It may involve undertaking a desktop investigation to confirm the validity and accuracy of information the employee has provided.

Do make sure that you take the time to do an appropriate investigation before trying to resolve the issue.  This may slow the process, but it does mean that you’ll be moving forward armed with as much information as possible. This may make it easier to resolve the issue.

Although we’ve listed this as mistake 4, taking too long to investigate a grievance is probably the most common mistake when managing grievances that we see. 

You’re busy.  A long email arrives from a clearly unhappy employee.  It’s many, many words and it seems to be quite complicated.  You don’t have time to read it properly today, so you’ll look tomorrow…..and then tomorrow…..and then tomorrow.

Whilst the employee’s grievance may not be the most important thing on your to do list, it will almost certainly be the most important thing on your employee’s mind.  The longer you leave it to respond, the more frustrated and angry they will become. This will make it far harder to guide them constructively through the process.

Get the grievance investigation going…

If you receive a grievance, acknowledge it as soon as you possibly can. At the same time, manage expectations as to when they will likely hear from you again.  The Acas guideline is that a grievance is heard within 5 days of the grievance being submitted.

Taking swift action is always going to be the better option when dealing with a grievance.

Grievances can be very long and there are times when you get to the end and still feel that you don’t understand what the employee is unhappy about. 

This can be due to language barriers, written communication not being great, or oftentimes lots of frustration tumbling out onto the page without a clear structure. A common mistake when managing grievance is to not seek clarity on what the issues are.

Get clarity on the grievance…

Don’t be afraid to seek clarity from the employee.  You can try to do this ahead of the hearing but, if written communication is an issue, then that’s unlikely to be successful.  Instead, you can use the hearing as the way to seek clarification. 

If you’re uncertain on what the issues are then you can open the meeting with something like:

Or, if you really are at a loss:

You are responsible for hearing, investigating and resolving the grievance. You can only do that if you fully understand the issues.

These are the most common mistakes we see when managing grievances but they are certainly not the only ones! Dealing with grievances can be complicated.

If you are dealing with a grievance and would like some expert guidance, give us a call on 0203 146 8770 or contact us using the contact form.