What Does an Employer Need to Know About Grievance Policies in England?

As an employer, you are bound to encounter situations where your employees have a grievance in the workplace. Therefore, you must have a fair grievance policy that is efficient when resolving disputes with your employees. Ultimately, having a grievance policy is a legal requirement. If you fail to sort out your employees’ grievances using your grievance procedures, they may take further steps to resolve them, such as going to an employment tribunal. This could involve you having to pay your employee a lot of compensation. This article will explain grievance policies, why your workplace needs one and what your policy should contain.

What is a Grievance Policy?

It does not matter what size your organisation is; you must still have a grievance policy or procedure meeting these standards. A grievance policy or procedure is how you deal with your employees’ grievances in the workplace. It guides your employees on how to raise a grievance with you, such as a problem, concern or complaint they may have. This may be regarding, for example:

• working conditions;
• wages; or 
• how you are treating your employees.

Your grievance policy must:

• mirror the Acas Code as a minimum requirement; and
• be in writing and easily accessible to your employees.

Where your grievance policy does not follow the Acas code, and your employee takes you to a tribunal, the latter can raise any compensation rewards to your employee by 25%.

Why Have a Grievance Policy?

Attempts to resolve your employee’s grievance through informal processes may not always work. Therefore, you are legally required to have a grievance policy procedure in place, and you need to have a procedure or policy for your employees to raise their complaints or problems with you formally. 

The law requires you to have your grievance procedure presented in writing and shared with all of your employees. You should refer to such procedures in your employees’ statements of employment particulars. Nevertheless, you should contain the full procedure in your:

• staff handbook;
• contracts of employment; or
• human resource intranet site.

Where you place your grievance policy in your employee’s employment contracts, you must ensure that you carefully follow it when dealing with a grievance. If you do not, your employee could have a breach of contract claim against you.

What Should a Grievance Policy Contain?

Above all, your grievance policy or procedure must be full and fair. A good policy should detail how you will approach dispute resolution. Additionally, it should support the perspectives of both you and your employees. In this sense, a grievance policy should:

• state that you will approach a grievance fairly and consistently;
• explain who employees should contact about a grievance;
• explain that you will gather as much information as possible to investigate grievances;
• state that you will hold a grievance meeting if you cannot resolve a grievance informally;
• allow your employee to bring a companion to disciplinary meetings;
• explain the timeframe for each stage of the grievance process;
• explain what happens where the grievance is occurring as part of disciplinary action;
• require you to make decisions and take action as soon as possible; and 
• give your employees a chance to appeal the procedure’s outcome should they wish and explain how to do this.

It is possible to use mediation as part of your grievance process. However, both parties must agree to mediate. Therefore, you may want to consider including it in your grievance policy.

Key Takeaways

As an employer, it is a legal requirement to have a grievance policy in place in your workplace. This must be written, referred to in your employees’ written statement of employment and placed in full somewhere accessible to your employees. At the very minimum, your grievance policy must mirror the Acas code. While you are encouraged to try to resolve your employee’s grievances informally, a grievance procedure allows you to resolve them where they are too severe for this or where you cannot resolve them informally. 

If you need help understanding grievance policies in England, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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