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Introduction to this document

Grievance form

Our form enables an employee to easily raise a formal grievance under the terms of your grievance procedure.

Raising a grievance

There’s no procedure set out in legislation for an employee to raise a formal grievance. The Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures simply says that a formal grievance should be raised “with a manager who is not the subject of the grievance” and that this “should be done in writing and should set out the nature of the grievance”. This therefore allows for grievances to be raised by letter, email or completion of a form. A grievance could even be raised via text message as that would still constitute being in writing, so do watch out for this too.

Form benefits

Firstly, providing a form for the employee to complete to provide details of their grievance means that you will hopefully obtain the key details of their complaint at an early stage. It may also encourage them to stick to stating the facts, rather than just making vague, generalised allegations. Our Grievance Form envisages that the employee will first summarise their grievance and then provide further details about it, and this may include providing any dates, times, locations, individuals involved and witnesses (where relevant). It also allows the employee to say how they would like to see their grievance resolved – this doesn’t mean you have to take the action requested by them even if you uphold their grievance, but it does give you early warning of the resolution they’re looking for. Secondly, the use of a form enables you to clearly identify the employee’s complaint as a formal grievance – where they put their complaint in a letter, email or text message, it’s not always easy to work out whether they’re just having a general moan about workplace matters, are making an informal complaint and are therefore seeking an informal resolution or are actually intending to raise a formal grievance and so want the grievance procedure to be invoked. Finally, our form provides a reminder for employees that, where possible, grievances should be resolved informally, and this may help to reduce the number of formal grievances raised.