You can be the best employer in the world but there are going to be times when you will have to make unpopular decisions. Sometimes, sadly, things can go beyond your control and the result could be a disgruntled employee who may raise a grievance.
Dealing with such an employee’s grievance can be very challenging for any business. Finding someone to hear the grievance who is not involved in the situation can be hard. Emotions can be running high and it is important to find a way forward so as to ensure that the grievance does not start to have a widespread adverse impact on your business.
Dealing with employee grievances is very process driven. There are key steps that you need to go through and you need to decide whether the grievance is justified or not. If you find it is not justified then you need to think about how you deal with the employee and get them to move on from the issue. If you find it is justified then you need to think about what you need to do to rectify the situation. This is where our grievance management service can help. If you are just looking for guidance then we can conduct a telephone consultation and provide you with scripts and other supporting documentation.
We can also attend meetings with you if you would like an independent witness or just some moral support. If you did like to hand the matter over to us then we will come on-site to meet the parties involved, conduct any investigation necessary and then provide you with a report of our findings and recommendations. This can be particularly useful if the employee grievance relates in some way to the individual who would normally deal with these matters, i.e. manager of the aggrieved employee, someone from the top / mid management ranks, or your in-house HR professional.
As a first step, we will ask you to complete a questionnaire that gives us some basic information about the situation you are dealing with and what events have happened to date. We will then arrange an initial telephone consultation with you to discuss the situation in more detail and the level of support you require.