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Airing a grievance: how to handle employee complaints

Summary

The key findings from our survey of grievance policies and procedures are:

  • almost all survey participants (100 out of 102 respondents, or 98%) have a formal written policy to deal with individual employee grievances;

  • time limits are used to ensure a speedy resolution of the grievance in 84 organisations;

  • the most common employee grievances are caused by issues surrounding pay and grading (in 40 organisations), terms and conditions (in 38), working practices (32), discipline (29), work allocation (22), bullying (20), discrimination (15), health and safety (7), sexual harassment (4), management style (4) and personality clashes (3);

  • 41 organisations have changed their policy in the four years since the previous IRS grievance survey, and one-third of these did so to incorporate the new right to be accompanied;

  • just 11 organisations provide for employees raising individual grievances to appeal to an independent third party, such as ACAS;

  • only a quarter of organisations (25) monitor the outcome of grievances compared with 40% in our 1997 survey;

  • some public sector organisations risk falling foul of the new Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, which came into force on 2 April this year, as only 13 out of 43 public sector bodies monitor staff grievances for equal opportunities purposes;

  • 72% of employers provide training for managers who might be expected to deal with a grievance;

  • just under half of respondents (49) have formal written policies for dealing with a collective grievance;

  • half of the organisations without a collective grievance policy recognise trade unions for collective bargaining, so unionised workplaces are only marginally more likely than non-unionised workplaces to have a collective grievance policy;

  • about half the organisations have a separate collective grievance policy and individual grievance policy;

  • 55% of collective grievance policies have provision for the involvement of a third party, such as ACAS, if a resolution cannot be reached internally; and

  • our survey respondents' advice to other employers on grievance policies includes: have quick and informal procedures; keep policies simple; liaise with and involve staff representatives; communicate the policy to staff and managers; provide training; and be consistent.


    • Workers may have problems with, or complaints about, their treatment in any organisation.