Grievance procedure

What a grievance procedure is, and where the rules come from

The Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures defines the term in one line: "Grievances are concerns, problems or complaints that employees raise with their employers." Acas describes the grievance procedure as "a formal way for an employee to raise a problem or complaint": the employer's written process for dealing with a problem at work, often called the grievance policy, and the Code sets the minimum standard of fairness it has to meet.

Three pieces of law sit behind it. Section 3 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 requires the written statement of employment particulars to include a note of the person to whom an employee can apply "for the purpose of seeking redress of any grievance relating to his employment", how the application should be made, and what happens next, or a reference to a document that explains it. The Code itself is issued under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, and although "a failure to follow the Code does not, in itself, make a person or organisation liable to proceedings", employment tribunals "will take the Code into account when considering relevant cases" and can adjust an award "by up to 25 per cent" where either side unreasonably failed to follow it. And the statutory right to be accompanied at a grievance meeting comes from the Employment Relations Act 1999.

The Code asks that rules and procedures "should be set down in writing, be specific and clear", that employees and their representatives are involved in developing them, and that everyone knows "what the rules and procedures are, where they can be found and how they are to be used". It also recognises that fairness is scaled: tribunals "will take the size and resources of an employer into account", so a charity with six staff is not expected to run the process of a large trust, but it is expected to be fair.

The current Code dates from 11 March 2015. Acas consulted on a revised draft between 30 July and 23 September 2026 and is reviewing the responses; the draft brings informal resolution into the statutory Code for the first time. Until a new Code is approved and laid before Parliament, the 2015 Code is the one that applies, and it is the one quoted here.

What counts as a grievance, and what belongs elsewhere

A grievance is about the employee's own position. In practice the common subjects are:

• pay, deductions, overtime or expenses, and anything that looks like a breach of contract;
• hours, rotas, shift patterns, workload and holiday;
• how a manager or colleague treats them, including bullying and harassment;
• discrimination, and requests for adjustments that have been refused or ignored;
• changes to terms and conditions, duties or place of work;
• working conditions, equipment and the working environment;
• how a previous process, such as a capability review or a restructure, was handled.

Some things look like grievances and belong in another procedure. A concern about wrongdoing that affects others, such as a risk to residents or pupils, fraud or a cover-up, is whistleblowing, and the whistleblowing policy guide explains why the two routes need to be connected rather than left for staff to choose between. A complaint from a parent, a resident or a service user goes to the complaints procedure. A grievance raised by a union or workplace representative on behalf of two or more employees is a collective grievance, which the Code excludes and which follows the organisation's collective process. The Code also notes that organisations "may wish to consider dealing with issues involving bullying, harassment or whistleblowing under a separate procedure"; if yours does, the grievance procedure should say where those go.

Where an employee raises a grievance during a disciplinary process, "the disciplinary process may be temporarily suspended in order to deal with the grievance", and "where the grievance and disciplinary cases are related it may be appropriate to deal with both issues concurrently". A procedure should say who decides which.

The steps, from the first complaint to the appeal

The Code's grievance section is short, and every sentence of it is a step a procedure needs.

1. Try to resolve it informally. The Code's foreword: "Many potential disciplinary or grievance issues can be resolved informally. A quiet word is often all that is required to resolve an issue." Acas advises employees to raise a problem informally first, and notes that mediation, involving "an independent, impartial person", can be used at any stage.
2. Raise a formal grievance, in writing. "If it is not possible to resolve a grievance informally employees should raise the matter formally and without unreasonable delay with a manager who is not the subject of the grievance. This should be done in writing and should set out the nature of the grievance." Acas's guidance on raising a grievance suggests the grievance letter says what it is about, includes any evidence, and says what the employee wants the employer to do.
3. Hold the grievance hearing without unreasonable delay. "Employers should arrange for a formal meeting to be held without unreasonable delay after a grievance is received." The employee "should be allowed to explain their grievance and how they think it should be resolved", and the employer should consider "adjourning the meeting for any investigation that may be necessary".
4. Allow a companion. The statutory right to be accompanied by a fellow worker or a trade union representative applies at a grievance meeting "which deals with a complaint about a duty owed by the employer to the worker", such as a complaint that the employer "is not honouring the worker's contract, or is in breach of legislation". If the chosen companion cannot attend, the employer must postpone to a reasonable time the worker proposes, within five working days of the original date. The companion may put and sum up the worker's case and confer with them, but not answer questions for them.
5. Decide and write it down. "Decisions should be communicated to the employee, in writing, without unreasonable delay and, where appropriate, should set out what action the employer intends to take to resolve the grievance. The employee should be informed that they can appeal if they are not content with the action taken."
6. Hear any appeal impartially. The outcome letter should state the right to appeal, and the employee should give the grounds "without unreasonable delay and in writing"; the appeal hearing should be dealt with "impartially and wherever possible by a manager who has not previously been involved in the case"; the right to be accompanied applies; and the outcome is given "in writing without unreasonable delay".

Acas's own summary for employers is that "you must follow a full and fair procedure in line with the Acas Code". The Code sets no deadlines beyond "without unreasonable delay", which leaves each organisation to set its own. A procedure that names a period for acknowledging a grievance, holding the meeting and giving the outcome, and says what happens when one of them has to slip, is easier to follow and easier to defend than one that leaves it to the manager on the day.

What to record at each step

The Code's foreword says that "employers would be well advised to keep a written record of any disciplinary or grievances cases they deal with". Acas's guidance on responding to a formal grievance says the employer "should keep written records of what takes place during the grievance procedure", including what the grievance is about, "any decisions and actions taken, and why", and whether the employee appeals. Its guidance on what happens after a grievance adds: "No matter what the outcome, employers should keep a written record of all grievance cases to help with any questions or similar cases in the future", kept confidential and kept only for as long as necessary.

In practice a complete grievance file holds:

• the grievance as the employee raised it, with the date it was received, in the form it arrived;
• what happened informally before it became formal, and when;
• acknowledgements, invitations to meetings and any request to be accompanied or to postpone;
• investigation notes, witness statements and the documents gathered, with a note of how each was obtained;
• notes of the grievance meeting, including adjournments, agreed by both sides where possible;
• the outcome letter, with the reasons for each finding and the actions promised;
• the appeal, its hearing and its outcome;
• a note that the promised actions were taken.

Grievance records are personal data about the employee and usually about colleagues, so they are within a subject access request, and the redaction questions in the subject access guide apply to them. Keep them with, or linked to, the personnel file for a period the retention schedule justifies; the data retention policy guide covers how to set one. A grievance that preceded a claim is kept until the claim is over.

The informal stage, and the time limits that do not wait

Most grievances are resolved, or fail, before the formal procedure starts, and the informal stage is the least recorded part of the whole process. The 2015 Code encourages it only in its non-statutory foreword. The draft Code Acas consulted on in 2026 goes further. According to Acas's consultation document, it "explicitly encourages early and informal resolution wherever possible", making that guidance part of what tribunals take into account; it suggests that "written confirmation of the outcome of an informal approach can sometimes be of mutual benefit", while making it optional; and it introduces "a new expectation for workers when raising a written grievance to state what prior steps have been taken to resolve the matter informally, or where no steps were taken the reason for that". The draft may change before it is approved, but the direction is clear: the informal stage is becoming part of the record.

Time limits run throughout. Acas's page on employment tribunal time limits says that for most claims the limit is 6 months minus 1 day where the time limit starts on or after 1 October 2026, and 3 months minus 1 day where it starts before that date. It is equally clear that "going through grievance, disciplinary or appeal procedures does not change your time limit". Notifying Acas for early conciliation pauses the clock; the grievance procedure does not. A grievance process that drifts for months serves neither side, because the employee may have to bring a tribunal claim before the employer has answered.

Two practical consequences follow for employers. First, when an employee tries to raise a grievance informally, the manager should treat it as a possible grievance from the start: acknowledge it, write down what was raised and what was agreed, and tell the employee how to take it further if it is not resolved. Second, a complaint that arrives in writing in any form, a letter, an email or a message, should be recognised for what it may be. The Code asks for writing; a procedure that recognises only a particular form risks the employer missing a grievance it was given.

The grievance that started in a message

Few grievances begin with a letter. They begin with "can I have a quick word about the rota? that's the third weekend running" sent to a manager's personal phone at ten at night, and a reply of "leave it with me". A week later there is another message, and a voice note. The manager mentions it to the deputy in their own chat, with a comment about the employee that seemed harmless at the time. Two months on, the employee submits a formal grievance, and the first thing the investigator needs to know is when the problem was raised, what was promised and what happened next.

All of that is in messages, on phones the organisation does not hold. The employee has their side and can produce it. The manager may have changed phone. The deputy's chat, which is about the employee and is therefore within a subject access request, is exactly the sort of document that surfaces later and changes the story. If the draft Code is adopted, the grievance letter itself will be expected to describe those informal steps, and the employer's version of them will be whatever its managers can find.

The answer is not to stop employees raising things informally; the quiet word the Code recommends is often a message now, and that is how problems get fixed early. It is to have those work conversations happen somewhere the organisation holds. ComplyChat gives them a channel the organisation owns: messages are recorded on the server as they are sent, everyone added is told the channel is on the record and can object or leave, and staff without a work account can join with a mobile number verified by SMS. On paid plans, once the organisation's Microsoft 365 tenant is connected, the lasting record files there under the organisation's own retention rules, so the informal stage of a grievance can be produced with its dates. It is not a case management system and it does not run the procedure; it also cannot recover messages already sent elsewhere. ComplyChat Free is personal messaging with one private group, direct messages and three calendar months of recent history, with no Microsoft 365 archive, which is shorter than many grievances take to surface.

A question for the next leadership or trustees' meeting: in the last formal grievance, where was the problem first raised, and could the organisation show from its own records what was said and promised before the letter arrived?

Official guidance and your next step

The primary sources are the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, paragraphs 32 to 47 for grievances; Acas's step-by-step guidance on the grievance procedure, which includes templates; Acas on tribunal time limits; and section 3 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. Quotations are from those pages as published on 25 September 2026. Watch for the revised Code after Acas's 2026 consultation, and note that the six-month limit for most claims applies only where the time limit starts on or after 1 October 2026. Northern Ireland has its own code and procedures, published by the Labour Relations Agency.

This guide is a summary for employers in Great Britain, not legal advice. A grievance that may become a claim, or that overlaps with a disciplinary or a whistleblowing concern, is one to take advice on.

Then do one thing: read your grievance procedure's first paragraph and check that it tells a manager what to do when a problem is raised informally, including a message, and what to write down. If it starts at the letter, the stage where most grievances are won or lost is missing.