Speaker 1: How you respond to a grievance says a lot about how you are as a company and affects the working relationship going forward so getting this right is really important and in this video I'm going to tell you exactly how. Hello my name is Jennifer I'm the founder of Silk Helix and we help small businesses with all things HR, people management and leadership. A grievance quite simply is a problem or complaint put forward by an employee to their employer about their working conditions so this could be their terms and conditions, it could be working relationships, it could be things around how they're being treated, things that are happening but it's something to do with them and their work environment. In most cases before we get a formal grievance letter somebody will have raised things informally, they'll have mentioned things to their line manager, they may have talked to colleagues about it, they may be just generally showing they're not happy around things. If we can deal with things at that stage it's going to make it much easier to rebuild the relationship and make things right going forward but if we can't and it gets to this formal grievance being received then we need to deal with it by inviting somebody into a grievance hearing. When we receive a letter of grievance we need to formally respond in writing to invite them to a grievance hearing as quickly as we possibly can. Again this is going to show that we're taking it seriously but also we make sure that we're in line with our own policies, making sure that we're also covering their right to be accompanied so they know what their rights are and that they can bring either a trade union representative or a work colleague with them to this meeting. In preparation for this meeting you need to have read through the letter of grievance and any pre-investigation or other information that surrounds this grievance that could help support to manage the grievance or respond to the grievance. Crucially go through that letter and look for areas where there's potential gaps, where there's things that you need to ask more questions about to get a full and thorough understanding, where they could provide some more evidence and examples of because those are the things that you're going to be bringing up with them at the meeting. In addition to yourself who will be chairing this meeting always have a note taker with you for a grievance hearing. You need to be concentrating on what this person's saying to you and preparing the questions that you're going to ask, making sure that you fully understand that if you're concentrating with writing notes or you've got your head down looking at a piece of paper you're not getting that interaction that's really going to get them to really bring out the grievance and explain everything to you. You will find that you'll go away having missed things so it's absolutely crucial that you've got a note taker. This has got to be an appropriate person, somebody who will treat the matter with confidentiality, could be somebody from HR, could be some an administrative person, somebody who's good at note taking as well because that in itself is a skill. The purpose of this grievance hearing is to really hear their grievances and what they're looking for as a response. So we'd start the meeting by introducing who's there, making sure they know who's in the room, making sure that the person accompanying them is the right person, they've got the right to be there and then we get them to explain the grievance in their own words and I would start them with this. I wouldn't start going oh I've got your letter here, here's some questions, I would ask them to explain it in their own words, recognise that you've got the letter, recognise that you've got some questions but get them to start it and say that actually their explanation might solve some of your questions anyway and then from that you may be taking a couple of notes down where you're thinking oh I need to ask a little bit more about this to enable them to continue their flow. You may ask things as you go along, it's about that conversation so making sure that you're showing that you're listening to them, you're open to what it is that they're telling you. This really is about trying to understand, not thinking through oh how am I going to respond to this, what am I going to say as an answer to this? It's about understanding, we don't have to be going back with an answer in this meeting and actually it's unlikely we're going to. So really the purpose of the meeting is to understand what they're telling you, making sure you've got the full picture, there's no gaps and that they feel listened to and heard because whatever the response is, if they feel like they've been listened to it's going to make it much easier for them to deal with that response, especially if the response isn't necessarily everything that they are asking for. In terms of the role of the companion, they are there really to support the individual going through their grievance and they can put forward the case, they can summarise the case, they can ask questions in the meeting but they cannot answer questions on behalf of the individual, that's crucial. This meeting is between the manager chair in the meeting and the individual so make sure that you're clear on the role of the companion and they're clear before you go into this meeting as well. As I say this is a meeting about understanding the grievance so at the end of the meeting we're not going back to them with an answer, we are summarising, we're making sure that we can relay back what we understand the grievance is, this gives them the opportunity to say no you've misunderstood me and correct us or to say yep that's correct, your understanding is correct and then we would explain to them what the next steps are and when they're likely to hear a response. Some grievances, the response can come very quickly, it's something perhaps somebody in the company needs to consider, perhaps there is actions that can be taken relatively quickly, in others further investigation is going to be needed and therefore it's going to be longer between the meeting and being able to get a response to the individual. But explain to them what you're thinking at this point, if there's things that you need to consider and go away and come back with a more clear indication of what next steps are then that's okay as well, we just need to tell them at the end of the meeting what it is that we're going to do next and when they're going to hear from us next. And then following that grievance meeting we will go back to them with a written response, if it's something that we can answer straight away or maybe we do an investigation, we may or may not need to speak to the individual again as part of that investigation and then we would go back with a response once we've completed that. But the aim is to be going back to them with a response which is either going to be that we've upheld their grievance and therefore we're going to take some kind of action because presumably if they're not happy about something and we've upheld it we're going to change something. It may be that we partially uphold it so we agree with some things we don't agree with other parts of the grievance or it may be that we're not upholding the grievance and we're going back to them say actually we don't think that this is correct or you're understanding the situation is correct for these reasons and in those we most likely have done some investigation to be able to explain why we don't think that their grievance is upheld. The grievance meeting is just one stage in a grievance this is a complex process it sounds quite simple and if you read the ACAS code on disciplinary grievance again the process sounds quite simple but there are some high risk things here for example if somebody's bringing up a grievance which relates to a discrimination situation or harassment there's potential high risk of an employment tribunal if this isn't dealt with correctly there's also risks that there's problems within your business that you're not spotting there's risks that this person could go and take their views to other people that those views will spread there's all sorts of risks that can come out when we've got something that's got to this stage of a formal grievance or even if it doesn't get to this stage and we're dealing with it informally. If you have received formal grievance from an employee or you think that something they're talking about might be a grievance might be leading to that there is a link to a free advice call in the comments below do book a call with us and we can talk through the risks and what you might need to do with that. We also have our digital course on managing disciplinary and grievance procedures which goes into these procedures and how you deal with them in much more detail there is a link on screen now plus a QR code and the description below also contains the links you can access that course. In the meantime don't forget to like and subscribe for weekly hints and tips on all things HR and people management.