Case law: guidance for employers on identifying a grievance

Deciding when a complaint is a grievance, triggering the statutory grievance procedure introduced in 2004, is now easier, following a number of recent cases decided by the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT).

A recurring problem for employers, since the new dismissal and grievance procedures were introduced, has been the difficulty of correctly identifying a Step 1 grievance letter, requiring that the remainder of the statutory procedure be followed.

Employers can extract the following guidance from the recent case-law:

the employee need not use the word "grievance"; and

• a resignation letter setting out the general nature of an employee's complaint can constitute a Step 1 grievance;
• the Step 1 letter need not be sent directly by the employee to the employer personally, eg it could be a letter before action sent by solicitors;
• the Step 1 grievance need not comply with the employer's own grievance procedure, eg it does not necessarily have to be sent to the person named in the employer's procedure.

In view of the above guidance, employers need to be particularly vigilant in reviewing any written complaint communications received from employees or ex-employees.

Immediate

See the discipline and dismissals pages on the Acas website