How to raise a grievance at work (UK)

General guidance for UK employees. Not legal advice.

What a grievance is really for

A grievance is a formal complaint to your employer about something that has happened to you at work. The official guidance, the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, says you should let your employer know the nature of the grievance, normally in writing. The employer should then hold a meeting to discuss it, decide on action, and give you the right to appeal. That is the floor your employer has to meet.

The word that matters is formal. An off-the-record moan to your manager is not a grievance. A grievance is the moment you put your employer on notice, in writing, that there is a problem they now have to deal with through a proper process. Once that letter is in, things change.

That single shift changes how you write. Anger reads as weakness, because it lets the reader dismiss you as emotional rather than wronged. Specifics read as strength, because they are hard to argue with. "I was treated unfairly and it has been a nightmare" is a release. "On 3 March, in a meeting with the named manager, I was told these exact words, which followed a named event" is a record. The first invites sympathy and gets none. The second builds a case.

Should you raise one, and when

This is the most important decision, and the one most people rush. A grievance is an escalation. Once it is in, you cannot take it back.

Raise one when the informal route has failed or was never safe, when the problem is serious and ongoing, and when you need it formally on the record so that what happens next can be measured against it. Think hard before raising one if you genuinely want to repair the relationship and an informal conversation still has a chance. Think hard too if your complaint is really frustration rather than something specific you can evidence. A grievance is a deliberate move, not a reflex.

Timing can matter as much as content. Where your real concern is discrimination, age being the most common, raising it formally in good faith makes it a protected act. If your employer then treats you worse because you complained, that worse treatment can be unlawful victimisation under section 27 of the Equality Act 2010, which is a separate claim. Raising the concern before a capability or performance process runs its course can put what follows in that frame. This is contested legal ground, so where discrimination is in play, this is the point to take advice before you act, not after.

In most cases the strongest sequence is to send a Subject Access Request before you raise the grievance, not after. Under the UK GDPR you have the right to a copy of the personal data your employer holds about you, including internal emails and notes you have never seen. The employer has one calendar month to respond, extendable to three if the request is complex. Read what comes back, then write your grievance around your employer's own words rather than your recollection. The trade-off is time, so if a deadline is bearing down you may have to act before the documents arrive.

There is one more effect to understand. Raising a grievance creates a formal dispute. Once a dispute exists, your employer can have a without prejudice conversation about settling that they could not properly have had before. So a serious, well-built grievance can be the very thing that produces a settlement offer. Go in understanding that a grievance is not only a complaint. It can be the opening move in a negotiation.

How to write the grievance letter

A grievance letter has a job to do, and a clear structure does most of the work. Build yours from six parts, in this order.

The heading. Mark it "Formal grievance" and date it. Address it to the right person under your employer's grievance policy, usually your manager's manager or HR, not the person you are complaining about.

The chronology. A short, factual account of what happened, in date order. Write it as if a stranger will read it, because one will. Use dates. Name the people and their roles. Quote exact words where you can, in quotation marks, and mark clearly where you are paraphrasing. For each significant event, point to the evidence: the email, the note, the document, the witness. Keep each event to a line or two. You are laying out a record, not telling a story.

The allegations. State plainly what you say was wrong and tie each point to the facts. Reference the relevant policy and the ACAS Code where the employer has fallen short of them. Say what happened, not how angry it made you. Where a protected characteristic is genuinely in play, you can name it, but do it with care, because the wording carries real legal weight. State the facts that point to it and say you believe the treatment was connected, rather than declaring a legal claim you have not yet proven. That one paragraph is the most worth having a solicitor review before you send.

The effect on you. A brief, measured account of the impact, professional and personal. Enough to show this is serious, not so much that it reads as a plea for sympathy.

The ask. State clearly what you want the employer to do: investigate the matters you have raised, hold a grievance meeting, provide the outcome in writing with reasons, and confirm your right to appeal. A clear ask matters, because a vague or partial response then has something concrete to be measured against.

What to leave out. Speculation about motives you cannot evidence. Insults and sarcasm. Threats to sue or go to a tribunal, because the strength of a grievance is in the facts. Anything you cannot back up, because one weak allegation lets the employer cast doubt on all the others. When in doubt, cut it.

The grievance meeting

Once your grievance is in, the employer should hold a meeting to discuss it without unreasonable delay. How you handle that meeting matters. Go in prepared and accompanied.

You have a statutory right, under section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, to be accompanied at the grievance meeting. Your companion can be a fellow worker, a trade union representative, or a trade union official. They can put your case, sum it up, respond on your behalf to anything said, and confer with you during the meeting. They cannot answer questions for you. The questions put to you, you answer. If your chosen companion is not available on the date proposed, you can ask for the meeting to be postponed by up to five working days.

Never attend alone. A companion changes the dynamic of the room, and gives you a second person who can take a clear, contemporaneous note that you can both rely on later.

Before the meeting, get a few things in writing. Ask for a copy of the grievance policy and confirmation of which ACAS Code the employer is following. Ask who will hear the grievance and who will take the notes. If the person hearing it is the person you are complaining about, that is itself a problem with the process, and asking on the record makes it harder to ignore.

In the meeting, present your grievance calmly and stick to the record. Take your chronology and refer to it. Let your companion take detailed notes. Resist being drawn into an emotional argument or letting the employer reframe your complaint as a misunderstanding. You do not have to resolve everything in the room. Anything significant said only out loud, ask to have confirmed in writing afterwards.

After the meeting, ask for the minutes. When they arrive, read them against your companion's notes. If they are wrong or leave something out, correct the record in writing, calmly and specifically, so your version is on file.

The outcome and the appeal

The meeting is not the end. What you do with the outcome decides whether the grievance worked.

The employer should give you the decision in writing, with reasons. Read it twice: once for what it concedes, once for what it dodges. A grievance outcome often upholds the small, safe points and quietly avoids the central one. Note which allegations were addressed, which were partly addressed, and which were ignored. An employer that ducks the serious allegation while conceding the trivial one has handed you a clear basis for an appeal.

You have the right to appeal an outcome you are not satisfied with, and the appeal should be heard, where possible, by someone more senior who was not involved before. Appeal when the outcome dodges the real issue, gets the facts wrong, or comes from a flawed process. Frame it tightly: say what the outcome got wrong and why, point by point, rather than restating the whole grievance. Even where you expect the appeal to fail, it is usually worth lodging, because it completes the process on the record and removes the employer's argument that you did not use the procedure available to you.

Why it matters

This is where the procedure becomes money. Where an employer unreasonably fails to follow the ACAS Code, a tribunal can increase a compensation award by up to 25%. So every procedural failure on the record, the meeting delayed for weeks, the hearer who had clearly pre-judged it, the outcome that never came in writing, is not just frustrating. It is potential value.

You do not raise this in the grievance itself. You bank it. The threat of that uplift, and the cost and disclosure of a defended claim, is exactly what makes an employer willing to talk about a settlement. A well-run grievance that has exposed real procedural failures is often the point at which a without prejudice conversation about terms begins.

When to get a solicitor

You can run a grievance yourself. There are points where you should not run alone.

Get advice early where there is a genuine discrimination angle, where you are considering resigning, where you have already been dismissed and a time limit is running, or where the sums are large because of your seniority or service. If you have already been dismissed, treat this as urgent. A strict time limit is running, and a self-serve pack is not the right tool at that point. Speak to a solicitor now.

Make the first call count. Bring your chronology, your grievance letter, any Subject Access Request documents, and a one-line statement of what you want. Ask how strong your position is, honestly. Ask whether there is a discrimination or constructive dismissal angle. Ask what they would do first, and how they charge. An initial consultation is often in the region of £200 to £400, and many people have legal expenses cover through home insurance or a union and forget it.