Overlapping disciplinary and grievance matters letter

If an employee submits a formal written grievance whilst you’re following your disciplinary procedure in relation to them, you need to decide how you’re going to tackle that.

Acas Code of Practice

The Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures says that where an employee raises a grievance during a disciplinary process, you can either suspend that process to deal with the grievance or, where the two cases are related, it may be appropriate to deal with both matters concurrently. So, it’s up to you what you decide to do in this situation, but do carefully consider whether not dealing with the grievance first could potentially cause prejudice to the employee, for example, because their grievance relates to an alleged conflict of interest by the chair of the disciplinary hearing, bias is being alleged in the conduct of that hearing, they’re alleging the investigating manager has been unfairly selective in their supply of evidence to the chair, or they’re alleging discrimination, harassment or bullying. In those types of cases, it’s best to deal with the grievance first and put the disciplinary process on hold whilst you do this, as you want to ensure the disciplinary process is and remains both substantively and procedurally fair. In other cases though, particularly where the grievance is a blatant attempt to delay a disciplinary hearing, you’d be justified in running the two procedures (grievance and disciplinary) concurrently. If you do adopt this latter approach, do ensure you keep the two procedures entirely separate.

Letter options

Our Overlapping Disciplinary and Grievance Matters Letter contains four options depending on the nature and timing of the employee’s grievance. These are as follows:

• a disciplinary hearing had already been arranged, but this is now being postponed until further notice whilst the grievance is dealt with
• a disciplinary investigation was still underway, but this is now temporarily being put on hold to deal with the grievance
• a disciplinary hearing had been arranged and this is still to go ahead, as you intend to deal with both the grievance and the disciplinary process concurrently
• a disciplinary investigation was underway which is to continue, as you intend to deal with both the grievance and the disciplinary process concurrently.

Where the employee had been suspended on full pay and the disciplinary process is put on hold, our letter confirms that the suspension will continue, subject to ongoing review, pending the outcome of that disciplinary process. Our letter then states that you’ll write to the employee separately to invite them to attend a grievance meeting - see our Notification of Grievance Meeting.