One of the golf clubs we look after received a grievance letter from a staff member recently.

It started off with the claim that he was being “harassed, bullied and victimised” under the Equality Act 2010 (Which is always fun!).

Wow, all of those things at the same time?!

But the most telling part of it is that he did not state WHICH protected characteristic he was being persecuted for.

[Read more…]

One of our clients averted disaster recently, with just one push of a button.

They’d received a grievance letter from an employee about one of their colleagues making rude and nasty comments about them.

We held the grievance meeting, and the employee gave plenty of detail, and provided witnesses, making it a pretty cut and dried case.

So, we then invited the colleague in for a disciplinary meeting.

She came alone (no companion), and sat down with us, the business owner and his PA.

We briefed the client on what to say and he seemed to understand it – from our perspective, the meeting went exactly as it needed to.

Which is why we were rather surprised to learn that the subject of the disciplinary (the employee accused of being rude and nasty) raised her own grievance, claiming that he’d started shouting at her during the meeting, and bullying her because she was female, older and “wanted to get rid” of her.

Red flag – the mention of age and sex immediately made us worry as a discrimination claim can mean an unlimited award at tribunal against the employer.  [Read more…]