Dealing With Grievances In Charities

Although employment law applies to all organisations (private, public and third sector), dealing with staff disputes and grievances can be particularly challenging for charities for a number of reasons, such as:

• There is sometimes no specific HR function/team dedicated to dealing with employee relations issues.
• The board of trustees are often volunteers who are unable to offer the time required or keep pace with an evolving issue/dispute.
• Resources and time are so stretched that it can be easier for trustees and managers to ‘hope’ that situations sort themselves out, often with disastrous consequences.

Grievance procedures

It is important that every organisation has a grievance procedure and that staff are aware of how/where they can obtain a copy if they wish to raise a complaint.

The procedure need not be unwieldy and lengthy but, as a minimum, should comply with the ACAS Code of Practice on Disciplinary Grievance. This requires that:

1. An employee should be permitted to raise a grievance formally and without unreasonable delay with a manager who is not the subject of the grievance. This should be done in writing and should set out the nature of the grievance.
2. The employer should arrange a formal meeting to hear the grievance and advise the employee of their right to be accompanied by a colleague of Trade Union representative.
3. The employer should decide on any appropriate action that needs to be taken and communicate the outcome without unreasonable delay.
4. Employees should be offered the right to appeal against the outcome.

Where possible, you should have one person hear the initial grievance and investigate it and have a separate (preferably more senior) person reserved to independently deal with any appeal which might come after the event. If all of the trustees deal with a grievance by way of panel, this can make it difficult for the organisation to provide someone genuinely independent at the appeal stage. Where management roles are thin on the ground (or the grievance involves the management) it is a good idea to consider having a sub board with nominated trustees who can be called upon to deal with these types of issues. They can then move quickly to participate in the process.

In very small organisations, it is simply sometimes not possible to allocate different personnel to oversee a grievance, particularly if it is complex and those who would have usually dealt with it are likely to be witnesses and not independent. In such situation, you may want to consider outsourcing the investigation to an independent HR consultant, who can provide a speedier, objective view and reduce the level of in-house politics.

Reusing grievance procedures and policies for your charity

In our experience it is quite common for smaller charities to swap/borrow each other’s policies or download and try to adapt local authority policies. We would urge against this as you may end up with a process that is more complicated than it needs to be and does not accord with your charity’s ethos or be specific enough to your operations.

Further, you may find that ‘borrowed’ policies are contractual, which means that they form part of staff contracts and thus must be followed to the letter to avoid the charity being on the end of a breach of contract claim if they deviate from the procedure. Our recommendation is that, where possible, both grievance and disciplinary procedures are expressed to be non-contractual¸ providing the employer with more flexibility in the way they run their process.   

It is helpful to review your policies annually to ensure that they are fit for purpose and take account of changing references to personnel who have left or changes which have taken place that may effect that process.

Dealing with grievances can be time consuming and stressful. Not dealing with them appropriately (or at all!) can result in employment tribunal claims, substantial cost and damage to reputation.