I had an interesting conversation with a client this last week. We got to talking about a grievance that we, at Senatus, had investigated a couple of years ago. As time has passed, we were both able to objectively reflect on what had happened, both from an employee and an organisational perspective. During the discussion, my client talked about how they had “used the procedure to protect ourselves”, and perhaps that was not the right course of action to take.
I found this perspective to be interesting. Not because the client was wrong; I think that he was right. I found it interesting because using formal procedures to protect the organisation has not arisen during the research I’ve done to date around the purpose and use of disciplinary and grievance procedures in the workplace.
I’ll start with the origins story:
Conflict in the workplace is a known phenomenon (Edwards, 1986). In the 1960s, the focus was on the conflict between employers and trade unions, which resulted in the Government launching the Donovan Commission. The Commission sought to improve union-management relationships, to the benefit of both employees and the employer. Their recommendations were published in 1968, one of which was to strengthen union-management relationships: this was to be achieved through the implementation of (or in some cases, the strengthening of) formal policies and procedures, including disciplinary and grievance procedures.
However, the minimum standards for what these policies and procedures should contain was not defined until the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act (1992), when the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures were published.
Whilst the ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures outlines a basic procedural framework as to how to manage formal disciplinary and grievance matters, the reality is that in some settings, such as in the NHS, the formal process is far from simple. In fact, it can give the illusion of fairness (Kaiser et al., 2013; Dierckx et al., 2023) – but that’s a discussion for another blog.
We are 50 years on from the Donovan Commission’s findings and the nature of the workplace has changed. Until the last couple of years, there had been a signficant down-turn in union-related strike action compared to the 1960s (resolutionfoundation.org). In contrast, the number of disciplinary and greivances has risen. When I first started working in the NHS some 20 *cough* odd years ago, nobody lodged a grievance. I remember being acutely aware of my skills and knowledge gap in this area due to lack of exposure compared the significant experience I was gaining from being involved in disciplinary matters. In comparison, a recent Freedom of Information request made by Senatus to every NHS Trust identified that there has been over 20,000 grievances lodged in the NHS since April 2017. Grievances are now commonplace.
Nowadays, organisations will frequently rely on formal disciplinary and grievance procedures to ‘contain’ the conflict between parties (Williams, 2020). Although it is best pratice to resolve issues locally and in a timely manner (Ury et al., 1998), we have all witnessed cases where the matter was considered ‘too difficult’ to resolve informally and the formal procedures have been evoked. This was evident in Saundry’s 2020 review of the state of employee relations in the NHS, which identified that local managers were choosing to formalise issues. Their approach was considered to be adversarial and “heavy-handed”, which is opposite to ACAS’ preference for an inquisitorial approach. Sadly, it is not uncommon for the use of formal disciplinary and grievance procedures to lead to increased levels of workplace conflict (Cappelli and Chauvin, 1991), due to employees feeling dissatisfied in how their issue has been managed (Abbot, 2007). Formalising the conflict can make a difficult situation become more difficult.
So it goes back to the ‘why’ – bearing in mind that the (limited) research available shows that formal disciplinary and greivance procedures, in many cases, do not help contain or effectively resolve concerns. I haven’t seen any research about disciplinary and grievance procedures being utilised to protect individuals or an organisation, but maybe ‘protection’ is another underlying reason that academics have yet to identify.
References:
Abbot, B. (2007) Workplace and employment characteristics of the Citizens Advice Bureau client. Employee Relations. Vol 29 (3) pp. 262-79.
Cappelli, P., Chauvin, K. (1991), ‘A test of an efficiency model of grievance activity’. Industrial and Labor Relations Review. Vol. 45, pp. 3–14.
Dierckx, K., van Hiel, A., Swart, H., Valcke, B. (2023) “The irony of fairness: How procedural fairness climate perceptions can hinder disadvantaged group members’ support for social change’, Group processes & intergroup relations pp.1-22
Edwards, P.K. (1986) Conflict at Work. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kaiser, C.R., Major, B., Jurcevic, I., Dover, T. L., Brady, L. M., Shapiro, J. R. (2013) ‘Presumed fair: Ironic effects of organizational diversity structures.’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol.. 104(3), pp. 504–519.
Saundry, R. (2020) The Impact of Covid-19 on Employment Relations in the NHS. Available at: www.socialpartnershipforum.org/sites/default/files/2021-09/NHS-Covid-ER-Report.pdf (Accessed: 31st July 2022)
Ury, W.L., Brett, J.M., Goldberg, S.B. (1988). Getting Disputes Resolved: Designing Systems to Cut the Costs of Conflict. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Williams, S. (2020). Introducing employment relations: a critical approach. 5th edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.