Grievance

daviddee

Hi. Just wondering if anyone has some thoughts on what is considered reasonable for a grievance to be concluded? I know there’s no statutory  timescale but ACAS say reasonable timescale . 

I won’t bore you with the all details of my grievance other than to say it was a grievance  I raised about a  contractor that supplied services to my employer who failed to sort out some necessary permissions in time for me to start my shifts and I lost a month’s salary. 

I raised the grievance and my employer followed the ACAS code in contacting me within five days and organising a meeting.  They didn’t inform me I was entitled to have someone with me, nor later provide written minutes of the meeting  but that’s an aside, , they  said in the meeting they’d hope to conclude it within 10 days but would update me in a week anyway. 

They didn’t get back to update for 9 days and then just to say they hoped to conclude in another week. Two weeks later they emailed to say waiting for more information, should be concluded by next week. We are now 50 days in since I first raised the grievance and over  three weeks since their last email contact.  

Before I email them again and make a complaint about a delay I was wondering if others think this is an unreasonable amount of time for a grievance to be concluded or that it’s just normal procedure? 

Grumpy_chap

This seems to be a grievance about the onboarding process and probably very difficult to assess given it seems to relate to a period before you were employed by the company.
Onboarding delays are unfortunate but not uncommon.
What outcome are you hoping for?  It is quite unlikely you will be paid for the month you were not working for the company.
Did you leave a previous employer prematurely?

Dakta

Could you give more details about this contractor, his role and what sort of permissions we're talking and whether it is in an onboard context?

I'm possibly jumping the gun, company I worked for was really lax with permissions (in the IT sense) and it took them 3 weeks to sort my accounts and stuff out, it was totally fine I just read a book at their cost and where possible sat next to someone and watched what they did. There wasn't really any argument about it,you turned up on the date you were told to start and the manager said sorry, but still waiting on your accounts, go make a coffee and shadow someone until your login starts to work. As long as you didn't take it on yourself to go home etc, there was no question of not being paid, your start date is in the agreement so interested in what happened your side. I'd check your docs, contracts for the start date and any discussion as such, as whether you have permissions or not, this is when your employment started.  

On a more general note, greivances can take a long time, though yours I wouldn't have thought would take long. I'm going through the process now, I'm in month 4 and it's been delay after delay after delay.

I don't think it's unreasonable to request information on what the delay is. 

daviddee

Grumpy_chap said:

This seems to be a grievance about the onboarding process and probably very difficult to assess given it seems to relate to a period before you were employed by the company.
Onboarding delays are unfortunate but not uncommon.
What outcome are you hoping for?  It is quite unlikely you will be paid for the month you were not working for the company.
Did you leave a previous employer prematurely?

no Ive worked for them For decades. But need certain certificates to be able to go onto the worksite. Despite giving plenty of notice they didn’t put in place the checks and tests I needed to be able to do my shifts . This is done by an outside contractor my employer employs to sort out the necessary permissions. 

As to an outcome. It would be great to get paid for the work I was available to do but prevented from doing so by someone else’s inability  to book the necessary completions, despite me giving plenty of notice of when I would be available to do them. 

But frankly I’m not expecting to get a positive outcome and think they’ve just kicked it into the long grass. Which is why I was asking about what is a general timescale. 

daviddee

Dakta said:

Could you give more details about this contractor, his role and what sort of permissions we're talking and whether it is in an onboard context?

I'm possibly jumping the gun, company I worked for was really lax with permissions (in the IT sense) and it took them 3 weeks to sort my accounts and stuff out, it was totally fine I just read a book at their cost and where possible sat next to someone and watched what they did. There wasn't really any argument about it,you turned up on the date you were told to start and the manager said sorry, but still waiting on your accounts, go make a coffee and shadow someone until your login starts to work. As long as you didn't take it on yourself to go home etc, there was no question of not being paid, your start date is in the agreement so interested in what happened your side. I'd check your docs, contracts for the start date and any discussion as such, as whether you have permissions or not, this is when your employment started.  

On a more general note, greivances can take a long time, though yours I wouldn't have thought would take long. I'm going through the process now, I'm in month 4 and it's been delay after delay after delay.

I don't think it's unreasonable to request information on what the delay 

Thanks. If you say you had 4 months wait then clearly mine is not yet excessively long,  which was kind of what I was wondering. 

If I haven’t heard anything by next week I’ll contact them and ask for an update. 

daviddee

Hi. Just wanted to give an update on this. It took my company months to sort out but they eventually did come back and agree it had all been their fault and they paid me the wages I had lost. 

Thanks for the replies. 

Dakta

That's a decent outcome thanks for letting us know hope you feel it's been resolved