An employee has raised a grievance about me

Alan Creevy, Founder · 20th October 2026

Your name is in the grievance. That one fact changes the question everything else hangs off: the usual answer to “who deals with this” is you, and this time it cannot be.

In a business of eleven people where you are the owner, it can feel impossible, and the pull is to treat the complaint as a conversation to have rather than a process to run. That is the choice that costs money later, and it is usually made on the first day.

Two roles have to leave your hands

The Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures is what a tribunal takes into account when it decides whether you handled this fairly. Paragraph 32 tells an employee who cannot settle a concern informally to raise it formally with “a manager who is not the subject of the grievance”. It is addressed to the employee, but it sets the standard your process gets judged against. Paragraph 43 says an appeal should be dealt with impartially and, where possible, by a manager not previously involved.

Read together, those two paragraphs take two jobs away from you: deciding whether the grievance is upheld, and hearing any appeal against that decision. You can still be interviewed, and still supply documents, dates and your own account. You cannot be the person who weighs your account against theirs and writes the outcome.

Paragraph 3 of the same Code says tribunals take an employer’s size and resources into account. That buys latitude on how elaborate the process needs to be, not the right to judge a complaint about yourself.

The first hour is where most of the damage gets done

Do not go and find the person. The conversation you want to have, the one where you explain what you actually meant, is the conversation that turns a complaint about process into an allegation of pressure.

What you should do instead takes five minutes. Acknowledge the grievance in writing the same day, in two or three sentences: you have received it, you are treating it as a formal grievance, you are arranging for someone else to consider it, and you will come back with a date. Then stop. Nothing in the Code requires you to answer the substance quickly, and everything you write while you are still annoyed will sit in the bundle.

Is it about a decision you made, or about how you behaved?

A complaint about a decision, a refused holiday request, a rota change, a warning, a pay review, can often be settled by someone else reviewing the decision and saying whether it was reasonable. The question is usually narrow.

A complaint about your conduct, that you shouted, humiliated someone in front of the team, singled them out, made remarks about them, needs its own process, its own decision maker and evidence from witnesses. It cannot be folded into a review of paperwork.

Work out which one you are holding from what the complaint describes, not from what it is called. If a letter headed “concern about my shift pattern” also says you told someone their accent made them hard to follow, that is a discrimination complaint and the heading does not save you. If you cannot tell, ask the employee in writing what happened and what outcome they want.

Everything you do to that person now will be read against this

From the moment the grievance lands, your ordinary management decisions pick up a second meaning.

If the complaint alleges a breach of the Equality Act, raising it is a protected act under section 27, and treating the employee badly because they raised it is victimisation. That holds even if the allegation turns out to be wrong, so long as it was made honestly. If the complaint is that the business is breaking the law, on pay, on safety, or, since 6th April 2026, on sexual harassment, it may also be a qualifying disclosure under section 43B of the Employment Rights Act 1996, with its own protection against detriment.

And if the relationship deteriorates far enough that the employee resigns, they can argue they were in fact dismissed, under section 95(1)(c) of the same Act. For an ordinary unfair dismissal claim that argument needs two years’ service today. From 1st January 2027 it will need six months, according to Acas, which brings far more of a small workforce into scope, and we have written about what that change means for a small employer. Where the grievance was a protected disclosure, or what drove them out was victimisation, no qualifying service is needed at all. The window for claiming has already widened: where the problem happened on or after 1st October 2026, the tribunal deadline is six months rather than three.

Anything you were already going to do, do it, and note down when the decision was taken and why. Anything new, ask whether you would be doing it at all if the grievance had not arrived. Moving their shifts, cutting their overtime, leaving them off the group chat, deciding that now is the moment to tackle their timekeeping: each is defensible alone and very hard to defend in a sequence that starts the week they complained about you. If they go off sick instead of resigning, that brings its own traps.

If there really is nobody else

If you are a sole director with no other manager, the options run out fast, and we have set out the order to work down in a separate article. Two things are specific to being the subject yourself.

First, you can split the job even where you cannot hand over all of it. If you have to pull the documents together because nobody else knows where they are, so be it, but someone else still makes the decision, and it stands. Giving up the outcome is what counts, not the admin.

Second, tell the employee in writing what you have arranged and why, before the meeting rather than after. A note saying that you are a business of eleven people, that you have asked a named person to decide, and that you will take no part in that decision, is worth far more later than a defensive outcome letter out of nowhere. If you are unsure which route is open, the Acas helpline is worth a call first.

Timing, and what the file has to show

There is no statutory deadline for answering a grievance. Paragraph 33 of the Code asks only that the meeting is arranged without unreasonable delay, so you set the rhythm and hold to it. Five working days from the invitation to the meeting, three from the meeting to a written outcome, and five for the employee to appeal is a defensible starting point, and the free disciplinary and grievance timetable works the dates out around weekends for you.

Two things are easy to miss. The employee has a statutory right to bring a companion to a grievance meeting about a duty the business owes them, under section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, and the right applies again at any appeal, so offer it both times. And an unreasonable failure to follow the Code lets a tribunal adjust the award by up to 25% under section 207A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. In an unfair dismissal case that uplift applies to the compensatory award, under section 124A of the Employment Rights Act 1996, not to the whole of what is awarded.

What to do today

Acknowledge the grievance in writing, briefly, and say that you are arranging for someone else to consider it. Work out from what the letter describes whether you are dealing with a decision or with conduct. Decide who will make the decision and who would hear an appeal, write both names down, and tell the employee. Then write yourself a short dated note of the management decisions already in train for that person, so that what you were always going to do is on record as predating the complaint. The rest can wait. What cannot wait is taking your own hand off the outcome.

Tarn.hr provides HR guidance based on UK employment law and Acas codes of practice. It does not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Employment law is complex and turns on the facts of each case. For any situation involving significant legal risk, potential tribunal claims, or matters of particular sensitivity, you should seek advice from a qualified employment solicitor. Tarn.hr is not responsible for any decisions made on the basis of its guidance.