My employee used ChatGPT to write a grievance

Alan Creevy, Founder · 3rd November 2026

Fourteen pages arrived at eleven at night. Your business has nine people in it and no HR department, and the letter you have just opened cites four sections of the Employment Rights Act, two cases you have never heard of, and a paragraph of the Acas Code. The size of it is the thing you are feeling. It is not the thing you have to deal with.

What you have is a grievance. The procedure for it is the one you would have followed for a two paragraph email, and the work this week is getting the complaints out of the wrapping.

The length changes nothing that you have to do

There is no statutory form for a grievance and no statutory deadline for your reply. The Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, which came into effect on 11th March 2015, says at paragraph 32 that the employee should set out the nature of the grievance in writing and at paragraph 33 that you should arrange a formal meeting “without unreasonable delay” once you have received it. It says nothing about how long the letter may be, what it may cite, or what the employee used to write it.

That matters, because the Code is the part with teeth. Under section 207A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 a tribunal can increase an award by up to 25% where an employer unreasonably failed to comply with the Code, if it considers that just and equitable. Nothing is added for failing to answer a citation.

Do not make the AI the issue

The sentence you want to write is that this was obviously written by ChatGPT. Do not write it, and do not put it in your notes either, because your notes are disclosable if this ever reaches a tribunal.

Three reasons. Detection tools are unreliable, so you would be asserting something you cannot actually show (that point comes from law firm commentary rather than a regulator, in this piece from October 2025). It also turns a question about what happened at work into an argument about the employee’s honesty, which is a much worse argument for you to be having. And if any part of the letter alleges discrimination, making that allegation is a protected act under section 27 of the Equality Act 2010, so treating the person badly because they raised it becomes a second problem on top of the first.

Taking a document seriously is not the same as agreeing with it. Answer the complaints and say nothing at all about the drafting.

Turn it into a numbered list before you do anything else

Read it once, with a pen, looking only for events. Every time the letter says that something happened, write one line: what, when, and who was there. Skip every paragraph of law. A letter this long often comes down to a handful of actual complaints, because most of its length is repetition and argument rather than incidents.

Then write back with your numbered list and ask them to confirm that it is complete and accurate and to tell you what outcome they want. That is not a stalling tactic. It is paragraph 34 of the Code in practice, because the meeting exists for the employee to explain the grievance and how they think it should be resolved. It also moves the work of narrowing the complaint onto the person who widened it.

At the meeting, ask them to talk you through the main complaints in their own words. What they explain unprompted tells you which ones are real to them.

Read the legal passages once, then leave them alone

Read them once, to see whether anything in there actually bites. Then do not argue with them in writing.

A rebuttal that answers every point invites a longer reply, puts you on ground where you are guessing, and makes the whole exchange about law rather than about the five things that happened in your workshop. Your outcome letter has to deal with the complaints and say what you are going to do about them. It does not have to deal with section numbers, and if a citation looks wrong, or looks invented, resist the urge to say so.

The exception is the passage that is really a complaint in disguise. “This amounts to indirect discrimination because of my religion” is not an argument about the law. It is an allegation that is not yet on your list, so put it on the list.

Three things that hide in a long letter

An allegation about a protected characteristic. This changes who ought to hear the grievance and whether an hour of paid advice is worth it. Unlike unfair dismissal, a discrimination or victimisation claim does not depend on how long the person has worked for you.

A protected disclosure. If the letter says that the business is breaking the law, or that someone’s health or safety is at risk, that may be a qualifying disclosure under section 43B of the Employment Rights Act 1996, which carries protection of its own, separately from the grievance.

A request for records. This is the one that catches small employers. A long letter like this may well include a line asking for every email, note and record that mentions the employee. The ICO says a request can be made verbally or in writing, does not have to use the words “subject access request”, and must be answered “without delay and within one month of receipt”, extendable by up to two months where it is complex or there are several requests. Being in the middle of a grievance is not a reason to refuse it. That clock runs from the day the letter arrived, separately from your grievance timetable, so if you only notice it once the grievance is over you may already be late.

The timetable to work to

Acknowledge the letter in writing on the day it arrives and say when the meeting will be. Then allow five working days from the invitation to the meeting, three working days from the meeting to your written outcome, and five working days for an appeal. Those are the starting points in the free disciplinary and grievance timetable, and they are convention rather than law.

If the volume genuinely means you need longer, say so in writing and give a date. Paragraph 33 asks you to avoid unreasonable delay, not to be quick, and a delay you have explained in advance is defensible in a way that silence is not.

The appeal should be heard by someone who has not already been involved. If your business does not contain a second person who fits that description, the order to work down is worth reading before you start rather than after. And if your own conduct is one of the complaints, you cannot be the person who decides it.

One more reason to keep the file. Since 1st October 2026 most tribunal time limits have run for six months from the relevant date rather than three, so the window in which this can turn into a claim is wider than you may remember it being.

What to do this week

Today, acknowledge the letter in writing and read it once for events only. Tomorrow, send your numbered list of complaints and ask them to confirm it and to say what outcome they want. While you are at it, check the letter for any request for records, and if there is one, put the date one month out in your diary now. Book the meeting inside five working days and tell them they can bring a companion.

Then, before the meeting, settle one question: does anything on your list involve a protected characteristic? If it does, that is the moment to take advice.

And do not lean on short service either. For a dismissal taking effect on or after 1st January 2027, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal falls from two years to six months.

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.