Grievance hearing invitation letter template

29th September 2026

A grievance letter lands on your desk and the temptation is to answer it. Do not. A grievance is a process, and the first thing it needs is a meeting, arranged promptly, by somebody who is not the subject of the complaint.

Here is the letter that arranges it, and the rules it has to satisfy. Note one difference from a disciplinary at the outset: the right to be accompanied does not automatically apply to every grievance meeting, and the reason is worth understanding before you write.

The template

The accompaniment right is narrower here than in a disciplinary

At a disciplinary hearing the statutory right to be accompanied applies whenever the meeting could result in a warning or other disciplinary action. At a grievance meeting it is narrower. Section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999 attaches the right to a meeting that concerns the performance of a duty by an employer in relation to a worker, and paragraph 35 of the Acas Code repeats that limit.

In practice most grievances worth holding a meeting about do concern a duty owed to the worker: how they have been treated, their pay, their hours, a failure to deal with something. A complaint about a colleague’s timekeeping that has nothing to do with the complainant may not.

The practical advice is simple. Do not spend your afternoon deciding which side of that line a grievance falls on. Allow the companion anyway. Nothing stops you being more generous than the statute, refusing is the kind of decision that reads badly later, and the argument costs you more than the concession.

Not the person they are complaining about

Paragraph 32 of the Code expects the grievance to go to a manager who is not the subject of it. That sounds obvious and is routinely got wrong in small businesses, where the person complained about is often the only manager there is.

If that is your situation, be honest about it in the letter rather than quietly hearing it yourself. Say who will hear it and why, and consider whether somebody outside the usual line, a director, a non executive, or an external HR adviser, can take it instead. A grievance heard by its own subject is not a grievance procedure, and a tribunal reading the file will see that immediately.

Promptly, and what that means

Paragraph 33 asks you to arrange the meeting without unreasonable delay after the grievance is received. There is no number attached to it, which means a tribunal looks at what you did and why.

Delay is the most common complaint about grievance handling and the easiest to avoid. If you cannot meet quickly, because the person who should hear it is away or because you need to gather something first, write and say so with a date. An acknowledged delay with a reason is a different thing from silence, and silence is what people escalate.

Answer it in writing, and offer the appeal

Paragraph 40 requires the decision to be communicated to the employee in writing, without unreasonable delay, along with what action you intend to take. Paragraphs 41 to 45 then give them a right of appeal, to be heard where possible by a manager who has not dealt with the case, with the same right to be accompanied and the same requirement to confirm the outcome in writing.

Say in the invitation that an appeal will be available. It costs a sentence and it tells the employee that the process has a proper end, which makes the meeting itself calmer.

Under section 207A of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 a tribunal can increase an award by up to 25 per cent for an unreasonable failure to follow the Code, and the grievance sections of the Code are as capable of generating that uplift as the disciplinary ones.

Two things that turn a grievance into something worse

Treating it as a performance problem. An employee who raises a grievance and then finds themselves in a capability process has a detriment claim forming, and if the grievance concerned discrimination or a protected disclosure it is a serious one. If there is a genuine performance issue that predates the grievance, document that it predates it.

Running it alongside a disciplinary without thinking. Where an employee raises a grievance during a disciplinary process, the Code allows the disciplinary to be paused while the grievance is dealt with, or the two to be handled together where they are related. Choose deliberately and record the choice. What happens when someone resigns mid process covers the related question of a process that gets interrupted.

If you would rather not start from a blank page

Tarn.hr asks what the grievance is about, whether it names a manager, whether confidentiality has been requested and whether an investigation is needed, then drafts the acknowledgement, this invitation, an investigation plan and the outcome letter. The first situation is free and there is no card required.

This is guidance rather than legal advice. Where a grievance alleges discrimination, harassment or whistleblowing, take advice from an employment solicitor before you respond to it.

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.