Employee complaint process flowchart (grievance procedure)

What the employee complaint process flowchart (grievance procedure) process is

An employee complaint process, more often written down as a grievance procedure, is the documented route an internal complaint takes from the moment it is raised to the moment the record is closed and retained. Most organisations have the stages sitting somewhere in a handbook. What the handbook usually leaves out is the routing: who receives the complaint when it is about the person who would normally receive it, at what point the informal stage stops, who is allowed to decide the outcome, and who hears an appeal.

The version mapped below runs across five lanes. The Employee lane holds the four points where the employee actually controls the flow: raising the complaint, judging whether the informal outcome is acceptable, submitting the formal grievance, and deciding whether to appeal. The Line manager lane covers first receipt, the informal meeting, and the remedy when a grievance is upheld. HR logs and acknowledges, appoints the investigator, chairs the hearing and issues the written outcome. Investigator is a separate lane from HR on purpose, because impartiality is the first thing an appeal tests. Senior management appears exactly twice: on the duty-of-care escalation and on the appeal.

Two decisions carry most of the risk. 'Grievance concerns the line manager?' sits at the very start, because a procedure whose only entry point is the line manager quietly fails every complaint about a line manager. 'Whistleblowing or safeguarding risk?' sits inside the investigation, because some complaints are not only about the individual's own treatment. When one raises wrongdoing, a safety risk or a safeguarding concern, it needs a route to senior management that runs alongside the grievance rather than waiting on its outcome.

What this flowchart covers

In this template

• Five lanes (Employee, Line manager, HR, Investigator, Senior management) across six phases: Raising, Informal stage, Formal grievance, Investigation, Hearing and outcome, and Appeal and closure.
• Two entry routes from the opening decision 'Grievance concerns the line manager?': the No branch goes to the line manager, the Yes branch goes straight to HR, and both converge on the same logged, written acknowledgement.
• An informal stage with a real exit: 'Resolved informally?' either closes and retains the record or sends the employee to 'Submit a formal written grievance', so nothing is left sitting in an informal limbo.
• Investigation held separately from HR: HR appoints an impartial investigator, who gathers evidence, interviews witnesses and issues the investigation report the hearing is based on.
• A duty-of-care branch inside the investigation: 'Whistleblowing or safeguarding risk?' escalates to senior management and then rejoins the main flow, so a serious concern does not depend on how the grievance itself is decided.
• Outcome and appeal: the hearing feeds 'Grievance upheld?', an upheld grievance gets an agreed remedy and follow-up actions, every outcome is issued in writing with appeal rights, and an appeal is heard by senior management before the record is closed and retained.

When to use this template

• You are writing or revising a grievance procedure and want the routing and hand-offs agreed before anyone drafts the policy wording.
• Complaints arrive by email, in one-to-ones and through HR, and nobody can say which of them are formal grievances or who currently owns them.
• A complaint has been raised about a line manager and the existing procedure has no route around that manager.
• Managers escalate inconsistently (some resolve everything informally, others pass every complaint to HR) and you need one page showing where the line sits.
• You need to show an adviser, an auditor or an employee representative body that the process includes an impartial investigation and a genuine right of appeal.

How it works

1. Rename the lanes to your real roles

   Replace Employee, Line manager, HR, Investigator and Senior management with the functions that exist in your organisation. Smaller employers usually merge HR and Investigator, in which case state explicitly who investigates when HR is itself involved in the complaint. Larger organisations often split HR into a case handler and a hearing chair. Keep the Employee lane even though it holds only four nodes: it shows every point where the employee is waiting for a response.

2. Name the alternative recipient on the opening branch

   'Grievance concerns the line manager?' is only useful if the Yes branch names someone reachable. Put a role and a contact route on it — an HR business partner, the manager's manager, a designated senior contact — and repeat it in the handbook. A route that exists only on the diagram will not be used by the person who needs it.

3. Set your acknowledgement and response timescales

   Add real numbers to 'Log and acknowledge in writing', to the hearing and to the outcome letter, and state where each clock starts. Anchoring to the logged receipt date rather than to when someone opens the file is what makes the commitment measurable, and it is the figure people will quote back to you later.

4. Write the criteria behind the whistleblowing branch

   'Whistleblowing or safeguarding risk?' needs objective triggers: risk of harm to a person, a legal or regulatory breach, a safeguarding concern, or an allegation against someone senior enough that normal escalation is compromised. Link the Yes branch to your whistleblowing and safeguarding policies so the documents cannot drift apart.

5. Decide who chairs the hearing and who hears the appeal

   An appeal is worthless if it is decided by the person who made the original decision. Name a chair for 'Hold the grievance hearing' and a different, ideally more senior, decision-maker for 'Hear the appeal and decide', and record the reasoning on both. Confirm the employee's right to be accompanied in the meeting invitation itself, not only in the policy.

6. Set the retention period, then publish the version

   Decide how long grievance papers are kept and where the restricted file lives, and agree both with whoever owns data protection. Then approve and date the map as the version your written procedure refers to. If an outcome is disputed later, what matters is which version was in force at the time, so keep the revision history rather than editing in place.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an informal complaint and a formal grievance?

An informal complaint is a conversation aimed at fixing the problem quickly, usually with the line manager and without an investigation. A formal grievance is a written statement that starts a defined procedure: an investigation, a hearing, a written outcome and a right of appeal. In this chart the two are separated by the 'Resolved informally?' decision, and the No branch is where the employee submits the grievance in writing and the process changes character. Employees should not be forced to exhaust the informal route first — serious allegations such as bullying, harassment or discrimination normally go straight to the formal stage, and that exception is worth writing into the procedure.

What happens if the complaint is about the employee's own line manager?

The procedure needs a second entry point, which is what the opening 'Grievance concerns the line manager?' decision provides. The Yes branch sends the grievance directly to HR; in other organisations it might go to the manager's manager or a named senior contact. It then joins the same logged acknowledgement as any other complaint, so the routing changes but the timescales and the record do not. The same principle applies further along: the informal meeting should be facilitated by an impartial manager rather than the person complained about, and the investigator and the appeal decision-maker must both have been uninvolved in the events.

How long should an employee complaint take?

There is no single fixed timetable; the expectation is that the employer deals with the matter promptly and without unreasonable delay. In the UK the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures sets that expectation, and an employment tribunal can adjust compensation by up to 25% where an employer has unreasonably failed to follow it. Common practice is to acknowledge within about five working days, hold the hearing within one to two weeks of the written grievance, and confirm the outcome in writing within roughly a week of the hearing. Whatever figures you settle on, put them on the chart and start the clock from the logged receipt date rather than from when someone opens the file.

When does an employee complaint become a whistleblowing matter?

A grievance is normally about the employee's own treatment. It becomes a whistleblowing matter when the disclosure concerns wrongdoing that goes wider — a criminal offence, a breach of a legal obligation, a health and safety danger, environmental damage, or the concealment of any of these — and the person raising it reasonably believes the disclosure is in the public interest. In the UK that distinction decides whether the protections introduced by the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 apply. The two are not mutually exclusive: one complaint can be both, which is why the chart escalates under the duty of care to senior management and then returns to the investigation rather than swapping the grievance for a different process.