Employee grievance process flowchart (concern raised to appeal outcome)
Employee grievance process flowchart: triage into the right procedure, an informal attempt, written grievance, impartial investigation, a hearing with a companion, an outcome letter, and an appeal heard by a different manager.
What the employee grievance process flowchart (concern raised to appeal outcome) process is
Almost every employer has a written grievance procedure, and almost none of them fail at the stage people expect. The written grievance arrives, somebody investigates, a meeting happens. What goes wrong is at the edges. The same manager investigates the complaint, chairs the hearing and decides the outcome, so the appeal is heard by the person who has already made up their mind, or by nobody at all. Timescales are written as "without unreasonable delay" and then measured by no one, so a grievance sits for six weeks while the employee is still at work, still sitting opposite the person they complained about. The informal stage gets used as a filter (a way of keeping things off the record) rather than as a genuine attempt to fix something quickly. Notes are not taken, so the hearing is reconstructed from memory months later, usually by whichever side kept a diary. Outcomes get delivered in a conversation, which leaves nothing to appeal against and nothing to show anybody afterwards, and the appeal decision is often never written down at all. The list of stages is rarely the problem. The routing, the clock and the separation of roles are.
The closest page to this one is the employee complaint process at /templates/employee-complaint-process, and the line between them is worth stating plainly, because both charts contain a hearing. That page is about routing: it opens on whether the grievance concerns the line manager so there is a second way in, it logs and acknowledges, and it carries a duty-of-care branch that escalates a whistleblowing or safeguarding risk to senior management and then rejoins the same investigation. It is drawn to get a complaint to the right people. This page is drawn around the conduct of the case once there is one: who investigates, who chairs, who hears the appeal, and what happens when those turn out to be the same person. Where the employer is the party bringing the case, the mirror procedure is at /templates/employee-disciplinary-process, and the two belong together, because a grievance raised inside a live disciplinary is one of the branches here. A concern about an accident, a near miss or an unsafe practice is not a grievance and belongs in the reporting chain at /templates/workplace-incident-reporting-process. A declared interest, a second job or an undisclosed relationship between a manager and a direct report is handled at /templates/conflict-of-interest-review-process.
Three things most written procedures leave implicit are drawn here. "Which procedure covers the concern?" sits before the informal stage, because whistleblowing and dignity-at-work routes carry different legal protections, a different pool of investigators and different support, and a procedure that discovers this at the hearing has already gone wrong; both of those branches leave the chart rather than escalating inside it. "Disciplinary already under way?" is a real branch rather than a footnote: a grievance raised during a disciplinary case may mean pausing the disciplinary, or hearing both matters together, and assuming it is always a delaying tactic is expensive. The hearing and the appeal then sit in two separate lanes, Hearing manager and Appeal manager, because an appeal decided by the person who made the original decision is not an appeal. The chart also admits that hearings do not always finish in one sitting: "Adjourn for further enquiry?" loops back to the investigator, which is what actually happens when an employee produces a document or names a witness nobody had spoken to. And both answers to "Is the appeal upheld?" run through "Confirm the appeal decision in writing", because an employee who loses an appeal is entitled to know why in a document they can keep.
What this flowchart covers
In this template
- Six swimlanes (Employee, Line manager, HR, Investigating officer, Hearing manager, Appeal manager) laid across six phases: Concern raised, Informal resolution, Formal grievance, Investigation, Hearing and outcome, and Appeal and retention.
- A triage decision, "Which procedure covers the concern?", that sends a protected disclosure and a bullying or harassment allegation out of the grievance route before the informal stage starts, rather than escalating them part-way through it.
- An informal stage with a real exit: "Settled at the informal stage?" either finishes the matter at "Closed by informal agreement" or sends the employee on to "Submit the grievance in writing".
- "Disciplinary already under way?" answered before the timetable is set, with the Yes branch leaving the process at "Heard alongside the disciplinary case" instead of the same facts being handled twice.
- An investigation run by someone outside the dispute ("Appoint an uninvolved investigator", "Collect evidence and interview those involved", "Write up the investigation findings") which the hearing can send back through "Adjourn for further enquiry?".
- Separate hearing and appeal decision-makers: "Is the grievance upheld?" allows a partial finding, every outcome leaves through "Send the outcome letter with appeal rights", and an appeal that reaches "Is the appeal upheld?" ends at "Confirm the appeal decision in writing" from a manager who took no part in the first decision.
When to use this template
- You are rewriting a grievance procedure and want the routing, the timescales and the separation of roles agreed before anybody drafts the policy wording.
- Your procedure mentions an appeal but never names an appeal manager, and in practice the person who decided the outcome has been hearing the appeals against it.
- Grievances keep arriving part-way through disciplinary cases and nobody can say whether the disciplinary should pause, run on, or be heard together with the grievance.
- Managers are settling complaints informally with no record at all, and you need the point at which a matter becomes formal, dated and written down to be visible on one page.
- You are briefing new managers or an employee representative body and want the right to be accompanied, the investigation and the appeal taught from a single diagram.
How it works
Rename the lanes to your own structure
Replace Employee, Line manager, HR, Investigating officer, Hearing manager and Appeal manager with the roles you really have. The last two matter most: keep them apart even where the same job title fills both on different cases, because the chart is what stops one person doing both on the same case. If you have no investigating officer to spare, name the arrangement you would fall back on — a manager borrowed from another site, a trained investigator from a trade body, or an external one — and say who investigates when HR is itself named in the grievance.
Put figures on the timetable
"Acknowledge and set the timetable" is inert until it carries numbers, and there are four of them: acknowledgement, hearing, outcome letter, appeal window. Around five working days, one to two weeks from the written grievance, a week from the hearing, and five working days to appeal are the usual shapes. The figures matter less than saying where each clock starts and who is watching it. Then add the one most procedures forget: how long an adjournment under "Adjourn for further enquiry?" may run before the employee has to be written to again.
Write down the triage criteria
"Which procedure covers the concern?" needs objective triggers, not judgement in the moment. In the UK a protected disclosure is one the worker reasonably believes is in the public interest and which concerns a criminal offence, a failure to meet a legal obligation, a miscarriage of justice, a danger to health or safety, damage to the environment, or the deliberate concealment of any of those. An allegation of bullying, harassment, discrimination or sexual harassment points at dignity at work. Say who decides, and say what happens when a concern is plainly both, because that is the common case.
Define what impartial means in your organisation
Set a written test for "Appoint an uninvolved investigator": no involvement in the events, no line-management relationship with anyone named, and no part in deciding the outcome. Decide who appoints, who may object and on what grounds. Then decide what the investigator produces — a factual report with the evidence attached, not a recommendation on the outcome, unless you have deliberately chosen otherwise and told the employee so. Record why the person appointed is impartial at the moment of appointment; reconstructing that reasoning after an appeal has been lodged never reads well to anyone.
Settle the grievance-during-disciplinary rule now
The Yes branch of "Disciplinary already under way?" is the one people improvise, badly. Decide in advance who makes the call, what makes two matters related, and what the employee is told. Where the grievance attacks the disciplinary itself, the safe default is to pause and deal with the grievance first, because the disciplinary decision is unsafe until you have. Where the two are genuinely unrelated, run them in parallel with different decision-makers. Either way, confirm the choice in writing at the time and give revised dates for both cases.
Set retention, walk it through, then publish a version
Agree how long the grievance file is kept and who may open it with whoever owns data protection; these papers often hold special category data, and the appeal file usually holds more of it than the original grievance did. Then walk the finished chart through with a manager who has actually chaired a hearing, an HR case handler and a union or employee representative, and correct it to what they do rather than to what the handbook says. Publish that revision and keep the ones it replaces: when a closed case is reopened years later, the only question that matters is which chart the handlers were following.
Frequently asked questions
What are the steps in an employee grievance process?
Raise the concern, attempt an informal resolution where that is appropriate, submit the grievance in writing, acknowledge it and set a timetable, appoint an investigator who had no part in the events, collect the evidence and interview everyone involved, write up the findings, invite the employee to a hearing and tell them they may be accompanied, hold the hearing, decide whether the grievance is upheld in whole, in part or not at all, confirm the outcome in writing with the right of appeal, hear any appeal by a different and uninvolved manager, confirm the appeal decision in writing, and retain the file. In the UK that spine comes from the Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, which is not itself law but is what an employment tribunal measures the parties against: it can adjust compensation by up to 25% in either direction where one side has unreasonably ignored it. The steps are rarely what fails. The appeal and the clock are.
How is this different from the employee complaint process flowchart?
Both cover a grievance and both contain a hearing, so the difference is in what each chart is drawn to settle. The employee complaint process at /templates/employee-complaint-process is about routing: it opens by asking whether the grievance concerns the line manager, so a complaint about the usual recipient still has a way in, it logs and acknowledges centrally, and it carries a duty-of-care branch that escalates a whistleblowing or safeguarding risk to senior management and then rejoins the same investigation. Use it when complaints arrive by five different routes and nobody can say who owns them. This page is about the conduct of the case: three decision-making roles held apart in their own lanes, a triage that sends whistleblowing and dignity-at-work concerns out of the procedure instead of escalating them inside it, an adjournment that sends the hearing back to the investigator, and a grievance raised during a live disciplinary drawn as a branch rather than left as a paragraph. Use it when one manager ends up doing all of it. Publishing both and linking them is normal.
Who should hear a grievance appeal?
Somebody who took no part in the original decision, and wherever possible somebody more senior than the manager who made it. That is the point of the separate Appeal manager lane in this chart: an appeal decided by the person who wrote the outcome letter is a formality, and it is one of the first things an adviser or a tribunal will look at. In a small organisation there may be nobody more senior, in which case use a different manager of equal standing, a director who has been kept out of the case, or an external HR consultant or independent person, and say in the procedure that this is what you will do. An appeal is also not automatically a rehearing of everything. Ask the employee to set out what they say was wrong with the outcome, then decide whether to review the decision on those grounds or hear the matter afresh, and tell them which you are doing before the hearing rather than after it.
Can an employee bring someone to a grievance hearing?
In the UK a worker has a statutory right to be accompanied at a grievance hearing that concerns a duty owed by the employer to them, and there is no qualifying period, so it applies from the first day. The companion may be a colleague, a trade union official, or a trade union representative certified by their union as trained for the role. At the hearing the companion may put the employee's case, sum it up and respond on their behalf to views expressed, and may confer with them during the meeting, but is not there to answer questions on their behalf. If the chosen companion cannot make the date, the employee may propose an alternative, and where that is reasonable and falls within five working days of the original the employer has to postpone to it; failing to is a complaint in its own right, worth up to two weeks' pay. Put all of this in the invitation letter rather than leaving it in the handbook, because the letter is the document people actually read.
What happens if a grievance is raised during a disciplinary process?
It has to be dealt with, not parked. The Acas Code contemplates temporarily suspending the disciplinary process to deal with the grievance, and dealing with the two concurrently where they are related. In practice the deciding question is whether the grievance attacks the disciplinary itself. If the employee says the allegation is retaliation, or that the investigating manager is the source of the problem, pause and resolve the grievance first, because the disciplinary decision is unsafe until you have. If the matters are genuinely unrelated — a pay dispute raised while a conduct case runs — appoint different decision-makers and run them in parallel. Either way, confirm the choice in writing at the time, with revised dates for both cases. In this chart the branch leaves at "Heard alongside the disciplinary case", which hands over to /templates/employee-disciplinary-process rather than duplicating the same facts in two files.