Decades of presenting employment law training have taught me that if you ask seasoned HR audiences what they think employees usually want from a grievance, they will generally lie. “Justice“, someone will mutter uncomfortably, or “for the truth to come out”, “a better relationship with their manager” or “to correct a wrong“, all straining every sinew not to say what they actually believe. Eventually someone’s self-control will break — “Money“, one will suddenly blurt, “money and revenge“. Then the tension in the room disappears and we can all stop pretending because everyone knows, surely, that you wouldn’t bring a grievance unless you wanted cash and someone else to suffer.
Pre-empting that expectation, employers sometimes a closed and defensive posture on receipt of a grievance, determined to batter flat any allegation they think might cost them. However, that is not always the reality, at least not until lawyers and unions become involved. Prior to that there may well be a brief point where a more constructive approach may pay dividends, a point before the formal grievance and investigation machinery has groaned into motion and developed a momentum it can be hard to stop.
Go back to that statutory definition of a grievance in Section 3 ERA 1996 – somewhere the employee can “seek redress”. When employers make assumptions about what that redress will be, that then drives the subsequent investigation towards a shock-and-awe carpet-bombing of the employee’s concerns. How...
The Department of Health and Human Services capped off a week of intensive anti-fraud activity with the launching of a six-month healthcare False Claims Act self-disclosure pilot program in partne...