Sarah built Watkins & Co from scratch. Ten years, three sites, 35 staff. She’s the founder, the decision-maker, and the person who keeps everything running.
On Monday morning she opened an email from her niece Chloe.
Not a question about her holiday dates. A formal grievance. 13 pages. A timeline going back fourteen months. Bullet points cross-referenced to the ACAS code of practice.
Chloe found ChatGPT.
This is the new reality. AI is helping employees file more structured, more detailed and more legally aware complaints than ever before — without a solicitor, without HR advice, and without warning. Just a prompt and a Monday morning.
Sarah has no HR function. No investigation process. And no idea whether she’s supposed to respond as an employer or as an aunt.
The answer is employer. And the process needs to be right.
✅ 3 THINGS TO DO IF A GRIEVANCE LANDS ON YOUR DESK
1. Acknowledge it in writing within 5 working days — silence is not neutral, it’s a procedural failure.
2. Appoint an investigator with no connection to the complaint — if it involves family, that person cannot be you.
3. Follow your grievance procedure to the letter — if you don’t have one, you need one before you respond.
These three steps will keep you on the right side of the process. But here’s the reality — most business owners get to step two and freeze. Because the investigator you need to appoint is you. And the person you need to investigate is family.
This is exactly the situation People Vision HR was built for.
We conduct independent workplace investigations — properly. We scope it, manage the process, conduct the interviews, review the evidence and produce a report that holds up when someone comes looking. We’ve been doing this for 10 years, across businesses of every shape — including the complicated ones.
Don’t let a 13 page grievance be the thing that catches you out.