Work related - grievance

[Holidaymodeon]

Hi, posting here for traffic!
Writing a grievance, ACAS has advised it but won’t read it prior to sending.
Can’t go to citizens advice as it is linked to my work…
is there a legitimate organisation who will read my grievance prior to sending?
it is long and covers so many issues in multiple areas, primarily disability discrimination, bullying and poor, possibly illegal practices but I am conscious I am coming from a place of high stress and emotion as well as sick with pain and don’t want to write a sprawling document that might be overkill and not taken seriously.
I’m neurodivergent and have been told I give too much info and find it really hard to pare down whilst maintaining the importance of the grievance.

thank you

The promptitutes are out in force today.

So for some perspective - racial discrimination claim, member wanted £40k. At point of ACAS they were offered 10% of that and the solicitors would not have taken the case. That’s where it was settled.

another case is heading through tribunal but that one is being managed outside the union because the likelihood is that there is on a 15-20% chance of success. That’s a disability claim too.

i know of only one case where the payment was in The tens of thousands - that was settled through an agreement but the employers had acted so unbelievably unreasonably and publicly that they absolutely did not want to go to tribunal as the reputational damage would have been extensive.

so again do your research

An employment law solicitor would advise. Might be a good investment. I have actually done this and she was good at keeping the important stuff and getting rid of the waffle. Beware of a need to vent.

I think try and minimise emotions and things that aren't concrete facts.

Try and bunch the grievances into categories. So disability, misconduct, bullying, etc. then look at each and work out on turn if they are all serious enough to include.

The reputational damage here would be huge, the public ramifications would be massive, there’s been serious claims in the past prompting rebrands etc

They just told me to follow the process , jcp disability adviser advised strongly against resigning and re-referred me to acas which is where I am now, I don’t think they are allowed to advise either way, just give guidance which I’m following

Are you maybe looking more for a settlement agreement for them to let you go? Are you looking to discuss this with your employer an a ‘without prejudice’ basis? I’m in a different area of law. If you can afford it I’d definitely recommend legal advice. I know three different employment lawyers at different firms, who are all extremely good. I don’t know what their fees would be but perhaps someone could give you initial advice for a modest cost (this is still likely to be 2-3 hours work so maybe in the region of 750 plus vat and I don’t know if that’s something you could afford given you’re about to go on ssp). I work with a disability and some employers are awful. Occ Health can also be very much ill informed and the nurse I spoke to their knew nothing of my condition and just assumed points which were about 30 years out of date and only backed down when I asked for full credential to pass to my consultant as her advice differed to his.

I hope you can get this sorted.

I have asked directly for a different manager: no, no reason given but the other manager has told me in confidence that toxic boss is also fobbing the new manager off with work whilst making toxic boss’s job look far bigger than it is so I believe that’s why they are staying as my line manager, obviously I can’t put all that in a grievance but I will state my request for a different boss was refused and as written above, I’ve gone above my boss’s head and been ignored.
my boss has emailed me twenty times during my sickness period too , every time I see the name my anxiety spikes hugely

You can ask AI to keep to a specific number of pages. So you can say "reword the following document into a 3-page document". But you do have to edit carefully afterwards. I write up my work an ask it to be written in non-technical language. I have to carefully edit to check the meaning I have intended comes across.

To the OP - two or three pages has to be enough for a main letter. If that does not include all of your information, then add it as appendices. So you say "see appendix 3" and add your screenshots or other evidence. You can have multiple appendices but only the succinct letter.

Good luck

They won’t help as the grievance has already started and unions are clear they don’t support new members with existing cases.

You need a union. I was a member of USDAW and they were great while i was battling work, find one specific to your line of work. They can advise you on legalities, discrimination, guide you through the whole process and most importantly they will accompany you to any grievance meetings. Having someone in my corner who knew all the details was a huge help to me.

OP I’ve been a disability outreach worker for twenty years and have experience with disability based complaints against employers, including the drafting and contextualising of issues. I can understand that you don’t want to go into detail on a public forum, so if you want to PM me with a brief outline of the problem I may be able to help you to prioritise the issues, put them into context and keep things as brief and to the point as possible.

ETA - if you have the resources, putting your grievances in front of a solicitor specialised in employment law would help.

You've said a couple of times that they are continuously breaking the law. Is there a whistleblowers route you could take?

What is a promptitute and why does it feel like an insult.

I am presuming it is in reference to saying use chat GPT but given the person needed advice and I am not able to give it, the one quick solution is to put in all of the grievance into a document and submit this, but utilise AI to give a short summary because it is useful.

im going to guess you don’t work for a large company with a really good AI model, if you did you would realise that you can utilise it to do a lot of the leg work for you, and edit context and tweak responses and tone to ensure the output is what is needed. Did you hate Google 20 years ago too?

This is an ongoing issue - no union will help with a pre-existing problem.

I have given AI tools multiple opportunities and not once has it delivered. There are documented impacts on critical skills humans need to have even from the lightest use. It amazes me that humans are so prepared to outsource their thinking to a hyped up text prediction tool. It hallucinates, cannot understand nuance and generally does a shit job whilst eroding actual human intelligence. I am willing to be open minded but when colleagues start sending me AI polished versions of stuff I have written and it contains none of the important stuff but adds things that were never there, I’ll continue preferring actual intelligences over climate destroying AI slop machines.

And yes, a promptitute is someone that pushes AI constantly. It’s even worse when you do it to advise in areas you have no knowledge of yourself.

When you have a disability which is exacerbated by poor practice in your workplace it isn’t as simple as just leave and get another job.
i am limited in what I can do anyway and this has forced further limitations, currently I am unable to apply for many jobs id have easily got before this

Funny. My boss is very proud of the way he ‘just bunged it into ai, do you want to know what it said?’

I’m not sure, it’s a complex set up, similar to a franchise , the people I’d whistle blow to are the same people currently ignoring my needs, I could take it far higher to an ombudsman type thing but not sure they’d read it if I haven’t followed all due process first

Thank you, I will if that’s ok, might not be today thou?
I really appreciate the offers on here and don’t want to burden anyone x

There is the disability law service, though not sure if they would do this
https://dls.org.uk/

If not, you may find somewhere local to you who will here https://advicelocal.uk/disability-social-care

And general advice in case helpful here
https://www.advicenow.org.uk/get-help/employment

Thank you, if you’re happy to recommend solicitors I will consider it. My boss found the occ health team on Google stating ‘they have good reviews and are local’.
so far they have cancelled the appointment the night before and then emailed me with a new date and to refer to the teams link but no actual Teams link, they arrange all the appointments with my boss who then harangues me daily to ‘check your spam folder’ .
the umbrella (national) company has their own hr and occ health etc. it for whatever reason I am not allowed to use it

This is the kind of thing I came for! Thank you 🤩 some really lovely people on here 😍😍😍

My grievance was upheld. It called one of the "top" governors to account and he resigned as soon as I submitted it.

Similar to @Holidaymodeon it was a big fish/small pond scenario. I was too terrified to shop locally for months (nervous for a few years actually, until recently when I stopped ducking behing displays and looked at him full in the face with a steady gaze 😐✊🏻).

Fortunately, the idiot had recorded himself bullying me.

I got a modest settlement which covered the savings I'd had to use during the process.

Yeah but that’s not what I did. I advised to use the information she has, but to add a bullet pointed lost at the front provided by ai.

anyone who is stupid enough to add an ai sheet to the beginning of their document without ensuring the summary is accurate and reflects what they want to say probably isn’t even capable enough of writing one of their own so no harm no foul.

I use ai constantly in my role in banking, it is a complementary tool, not a replacement for critical thinking. I feed it documents, and then ask it to answer questions, I then converse with it to achieve the right results by adding context to what it is saying, giving it additional data points and things to consider. Anyone just sending a first draft isn’t using it properly, I suspect that this is your experience with your colleagues, it is with a lot of mine too. What you cannot deny though is that when used properly AI can improve the quality of your work, and allow you to focus on improving and amending the output detail while it does the bulkier block writing that forms the base.