Any Nhs HR people around?

[maxpower]

I took one of my teams through a restructure last year. It involved changing a member of staffs working pattern. She challenged it during consultation on the basis of a letter she had from my old line manager 5 years ago which looked like it confirmed her existing working pattern as part of her t&c's.

3times I was aassured by HR That we were ok to continue with the proposed changes to her working pattern and I was told they sought legal advice to confirm this.

Employee subsequently took out a grievance against me and as an outcome the employee has been told her grievance has been upheld - although that's not what I was told in the recommendations letter I received.

Do I have any recourse against HR for the incorrect advice I was given more than once? Is it correct that my outcome letter made no mention that the grievance had been upheld?

Tia

I'm not NHS, but can I ask what kind of recourse do you mean?

In terms of whether there's a specific requirement to formally notify someone in an outcome letter whether the grievance was upheld, your grievance procedure ought to include that requirement if so.

I assume no disciplinary action is being taken against you or anything?

I've recently left HR in the NHS so I'll try to help.

Reading your post it sounds like you we're consulting with that member of staff with regards to changing their working pattern? Regardless of whether they had a letter from your previous manager dated five years ago there is no reason you can't consult with somebody with regards changing their working pattern. If they agree to accept the change then all well and good, if they don't then potentially the outcome is you dismiss them and offer them re employment on the new t&cs, obviously there are risks attached to doing that!

At what point did they raise their grievance, was it during the consultation or after the changes had been implemented and what was the basis for their grievance?

In terms of the grievance outcome if you are the manager of the individual and you are expected to implement whatever was upheld, I'm assuming you mean the employee is saying their original working pattern was upheld? Then I would expect that this is communicated to you. Who was the grievance raised with, my experience of grievance policies in the Nhs is it goes up the management line so it would have been heard by your boss, is that correct? If so I would be asking my boss for some feedback as to what was actually upheld as you will be required to implement it.

In terms ?poor HR advice during the original restructure was it always from the same person or was it from different HR people? If it was the same person are they still working there? In terms of moving forward it sounds like your HR person is going to need to work hard to rebuild their relationship with you. I'm not sure what level you are and what level the HR person was but I'd suggest having a chat with your manager in the first instance about how you feel let down by HR and that you think there could be some useful lessons learnt from the whole situation (restructure onwards). Suggest to your mgr that you think some form of lessons learnt exercise would be useful involving HR, staff side (I'm assuming the unions were involved in the consultation process, they usually are in the nhs), you and your manager. The purpose of which isn't to point fingers but to learn so the same thing doesn't happen again.