ACAS Early Conciliation process

[Quirkyme]

Afternoon,

Has anyone here gone through the ACAS Early Conciliation process?

Did you involve ACAS while your grievance was under investigation, or did you wait until after? I’m considering the former.

What led you to purse early conciliation and how did it go?

If you initiated early conciliation during the investigation phase, did the agreement reached affect the investigation’s outcome? For example, did the individual you filed the grievance against avoid consequences due to a settlement?

So firstly be careful of timelines if grievance is around disability as you have 3 months less one day to register via Acas.

If your employer is anything like mine they dragged out even starting investigations for months and got their act together when they found out I had registered with Acas, I think they were hoping I would time out.

Can you give some details of what's going on ? I have to say Acas has been amazing with me tbh

Hey, thanks for your comment.

To my knowledge, most of the cases submitted on via the EC process have a timeline of 3 months and less one day from the last incident to be registered, not just disability. They mentioned this on their website and I have also spoken with them directly too.

I get what you mean about lengthy investigations, stalling etc. I'm still got a while 'til that timeline is reached but I ready to submit the form alongside tbh. It's a very substantial grievance.

Mine isn't related to disability, but another protected characteristic.

I'm glad to hear that they were good to you, I haven't seen much about people talking about their experiences with the EC process anywhere. I can give a bit more detail, may I message you directly?

So I submitted to Acas and then got assigned a person handling my case about 2 weeks after roughly.

I submitted a SAR at the same time

It depends what you want to do but in the beginning I just wanted to get a resolution to my work issues and hopefully stay at my company (maybe in another role) but whist this was going on I found out via the SAR just how toxic the company was and thought I need to leave.

They liased with my company and after a few rounds I was offered pretty much a years salary (I'm a high earner) and was pulled into a with out predudice call with hr where they apologise and offered their finial offer which I accepted

Now this took at least a month to get to this point. My company had only started investigating once they found out I had contacted Acas and I still don't have the results of the "grievance".

It's bloody hard but I was lucky to have written proof of what happened. I'm not going to lie this has been the worst process I have ever experienced and I'm still reeling from the Acas person telling me my company has a specific person who handled Acas queries and union being completely unsurprised this has happened and has said that my company deals with a lot of settlements.

Expect to be gaslit and if you haven't already do a SAR - they results maybe very revealing. Mine was.

Hey, thanks for commenting. Perfect.

Indeed, I also submitted a SAR alongside my grievance. Haha, apparently it's "complex" so they've actually extended the deadline of when I'll receive the SAR by.. til June...

I have no doubt what comes back, will be revealing also.

I'm hoping for similar outcomes to yours tbh.

So was your grievance investigation not fully completed then as you reached a settlement? And I'm guessing that the person/people the grievance was against , didn't receive any consequences?

Also, when you agree on a settlement etc, I know a lot involve signing NDAs, but do you just leave with immediate effect and notice periods voided or?

I'm planning to submit my EC form this weekend.

I see, interesting. So you took the money and ran? Haha I work for an LG also, it's put me right off, won't be doing so again.

What is WB?

The person has committed multiple acts of gross misconduct, as in substantial. My grievance is full of evidence and it's the biggest piece of work I think I've ever completed. And I've got a BSc and MSc!

I'm slightly intrigued to see if the SAR details will shock me seeing as my grievance is full of evidence with them doing what they've done in writing, but I will definitely have wine! Because tbh, each time I've thought the situation could not get any worse, it has.

How did you find filling out the form? Any tips? I have begun it but not looked at it all fully. I think I saw someone say elsewhere that it's generally smooth to complete.

@Quirkyme isn't local government fun ?
😭 I have pmed you. WB stands for whistle blowing. Really wouldn't recommend!

Oh I also meant to ask, so is there an option with the form to upload the grievance? Like did you end up sending the grievance at any point to your conciliator? Because the events are many and complex to be really be captured in a phone call without reading through the grievance. Although the person I spoke to at ACAS said most communication with the conciliator is via email?

Yay! I will check my messages.

And oh my it's fun indeed. I would totally recommend working there 😁

I will pm you as I maybe able to help with grievance letter

@Quirkyme in my experience what happens is ACAS start the process and contact your employer. Your employer says currently going through grievance process. ACAS say ok we will put early conciliation on hold until grievance and appeal process exhausted.

This has several benefits:

• you know your ACAS application has been lodged in good time
• your employer knows there is no benefit in trying to delay the grievance
• your employer knows they have to get it right and follow the correct procedure, timelines etc. or an ET will probably find against them
• your employer knows you are serious and they need to be too.
• it can initially piss your employer off as they think you don’t trust them and have jumped the gun but if their honest they know in your shoes they would do exactly the same.

Hello, thank you for laying it out like this. Some of these points were things I had considered too, so these are really helpful.

I'll submit the form this weekend :)

Hi all, a Q. So, on the form one of the Qs is "is the claim against an organisation or a person?" Then says "in most cases the claim should be made against the organisation on the payslip, not the HR or a line manager". So I put my employer's name, and not the actual person whom the grievance is against - the manager?

But here: www.mumsnet.com/talk/work/4488590-Acas-Early-Conciliation-form someone says "the only thing to remember is if it's a discrimination claim and you want to add individuals to the claim you must do it on the ACAS form too otherwise you can't lodge an ET form against them later." But then later says "with naming people: in my claim I wanted to name two individuals who had personally discriminated heavily against me but missed them off the ACAS notification, later down the line we had the opportunity to add them but my solicitor said in practise the employer would just pay any awards against them on their behalf so it makes no difference to them."

So now I'm wondering, if I name my manager instead of the organisation if I should also name the other two people she's colluded with that are also named on the grievance. I think I should.

Those who commented what did you do for yours?

You can do both I.e. name the organisation and the manager & those they colluded with. If I recall correctly Allison Bailey did this, as did Maya Forstater. In Allison’s case she later withdrew the claim against named colleagues.

Normally as part of the process it will become clear who are the respondents. Meant to add it’s easier to remove rather than add.

Perfect, thank you so much for confirming!

Yes, just been through this - discrimination case, company refused to engage with acas/EC and dismissed my grievance. I appealed it, at which point they went ‘we’re still dismissing your grievance but oh whoops actually we are legally obliged to pay you your bonus from last year’ 😀If this experience has taught me anything it’s that HR departments and companies appear to know sweet fuck all about employment law or the equalities act.

What they don’t yet know is that I’m still taking them to a tribunal despite having been finally given my bonus - if they wanted an easy life they should have accepted my very reasonable settlement offer at the EC stage, so 😬

@careerchangenamechange

Yeah I agree. I've deffo seen over the last few years in LG that there are a lot of unskilled HR professionals, and management and higher ups know next to nothing like you say.

It's really brought to the surface when shit hits the fan,

Good on you taking them to tribunal, I hope it works out even better and you rinse them for their money 😁

Hey, me again. How did you find giving details about what happened on the form?

Because there is so much that's happened, it can't really be summarised?

How did you guys tackle it to portray on the form?

I only got back in a few hours ago, so will have to continue with the form tomorrow. I'm going to have to list the multiple events that happened as stated on the grievance.

HR Director here (very highly qualified and experienced and not in LG).

Have dealt with conciliation claims on behalf of employer hundreds of times over the past 20 years. Nobody has got anywhere near a year’s salary as an outcome. Have worked for companies that had a low risk threshold and would settle up to £10k on every case as that was assessed as our cost basis to get to tribunal pre-hearing and others where we’ve refused almost every conciliation and gone to tribunal.

Only ever lost one tribunal case and that was partial due to a manager not documenting a discussion. That’s pretty rare amongst my peers.

Have never had EC continue when a grievance is still being investigated.

Ahhhh 800 characters to share what's happened, really isn't enough!!

Been through alongside a grievance. Finished early conciliation with no settlement as they still hadn’t finished the grievance and delay tactics trying to call my bluff. Put in tribunal claim.

The law is quite complex around discrimination. You’re best off trying to engage a lawyer.

Hey, thanks for your comment. Sorry to hear your employer didn't engage. I'm totally prepared and ready to go through to tribunal should it come to that.

Can I ask, how you found it filling in the form and describing what happened in just 800 characters? I really feel if it's not just one event that occurred that 800 characters really isn't enough. It's quite ridiculous

I have thought about getting a lawyer involved too, instead of tbh. Quite a number of people had suggested it to me, before it escalated as far as it has gone.

Maybe I'll start looking into that as an option sometime this week perhaps.

You don’t have to detail it all. Your detail will be in your grievance. Just outline the main points and note that the rest is in the grievance. ACAS can’t advise you on your claim anyway. I just found it a bit of a check box exercise tbh.

Do note that lawyers can be expensive. You may want to check if you have legal help covered in your building or car insurance. They’ll assess your chances in court and if deemed to be above 51% they’ll represent you and it will be covered.