Employee grievance and discipline policies and procedures: FOI Release

Information requested

1. How does the Scottish government know how many formal grievances were raised over a particular period of time? Does Scottish government collate details (metadata like subject, date raised, etc) of fformal grievances together in a central file, document or system that can be used to enable later reporting? Alternatively, are all formal grievances kept separate, necessitating a wide-ranging separate search from scratch each time a relevant FOI/parliamentary question is asked?

2. Do any ‘desk instructions’ or part of desk instructions exist that instructs staff how to register/log internal formal grievances once they are received? If so, please provide that section of instructions.

3. Responses to other FOIs/ parliamentary questions ask for information regarding specific types of formal grievances, like “where the main cause was cited as bullying or harassment”. When such specific requests for information are made, does that necessitate each grievance raised over the specified period of time being looked at each time individually, searching for the appropriate theme, or are the cases already pre-labelled in some fashion so that, for instance, only “bullying” formal grievances raised can be quickly found and reported on?

4. When Scottish Government responds to FOIs and parliamentary questions about the number of internal formal grievances raised by its staff over a specific period, does it report the number raised, or the number taken to a formal conclusion? E.g. if 7 were raised over a specific period of time, 3 of them concluded, 1 withdrawn by pursuant, 1 cancelled by the member of staff leaving the organisation, 1 commenced as a formal grievance but later treated/resolved as/or downgraded to an ‘informal’ grievance status, and 1 was not yet concluded by the end of that specific period, would “7” be reported?

Response

Question 1: While line managers in the Scottish Government are encouraged to deal with grievances at an early, informal stage under the Grievance policy, formal complaints are dealt with by HR. The HR team responsible for dealing with formal complaints holds a database where details of the case are recorded. The details held include the date the case was raised and the nature of the complaint. This allows the HR team to report on the number of formal cases raised.

Question 2: Yes desk instructions for using the HR case management database exist. These are included in annex A.

Question 3: While the team can identify the broad nature of the complaint (for example, bullying), a check of individual case files may be required depending on the information requested.

Question 4: The Scottish Government’s response to FOIs will depend on the information requested. Using the example provided, if the SG was asked to provide information about ‘the number of internal formal grievances raised by its staff over a specific period’, we would report all formal grievances recorded regardless of the eventual outcome. You will wish to note that the information provided above relates to the arrangements that apply in the HR team responsible for the core directorates within the Scottish Government (see Annex B for details). HR teams covering other areas may operate different arrangements.

ANNEX B
Core Directorates of the Scottish Government:
Director-General Communities
Director-General Corporate
Director-General Economy
Director-General Education and Justice
Director-General Health and Social Care
Director-General Net Zero
Director-General Scottish Exchequer
Director-General Strategy and External Affairs

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI 202400423427 - Information Released - Annex A

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