Types of grievances in the workplace, with examples

A grievance is a formal complaint an employee raises about their treatment at work. The most common types are bullying and harassment, discrimination, pay and benefits disputes, working conditions, favoritism, and interpersonal conflict. This guide describes UK practice, where the Acas Code of Practice sets the standard employers are expected to follow.

Recognizing which type of grievance you are dealing with is the first step to handling it consistently, because different types call for different investigation approaches even when the formal procedure stays the same.

What counts as a grievance?

A complaint becomes a grievance the moment an employee wants it addressed through the organization's formal process rather than resolved in a conversation. A one-off remark about a heavy workload is a complaint. A written statement that the workload has been unmanageable for three months and no one has acted on it is a grievance.

Bullying and harassment

Bullying covers repeated, unwanted behavior that undermines, humiliates, or intimidates an employee. Harassment is narrower and defined in law: section 26 of the Equality Act 2010 covers unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic such as age, sex, race, disability, or religion, which violates a person's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment.

Both are among the most common employee grievance examples, and both usually need a more thorough investigation than a single-incident complaint, since the pattern of behavior over time is often the evidence itself. For a closer look at this category, see our guide to workplace harassment, and our guide on what to do when an employee reports harassment for how to handle the first 48 hours.

Discrimination

Discrimination grievances involve an employee being treated less favorably because of a protected characteristic, whether in pay, promotion, workload, or day-to-day treatment. Any employee can take any grievance straight to the formal route, so that is not what makes these cases distinctive. What makes them distinctive is the exposure behind them: the same facts can support a tribunal claim under the Equality Act, so the quality of the investigation matters well beyond the grievance outcome.

Pay and benefits disputes

Disagreements over pay, bonuses, overtime, or benefits are common workplace grievances, particularly when an employee believes they have been paid differently from a colleague doing similar work. These grievances usually come with a paper trail (contracts, pay records, comparator roles) which can make them faster to investigate than interpersonal cases, though no less serious to the employee raising them.

Working conditions

Grievances about working conditions cover physical safety, workload, scheduling, and the general environment an employee is expected to work in. A grievance about being consistently rostered for shifts that conflict with childcare responsibilities falls here, as does a complaint about unsafe equipment that was flagged and never fixed.

Favoritism

Favoritism grievances arise when an employee believes a manager treats one team member more favorably than others in assignments, opportunities, or day-to-day treatment, without a defensible reason for the difference. These are harder to investigate than they sound. The evidence is usually a pattern of small decisions rather than one incident, and the manager involved may not recognize the pattern themselves.

Interpersonal conflict

Not every grievance involves a manager. Conflict between colleagues, personality clashes, disputes over how work gets divided, or a breakdown in a working relationship can all escalate into a formal grievance when informal resolution has not worked. These cases often benefit most from mediation, since the goal is usually to restore a working relationship rather than to establish who was right.

Is a complaint the same as a grievance?

Not quite. A complaint is any expression of dissatisfaction, raised however informally. A grievance is a complaint the employee has chosen to put through the organization's formal grievance procedure, typically in writing. The distinction determines which process applies and what rights come with it, including the right to be accompanied at a grievance meeting. Our guide to formal vs informal grievances covers exactly where that line sits.

Is whistleblowing a type of grievance?

No, though the two arrive through the same door often enough that it is worth being clear. A grievance is about how an employee has been treated. Whistleblowing is a disclosure about wrongdoing that affects other people: fraud, a safety risk, a breach of the law. The protections are different, the process is usually different, and Acas lists whistleblowing among the issues that should go straight to the formal route rather than an informal conversation.

One message can contain both, which is where most organizations get caught out. An employee who reports that a colleague is falsifying safety records, and that their manager sidelined them for saying so, has raised a whistleblowing disclosure and a grievance in the same email. Our guide to whistleblowing covers how the two differ and why the difference matters for how you route the case, and our whistleblowing software page shows how both routes run through one intake without the reporter having to pick the right category first.

One system for every type of grievance

Bullying, pay disputes, favoritism, and interpersonal conflict rarely arrive labeled as such. They come in as a message, an email, or a hallway conversation, and someone in HR has to work out what type of grievance it actually is before deciding how to handle it.

With SpeakUp Report, conditional intake questions adapt to the category an employee selects, so your team captures the right details from the start, whatever the case turns out to be. See the full process on the HR grievance software page, or read how to run the grievance procedure itself, step by step.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a grievance?

A grievance is a formal complaint about treatment at work that an employee raises through an organization's grievance procedure, usually in writing, rather than resolving it informally. It becomes a grievance at the point the employee wants it addressed formally, not simply because the issue is serious.

What are the most common workplace grievances?

Bullying and harassment, discrimination, pay and benefits disputes, working conditions, favoritism, and interpersonal conflict between colleagues are the categories that come up most often across organizations of every size.

Is a complaint the same as a grievance?

‍ No. A complaint can be raised informally and resolved with a conversation. A grievance is a complaint an employee has chosen to put through the formal procedure, which brings specific rights, including the right to a grievance meeting and the right to appeal the outcome.

What is the difference between a grievance and whistleblowing?

A grievance concerns how an employee has been treated at work. Whistleblowing is a disclosure about wrongdoing that affects others, such as fraud or a safety risk. They carry different protections and usually follow different processes, and a single report can contain both.