Working at a responsible position within a company will have you come across many instances where you will be required to respond to employees’ grievances. If an employee has reached out to you regarding a grievance, it is your job to investigate the problem and resolve it as soon as possible. But your job does not end at resolving an issue – you also have to respond to the grievance letter that you had originally received.
Your response to a grievance letter should be well thought out. You need to lay the facts out in front of you before you begin writing. What was the original grievance? What results did you get once you investigated the complaint? Was it in favor of the employee who wrote it or the one against whom it was written? What did the grievance addressing committee conclude? All these questions will help you decide how to word your response to the grievance letter.
A grievance meeting is usually conducted with both parties present so the verdict might be obvious to both. However, you might want to respond officially especially if neither party was present and the verdict was passed between you and other members of the grievance committee. Here is a sample response to a grievance letter that you can look into before writing one yourself:
Sample Response to Grievance Letter
January 20, 2015
Mr. Axel Henderson
Project Manager
Yersuma Corp
100 Hill Road
Greenville, MI 17363
Dear Mr. Henderson:
This is in response to the letter you wrote to me on December 5, 2015, detailing a grievance with Ms. Jemima Kohler (Project Director). We would like to inform you that upon investigating the circumstances of your grievance and associated evidence, we have come to a conclusion which we would like to share with you here.
You mentioned that you were harassed by Ms. Kohler on three occasions when you provided your input in certain modules of the project that you are both working on. We have spoken to Ms. Kohler and other staff members who were present on all three occasions, all of whom have denied that anything such thing happened. As per one of the staff members, Ms. Kohler was “merely practicing her authority on an insubordinate employee and was well within her means to do so.”
Please remember that the ability to work in a team and take orders from a supervisor is a quality that Yersuma Corp looks for in its employees foremost which apparently, you have not been able to display. While we are not taking any disciplinary action against you, we do suggest that you try and work in harmony with your team and do not indulge in insubordination.
In view of the proceedings that transpired at the meeting, your grievance and suggested remedy have been denied.
Best regards,
William Page
Manager Human Resource
Yersuma Corp
Tel: (888) 888-8888