Acas, the UK’s workplace conflict authority, opened a consultation on 30 July on the first full rewrite of its statutory Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures since 2009. The draft Code pushes employers and workers toward resolving concerns informally before either side files a formal grievance, and swaps adversarial terms like allegations and penalty for language built around conversation and fact-finding. The consultation runs until 23 September.
The push for early resolution is backed by a stark cost gap. Acas research puts the annual cost of formal disciplinary and grievance procedures to UK employers at roughly 2.36 billion pounds, compared with about a tenth of that, roughly 250 million pounds, for informal resolution. Acas also cites data showing 44% of working-age adults in Great Britain experienced conflict at work in the last 12 months, a volume the current formal-first process was never built to absorb efficiently.
For HR leaders, the shift is procedural: the draft Code asks parties to show what informal steps they already tried before a formal grievance is accepted, introduces mediation as a standard option, and recommends manager training in conflict-handling skills, meaning case-management workflows and manager training content built around the 2009 Code will need updating.
The original insight most coverage misses: because tribunals weigh the Code when judging whether a dismissal process was handled reasonably, an employer whose process still assumes a formal-first sequence risks falling out of step with tribunal expectations before the final Code is even adopted, not after. This adds to a busy year for UK employment law, alongside the ongoing consultation on workplace monitoring technology, and fits a pattern where compliance frameworks are being rewritten faster than internal policy can track.
Source: Acas
