The management of discipline and grievances in British workplaces: the evidence from 2011 WERS

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12164
• Author: Stephen Wood,Richard Saundry,Paul Latreille
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

The management of discipline and

grievances in British workplaces: the

evidence from 2011 WERS

Stephen Wood, Richard Saundry and Paul Latreille

ABSTRACT

This study tests the assumptions and prescriptions of the Gibbons’Review of dispute

resolution in the UK. Contrary to these, the formalisation of dispute resolution has

continued and is not strongly related to the level of disputes or tribunal cases nor is

the use of mediation which is complementing not replacing formalisation.

1 INTRODUCTION

Individual employment disputes have been given more salience by both policy makers

and scholars as the collective regulation of employment has been progressively eroded

and strikes and other collective expressions of conflict have become rare. In Britain, in

particular, the increasing individualisation and formalisation of the management of

conflict have been a significant feature of contemporary employment relations.

Following the introduction of the right to claim unfair dismissal in 1972, and the

first Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures in 1977, written

procedures for handling disciplinary matters and employee grievances have become

almost ubiquitous in British workplaces. By 2004, 91 per cent of workplaces had

formal disciplinary procedures, and 88 per cent had formal grievance procedures

(Kersley et al., 2006: 215). This spread of procedures over three decades was primarily

driven by employers’concerns over the threat of litigation (Edwards, 1994; Saundry

and Dix, 2014). However, it also reflected the State’s belief that disciplinary and

grievance procedures were a way of underpinning ‘good employment practices’

(Department of Trade and Industry, 2001: 14) and a means through which workplace

order could be maintained and conflict contained.

Subsequently, minimum statutory procedures for dismissals and grievances were

introduced in 2004 to encourage their further adoption among small- and medium-

sized enterprises (SMEs), where written procedures were less common. While trade

unions supported the statutory route, employers and some politicians viewed such

provisions as another example of escalating employment regulation being a drag on

organisational efficiency, and expressed concerns that SMEs, in particular, were more

vulnerable to litigation (Department of Trade and Industry, 2007).

The then Labour government addressed these concerns by initiating a review of the

UK’s system of dispute resolution, which reported in 2007, and became known, after

❒Stephen Wood, University of Leicester, Richard Saundry, Plymouth University and Paul Latreille,

University of Sheffield. Correspondence should be addressed to Stephen Wood, University of Leicester,

University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH; email: s.j.wood@le.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 48:1, 2–21

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2017 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

its chair, as the Gibbons Review. This argued that the use of statutory procedures

deterred early resolution, encouraged defensive postures and intensified conflict. Con-

sequently, the 2008 Employment Act abolished statutory procedures and provided for

a shorter and less prescriptive Acas Code of Practice on Disciplinary and Grievance

Procedures. The revised Code, however, retained the core elements of the statutory

procedures. In addition, the Coalition government (2010–15) followed the call made

by Gibbons to promote the use of mediation as a means of early dispute resolution.

Most significantly, Acas included a reference to mediation in the foreword to the re-

vised Code. Subsequently, the Coalition government sought to continue to increase

the freedom given to management by reducing the risks of litigation for employers,

primarily through the introduction of employment tribunal fees (Hepple, 2013; Ewing

and Hendy, 2012). Furthermore, the promotion of alternative dispute resolution

methods through the extension of Acas conciliation and the active support of work-

place mediation has continued.

It is too early to assess the full impact of the post-2010 employment tribunal reform

(although the number of tribunal cases has fallen), but national data from the 2011

Workplace Employment Relations Study (WERS), combined with data from 2004

WERS, provide the first opportunity to assess developments following the

Gibbons-inspired changes and the abolition of statutory regulation of dispute resolu-

tion. Using these data, we address three questions: first, was the increased

proceduralisation of workplace dispute resolution reversed or at least arrested

between 2004 and 2011? Second, to what extent has mediation become part and

parcel of British employment relations? Third, how have workplace procedures and

mediation affected the outcomes of workplace disputes such as disciplinary sanctions,

dismissals, grievances and employment tribunals?

It is not possible to explore the precise impact of either the introduction of

statutory procedures in 2004 or their abolition in 2009 using data from the WERS

series, as these changes straddle the conduct of the 2004 and 2011 surveys. Any

changes over the period could be due to either of these reforms, and some workplaces

may have reacted to both. Nonetheless, our focus is the changes in trends: whether the

rise of formal procedures and very limited use of mediation has been reversed. If such

changes have begun, we might be justified in linking them to post-Gibbons policy.

On the other hand, if no such changes are observed we have strong grounds for

concluding the policy change has not had a major effect, at least by 2012.

We open the article with a more detailed examination of the developments in public

policy, before setting out the research questions that our empirical analysis will

address and presenting the current evidence relating to these questions. We then

outline our use of 2011 WERS and the measures and models employed in our

multi-variate analysis. The results of our empirical analysis are then reported. Finally,

we discuss their implications for our research questions and possible developments in

the management of individual conflict.

2 THE CHANGING PUBLIC POLICY CONTEXT OF UK DISPUTE

RESOLUTION

The system of dispute resolution in Britain has its origins in the conclusions of the

Donovan Commission (Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’

Associations 1965–1968, 1968: 143) which highlighted the role of disciplinary issues

in triggering collective industrial action and expressed concern that employers’

3Management of discipline and grievances

© 2017 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd