AI-assisted Grievances: Practical Steps For Retail, Hospitality & Leisure Employers

Retail, hospitality and leisure employers are increasingly seeing employee grievances that appear to have been drafted, or heavily shaped, by AI tools. These complaints can look polished and legally sophisticated, but they are often lengthy, repetitive and difficult to investigate. For businesses managing large frontline workforces, shift patterns, customer-facing teams, seasonal pressures and high employee turnover, the key challenge is to respond fairly without allowing the process to become disproportionate.

Why AI grievances can be difficult to manage

There is nothing inherently wrong with an employee using AI to help organise their thoughts or improve the wording of a complaint. However, our experience is that AI-generated grievances can obscure, rather than clarify, what has actually happened. They are more likely to be excessively lengthy, used to unnecessarily or falsely assert legal labels and reference complaints that do not fit the facts, such that the genuine root of the employee’s complaint, which the grievance process is intended to address, is obscured.

There are also confidentiality and data protection risks. Employees should not input confidential business information, customer details or personal information about colleagues into public AI tools. Employers should be equally careful about using AI to analyse or respond to grievances, particularly where witness evidence, health information or sensitive workplace allegations are involved.

Spotting a possible AI-assisted grievance

A grievance may have been AI-assisted if it is unusually formal, generic or legalistic; uses American spelling or terminology; refers to legislation or case law without explaining how it applies; or lacks the practical detail usually needed to investigate a workplace complaint, such as dates, names, locations and what outcome the employee is seeking.

These signs should not be used to dismiss the grievance. They are a prompt to clarify the issues and ensure the employee is given a fair opportunity to explain their concerns in their own words.

How should employers respond?

Start with the usual principles. Follow your grievance procedure and the ACAS Code, act promptly, keep the process confidential, allow the employee to be accompanied where appropriate and make sure the decision-maker has enough information to reach a fair outcome.

If the grievance is very long or unfocused, it is reasonable to ask the employee to identify their key concerns. A practical way to do this is to invite them to a grievance meeting and ask them to explain, in their own words:

• What happened

• Who was involved

• When and where the issue arose

• How it affected them; and

• What outcome they are looking for

Employers should avoid being drawn into a line-by-line rebuttal of every generic legal assertion. Instead, acknowledge the grievance, identify the factual issues to be investigated, verify any legal references before relying on them and explain clearly in the outcome letter what has been investigated, what evidence has been considered and why each key complaint has or has not been upheld.