As of 13 August 2026, AI cannot help your business investigate an employee grievance.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface gets you a draft, but you cannot verify it yourself. That is the catch.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your current grievance, disciplinary, data protection and investigation policies, and confirm who is authorised to investigate and make the decision.
   2. Gather the written grievance, the response if any, relevant messages and documents, witness names, interview notes and a dated chronology; remove personal data that is not needed before sharing anything with an AI tool.
   3. Paste the policy and evidence into a chat in separate labelled sections, then use the supplied prompt to request an evidence table, allegation list, chronology and neutral interview questions.
   4. Compare every date, quotation and source in the AI output with the original documents, correcting omissions and removing anything the model cannot trace to supplied evidence.
   5. Use the questions to prepare human interviews, record each person's answers accurately, and add the new records to the evidence set rather than asking AI to conduct or simulate the interviews.
   6. Ask the model to identify unanswered questions and contradictions in the updated evidence, then have the appointed investigator and, where the case is serious or disputed, an employment solicitor assess fairness, procedure and next steps.
   7. Keep the final findings, rationale and decision in the authorised business record, and send only the approved communications to the people involved.

   Prompt

   Act as an investigation administrator, not as an employment lawyer or decision-maker. Using only the material I provide, help prepare an employee grievance investigation pack for a UK business.
   
   Material:
   - Grievance policy: [paste the current policy]
   - Grievance and allegations: [paste the complaint]
   - Relevant documents and messages: [paste redacted material]
   - Witness or employee accounts: [paste redacted notes]
   - Known dates and actions: [paste the chronology]
   
   Do not invent facts, witnesses, evidence, policy wording or legal requirements. Do not decide who is telling the truth. Separate each allegation from the evidence that supports it, contradicts it or remains missing. Identify inconsistencies and questions that need asking without treating an inconsistency as proof of dishonesty. Draft neutral interview questions for the complainant, the employee complained about and relevant witnesses. Create an evidence and chronology table with the source for each entry. Flag conflicts with the supplied policy, gaps in the investigation and any point that needs an employment solicitor or HR specialist. Do not recommend disciplinary action or state a legal conclusion. Minimise personal data in your response and reproduce sensitive information only when necessary. End with a list of decisions and factual findings that must be made by the appointed human investigator.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.