What happens to your career after a Personal Grievance?
This is the caveat for all articles we publish. These are opinions freely given, and they aren’t going to be right in all situations (see here for our terms and conditions) so use at your own risk. For tailored advice, book an appointment to discuss.
You’re likely worried what the consequences might be after raising personal grievances, which is fair enough- life goes on. I do discuss similar questions here, but those are specifically worst-case scenarios.
Just a job or career job?
Perhaps a big factor in future consequences is whether this is part of your career, or just your current job. ‘Just a job’ is when what you are doing is just the best work you could find at the time to pay the bills. It’s working in the supermarket as a teenager, temp work on your OE, packing boxes in the factory, the casual work helping cruise ships post your retirement. A career job is when this job is a step in a larger plan of progression in an industry or profession. It’s the junior role in the editing suite, the marketing coordinator role, the apprenticeship.
If this job is a career job, then there will more long-term consequences because this is step in your career, a piece of your skillset. If this part of your skillset went badly this may affect your reputation and your confidence. If this is part of your career, it is perhaps more advisable to knuckle down and suffer through it, to get out the other side, rather than pull out and object.
If this is just a job, the consequences are much less. Unless café work is your longterm plan, raising a PG because your boss reduced your hours without your agreement is less of a big deal. Other than maybe needing a reference (see here for more), there are unlikely to be many long-term consequences to getting another job.
Professional reputation
This is a tricky question, because we really don’t know how much (if at all) this is a problem because you can’t pin down gossip, so this is all conjecture. In small industries with only a few (or even one) employer, raising a PG can be career suicide. Most likely are professionals in industries where the state is the major employer- police, nurses, doctors etc are groups at most risk of struggling to get a job in their field if they go against that employer- regardless of whether they are right or wrong.
For other industries it’s very hard to say. Rumours abound that interns in high pressure professions such as banking, finance and law will never work in their industry again should they object to their conditions. I can’t say this is true or not, and it’s very likely true in some countries, and not in others.
Legal restraints
If you sign a settlement, you’ll be signing a lifetime of confidentiality about what happened. This does go both ways so your employer will also be gagged from discussing it with other employers, so this will stop some of the scuttlebutt. However, if there is just 1 big employer (e.g. a national police force) they aren’t prohibited from telling themselves.
For you, you will need to remember to keep your mouth shut. It’s unlikely (but not impossible) to get back to the employer that you told your friends about it, but whatever you do, don’t post anything on social media.
Published court cases
Almost directly opposite to a confidential settlement is the published court decision. If you settle, no one knows about it except for the parties. If you go to court, theoretically everyone knows about it (although it’s not that popular a topic- see here for more on this). This does mean that a thorough recruiter could find your court case on google.
How likely is this? I can only speculate. I would say that although companies vary, recruitment processes are becoming less thorough. Currently we are seeing an increase in automated reference checking as recruiters see taking references as a compliance step rather than a selection process, so if they aren’t even going to do that properly, it’s less likely they will start googling candidates just in case.
Declaring on application forms
What we are seeing more of, is it being asked on application forms. Questions to the effect of ‘have you ever raised a PG against your employer?’ which can put you in a predicament. This is definitely an opinion and not advice, but my opinion is: you’re stuck between two absolutes- breaching the confidentiality agreement, making a false statement. When stuck in such a predicament, it is reasonable to choose to not breach a legal document.
