Employee relations, cases and workplace safety

Give employees a safe, tracked way to ask HR a question, raise a grievance or report a problem, and give HR one place to handle it: cases, disciplinary records, an HR knowledge base, incident and health-and-safety logs, medical check-ups and wellbeing resources.

Incidents, check-ups and wellbeing need the health and safety add-on. A menu item you cannot open is hidden, not broken.

For employees

Find these under HR → Self service.

My cases

1. Open My cases and choose Raise a case.
2. Pick a Topic (for example Question for HR, Grievance, Complaint about conduct), write a Subject and What happened. While you type the subject, matching HR policy articles are shown under These HR policies may already answer this, so you may find the answer without waiting.
3. Optionally name the colleague it is About. They are not told.
4. Choose Send to HR. The case appears in the list with its reference and status: Open, In progress, Waiting, Resolved or Closed.
5. Open a case to read HR's replies, answer, add a file (up to 20 MB) or Withdraw it while it is still open.

What you should know:

• Grievances and complaints are confidential. Only the HR people handling your case, and the people they give access to, can open it. Your manager does not see your cases.
• You never see HR's internal notes or the names of the HR people working on it; replies are signed "HR".
• If your company allows it, you can switch on Send anonymously. After sending you see your one-time key once, with a Copy button and the warning that it cannot be shown again. Tick I have saved my key and choose Done. To read replies later, open My cases → Read an anonymous report, paste the key and choose Open report. HR cannot see who sent it, and nobody can recover a lost key. The key is not saved in the browser.

My notices

If HR issues you a show-cause notice or a warning, it appears under My notices with a "Needs your reply" mark, and you are told. Open it to read the reason and dates, then:

• Acknowledge receipt to confirm you received it.
• Write your side under Your reply and choose Send reply before the Reply by date. You can update it while the notice is open.
• After HR records a Decision, you may write an Appeal and choose Send appeal. You then see the result of the appeal.

You never see HR's private hearing notes.

Report an incident

Open Report an incident and choose Report an incident to tell the safety team about an injury, a near miss, an illness or property damage. Choose the kind, the severity if you know it, When and Where, describe what happened, who saw it and what was done right away. Switch on This happened to me if you were hurt or became ill. Choose Send report. The page lists what you reported (and reports about you) with their status: Open, Investigating or Closed.

My check-ups, Wellbeing and HR policies

• My check-ups lists the medical check-ups planned for you, when they are due or were done, the outcome and any restrictions. Only you and the people allowed to see medical details see the outcome.
• Wellbeing lists the helplines, counselling services and guides your company publishes, grouped by topic. Choose Read or Open link.
• HR policies is a searchable library of your company's policies and answers. Search, or pick a topic. If you do not find an answer, choose Ask HR to raise a case.

For HR

Case work is under HR → Employee relations (Cases, Disciplinary, HR policies, Relations analytics, Relations settings). Health and safety is under HR → Safety (Incidents, Medical check-ups, Wellbeing library). What each person can do depends on their role: day-to-day case work, assigning, closing, access to all confidential cases, reading the audit trail and changing settings are separate permissions.

Cases

Cases is the queue. The tabs show Open, Assigned to me, Overdue and All, each with its count, and a notice tells you how many open cases have no one assigned. Filter by kind, priority or person, and search by reference or subject. Each row shows the Confidential, Anonymous and Legal hold marks.

• New case opens a case for someone when a complaint arrives on paper or by phone, to start an investigation, or to track a long-term absence or a return to work. Choose the category, the priority, who raised it and who it is about, and whether it is Confidential.
• On a case, the summary shows status, priority (change it right there), who raised it, who it is assigned to, the kind, who it is about, and the first response and resolution times.
• Assign (or Reassign) gives the case to a colleague, who is told. New cases are shared out automatically among the people set on the category, giving the next one to whoever has the fewest open.
• In Conversation, write to the employee and choose Send reply, or switch on Internal note and choose Add note for a note only HR sees.
• Steps lists the starter steps of the category (an investigation has steps to record the allegation, interview, collect evidence and decide; a return to work has steps for the fit note, the meeting and the review). Tick them off, add your own with a due date, or remove them.
• Files holds evidence or a fit note. Downloads use short-lived links.
• The ⋯ menu moves the case along: Mark in progress, Waiting for the employee, Mark resolved, and Put on legal hold / Release legal hold. A case on legal hold is never removed automatically.
• Close case asks for the outcome, which the employee sees. Reopen brings a closed case back.

Confidential cases

A confidential case is invisible to HR colleagues who are not on it: it does not appear in lists and its link answers "not found". It is open to the person assigned, to the people listed under People with access (add someone with Give access), and to the few people allowed to open all confidential cases, such as the head of HR or an investigator. Every opening, change, file download and access change is written to the case's Audit trail tab, which only people with that permission see. The trail never contains the text of the case.

Response times and escalation

Each category has a time to first answer and a time to resolve, counted with your company holidays. When a case is late it is marked overdue and escalated once to the person set for the category (or the person under Late cases go to in settings), who is given access if the case is confidential and is told. Notifications only say that a case needs attention and give its reference.

Anonymous reports and the speak-up page

In Relations settings → Reporting, Allow anonymous cases lets employees send a case without their name. Under Speak-up page, switch on Speak-up page is on and set a Page address (6 to 80 lowercase letters, numbers and dashes). The Public address appears with Copy and Open; share it with staff or contractors. The page needs no sign-in: people Make a report and later Check a report with their one-time key. Reports from it are anonymous and confidential: nothing about the sender is stored. Both options are off until you turn them on.

Disciplinary records

Disciplinary lists show-cause notices, verbal, written and final warnings and suspensions, with their step and an Active warning mark while a warning counts.

1. New record: choose the employee, the type and the reason, and optionally the incident date, the Reply by date, a sanction and Valid until. Save draft keeps it private.
2. Issue it. If your company has an approval flow for disciplinary action, it waits for approval first and returns to draft if declined. Once issued, the employee is told and sees it under My notices.
3. The letter is made from your published warning or show-cause letter template and filed in the employee's documents. If it cannot be made, the reason is shown with Make the letter again; publish a template and retry.
4. The employee's reply appears under Employee's reply. Schedule hearing (or Move hearing) tells the employee the date; Hearing notes stay private.
5. Decide records the decision, the sanction and, for warnings, how long it counts (12 months by default, changeable in settings). Close finishes a decided record.
6. If the employee appeals, Decide appeal: Decision upheld, Sanction reduced or Decision overturned, with a note. An overturned warning stops counting at once.
7. Withdraw a record made in error, with a reason; it stays on file.

HR policies

HR policies is where you write articles for employees only: policies, handbooks and answers. New article takes a title, a topic, tags and the text, and Published decides whether employees see it. Topics groups articles so employees can browse them. Employees search them in Self service, and they are suggested when someone raises a case. They are never shown to customers or on any public page.

Health and safety

• Incidents: the totals at the top show incidents, open ones, reportable ones and days lost. Record incident takes the kind, severity, when and where, branch, the injured person, what happened, witnesses, what was done right away, root cause, corrective actions and days lost. Switch on Reportable for an incident that must be reported to the authority and fill in Reported to the authority on; a reportable incident cannot be closed before that. Add photos or documents under Files, then Close (or Reopen).
• Medical check-ups: the tabs show Due, Overdue, Done and All. Schedule check-up takes the employee, the check-up (for example Annual medical), the due date and the clinic. Record outcome takes the date, the outcome (Fit, Fit with restrictions, Unfit), restrictions, notes and the next due date, which plans the next check-up automatically. Outcomes, notes and files are medical information: if your role may not see medical details you see Restricted instead. Managers and HR are reminded of upcoming check-ups without being told what they are for.
• Wellbeing library: New resource publishes a helpline, guide or program with a topic, a short description, a link and text. Switch off Visible to employees to keep it with HR.

Settings and analytics

Relations settings has Reporting (anonymous cases, the Privacy minimum for analytics, Late cases go to), the Speak-up page, Disciplinary (Days to reply and Warnings stay valid for) and Case categories. New category sets the name, kind, response times (Answer within, Resolve within), Assign to, When late, tell, Starting steps (one per line), Keep closed cases for, Confidential and Active. Help desk, grievance and complaint categories are offered to employees. A category that already has cases cannot be deleted; make it inactive instead. Closed cases past their retention period are removed automatically, except those under legal hold.

Relations analytics shows only totals for the dates you choose: cases by kind, status, month and department, average days to resolve, share answered in time and disciplinary records by type. Any group smaller than the privacy minimum (5 by default) shows Hidden, and a neighbouring group is hidden with it so a hidden number cannot be worked out. Nothing names a person or a case.

Good to know

• Cases, records and incidents are special categories of personal data. Give the confidential-cases permission to as few people as possible.
• Notices to employees never contain the text of a case or a decision, only that something needs their attention.
• Deleting an employee's access to the app does not delete their cases; use retention and legal hold to control how long they are kept.