Tribunals still judge the process. The draft Acas Code just gave them more of it.

Employment tribunals ask whether the employer acted reasonably. That often means process: what happened, when, who did it, and what the file can show.

That is not new. The Acas Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures already sits behind that test. An unreasonable failure to follow it can adjust a compensatory award by up to 25%. That is process education, not legal advice.

What is new is the volume of process Acas is proposing to put into the Code itself.

What the draft Code adds

On 30 July 2026, Acas opened consultation on a draft Code. Responses close at 11:59pm on 23 September 2026. The Code was last fully revised in 2009. The draft is longer, and it pulls informal resolution into the statutory frame.

Law firms will brief you on every paragraph. The point for anyone who runs cases alongside a day job is simpler.

The draft expects informal steps to be tried where they fit. When a formal disciplinary meeting is notified, the employer should state what was tried informally, or why nothing was. A formal grievance is expected to do the same from the worker’s side. Fact-finding should be objective, reasonable and proportionate. Suspension gets tighter limits. Mediation and facilitated conversations get a place in the text.

None of that replaces judgement. It adds process that will need to appear in the file, or the file will need a reason it does not.

A longer Code is still a document

Documents sit in SharePoint, in a policy pack, in training notes from last year. On a live grievance, the next step still comes from memory unless something puts it in front of the person doing the work.

That is the gap between a process on paper and a process in the work. Policy and statute exist. They are not in the room at the moment of decision. Two people running the same case can reach the next step differently, without bad intent.

Informal resolution is the sharp example. The draft wants it attempted and recorded, or explained. On a busy desk, that is exactly the step that was “meant to happen.” It is discretionary until someone asks for the file. Then it is either in the record, or it is a gap.

The same pattern hits updates and welfare checks. Nobody skips them because they do not care. They go first when the process lives in one head and the day job is already full.

What a tribunal will ask next

When more of the Code is about early steps, the questions get more specific.

Was informal resolution tried? Where is that shown? If it was not tried, where is the reason? Who decided suspension was necessary, and against which limited grounds? Was the fact-finding proportionate, or did the organisation default into a full formal path because that felt safer?

Those are process questions. They are not truth questions. A careful investigator can still leave a thin file if the steps sat outside the work.

Most case management systems will not fix that by themselves. They put a process on the case and leave each task as a tick-box. The informal attempt becomes another note someone remembered to type, or nothing at all.

What has to change in the work

The Code can only set the standard. The live case has to hold it.

That means the next step sits inside the task, with the guidance attached, not only in a PDF. Informal attempts, updates and welfare checks are held like any other deadline. What was skipped stays visible, so the reconstruction does not start when a claim lands.

Investigators still make every judgement call. The process should not depend on who remembered which paragraph of the Code this month.

We’ll run the process. You run the case.

CaseGrid is building a case management system for workplace investigations around that standard: ACAS-aligned steps inside each task, with the guidance, approvals, deadlines and record in the work. If the draft Code is making you look again at where your process lives, join the waitlist.