r/AskHRUK

My company is offering me settlement and pushing me towards it saying , the company might og for restructuring, your job might be at risk, you might be redundant. I don't know how to deal with this

My visa is tied to this. They say a settlement gives me time, and that redundancy will be done in 2 to 3 weeks.

I don't know how to deal with this cause I need longer time because of the visa. Which one should I use.

UK based company and I've been employed for 3.5 years there with them. 1.5 years short of settlement.

One of my employees has raised a grievance against me and I am waiting for HR to speak to me

I don’t know what it’s about yet but I suspect it’s because we had a disagreement and I sent them one overly aggressive / unprofessional / manager-authority message out of frustration

In hindsight I could have handled the situation better and I understand that my message could have come across far too strong / authoritative. I made a small mistake and I understand how they could be upset

Realistically, I feel like we could settle this informally where I apologise for being overly aggressive and improve my professionalism as it’s just a one-off blip, however, I fear the employee will push for a lot more here

How does the formal or informal process work and how long will it take?

More importantly, how much trouble am I likely to be in here for this one message? They are now on long-term sick leave [mostly caused by something else but this could be seen as having contributed to it]

It feels unlikely but I’m very concerned there is a chance for “on-the spot” sacking for gross-misconduct which is made worse as I’m close to exchanging on a property

Post
I’m 21F and recently started a new job in finance. Yesterday, one of the advisers came to town to visit the office. He is 51M, married with children, and is quite senior compared with me.

A group of us went out for drinks after work. We were all drinking quite a lot, and I was pretty drunk by the end of the evening. He was being very friendly with me throughout the night, laughing with me, hugging me, etc.

At some point while we were sitting at the table, he started holding my hand under the table and then started touching/rubbing my leg. I remember moving his hand away at one point. I don't remember explicitly saying anything to him about it, but I definitely remember moving his hand away.

Eventually everyone started going home. Before leaving, he asked me to message him when I got home safely. I did that once I got home. After that, we had some messages back and forth. He mentioned that his hotel room was really cold and said something along the lines of showing me next time he was in town. I responded jokingly and said goodnight. Earlier in the conversation I had also said that I hoped to see him very soon.

This is the part I'm struggling with because I was drunk and I can see how some of my messages could come across as flirty or like I was interested in him. I don't want to pretend otherwise. But the messages were after I got home, after the physical touching had already happened.

Today he unexpectedly came into the office again and spent quite a lot of time talking to me before leaving.
At the end of the day, a female colleague who had been at the drinks asked me whether he had been "really touchy" with me and whether he had made me uncomfortable. She said that she and another person had also noticed his behavior and thought our manager should know.

I feel really anxious and confused now. Part of me feels like I was taken advantage of because I was drunk, he is much older and senior to me, and I moved his hand away. But another part of me is worried that I somehow encouraged it because I was friendly with him and then sent those messages afterwards.

I don't want to report him or make this into a big workplace issue at the moment. I'm also scared of looking like I'm making something out of nothing, especially because of the messages.

So I'm looking for some outside perspective:

I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who have experienced workplace situations like this, because I don't really know how to interpret what happened.

Edit: I will say this is also a small company where everyone is really close friends with each other (everyone knew each other prior to the company starting).