Culture Litmus

Why do grievance procedures damage workplace culture? | David Liddle, The TCM Group

Because they teach people to blame and defend, says David Liddle, CEO of The TCM Group. A grievance procedure builds working relationships on right and wrong, win and lose, and that behavior becomes the culture. His alternative is the Resolution Framework, which resolves issues through dialogue, and his one action for people leaders is to go and listen.

Season 07 · Culture Litmus

Five conversations on the gap between what organizations claim about their people and what they can actually evidence.

  1. 01Gethin Nadin, BenifexSeptember 8, 2026
  2. 02Jennifer McClure, DisruptHRSeptember 22, 2026
  3. 03David Liddle, TCM GroupThis episode
  4. 04Jessica ZwaanComing October 20, 2026
  5. 05Helene V. Gagnon, CAEComing November 3, 2026

TL;DR

What you need to know from this episode

  • The grievance procedure is a cultural signal, not just a policy. David's most common finding inside high-performing organizations is that grievance and disciplinary processes seed relationships built on right and wrong, win and lose. In his words they are about blame, shame, punish and destroy, and that behavior becomes normal.
  • Ask who benefited. He has asked leaders for 25 years who benefited from their last grievance process and how it helped the organization. He says no one has ever told him there was a benefit. He puts the cost of workplace conflict at 28 billion pounds a year in the UK.
  • People first has to show up in the handbook. A welcome from the CEO followed by pages on what happens when you fail tells a new starter the system is geared against them. He compares it to a casino where the house always wins.
  • Culture change stalls for two reasons. It becomes an initiative, usually born from a crisis, or it gets subcontracted to HR. The organizations getting it right treat culture as shared ownership.
  • The 90-day action is to listen. Go and ask people how work is, what they need and how you can support them, then act on it. His single universal truth after decades of mediation is that people want to feel heard and valued.

David Liddle is the CEO of The TCM Group, President of the People and Culture Institute and Editor-in-Chief of The People Leader magazine. He led a mediation and restorative practice charity before founding TCM in 2001, and he has written three books, most recently People and Culture: A Practical Guide. He was inducted into the HR Most Influential Hall of Fame in 2026.

This is the third episode of Culture Litmus, the Season 07 series on the gap between what organizations claim about their people and what they can evidence. David's subject is the gap between the culture an organization describes and the one its own procedures create.

What is a transformational culture?

A transformational culture, as David Liddle defines it, puts people, purpose and values at the heart of the organization and manages the relationship between employer and employee through dialogue, facilitation, coaching and mediation rather than through rigid rules.

He arrives at it through a short history of how work has seen the employee: first as a utility, then as a resource, then as an asset to be depreciated and a risk to be managed, then as a consumer of services, and now as a citizen, an active participant in the world of work. The systems most organizations still run were built for the earlier versions. They centralize power, rely on command and control, and manage people through investigation and formal process. His verdict is blunt: they do not work, and they probably never really worked.

What is the most common cultural problem in high-performing organizations?

David Liddle's answer is the grievance procedure, and the disciplinary process beside it. Asked for the single most common cultural pattern inside high-performing organizations that still struggle with fairness, he does not name leadership capability or manager skill. He names a document. His reason is that it seeds relationships based on right, wrong, win, lose, attack, defend. In his words it is about blame, shame, punish and destroy, and those behaviors become culturally normal. They show up in how managers handle disagreement and in how someone is treated when they challenge, disrupt or make a mistake.

The organizations he sees making progress are rewiring that justice model. They have decided they can be compassionate and compliant, empathetic and still hold people to account, tough and tender, fair and firm. The problem with the old policy is that it is binary, and work is not. Some of them, he says, are ripping out grievance and disciplinary processes and replacing them with something more progressive.

Why does David Liddle compare legacy HR to a casino?

Because, in his account, employees are dealt a bad hand from the minute they walk into the organization, and the house will always win. The part of his own model he finds missing most often is a people-first approach. Organizations talk about customer first, engagement scores and employee experience, and then it does not materialize in recruitment, onboarding or the employee handbook. The handbook opens with a welcome from the CEO and then lists what happens when you make a mistake, when you are bullied, when you underperform. The message, he says, is that it is geared against you.

In his casino the house is the legacy HR department. An employee in that system is treated as a risk and a threat, and the processes of work are designed to manage them as one. That breaks the relationship between employer and employee, and it shows up as low trust, poor morale, low productivity, high attrition and low engagement.

When people ask whether putting people first creates an entitlement culture, his answer is that trusting people and listening to them is how you find out what they already know: the answers to today's problems and to tomorrow's.

What is the Resolution Framework, and why replace the grievance procedure?

The Resolution Framework is David Liddle's alternative to grievance and disciplinary procedures. It resolves workplace issues through dialogue and restorative practice instead of fault and blame.

His case for replacing the old process starts with a question. David asks listeners to think of a recent grievance or disciplinary process in their own organization and to ask who benefited from it, and how it benefited the organization. He has put that question to conferences, boardrooms and round tables for 25 years, and he says not once has anyone told him there was any benefit. What he hears about instead is harm, fear, stress and cost. He puts that cost at 28 billion pounds a year in the UK, about a thousand pounds per employee.

Instead of finding fault, the framework asks what each party needs, assesses the situation through what he calls a resolution index, and builds a resolution around it. It rests on restorative practice, which he describes in simple terms as dialogue, compassion and psychologically safe, trauma-informed process. He says more than 2,000 organizations have adopted it. To leaders who ask how they could survive without a discipline and grievance procedure, his reply is that it is the best thing they will ever do, because it gives managers the space to address issues at source.

What is the business case for fairness and justice at work?

The business case, as David Liddle makes it, is that people who feel seen, heard and valued give more discretionary effort, innovate more and are more willing to challenge. To make that case to a board, he starts with a question the people function rarely asks itself: what is the value we are here to create? He measures it four ways: shareholder value, social value, stakeholder value and strategic value, the last being the alignment between the chief people officer and the chief executive. Then he looks at how a people function measures its value today, and his observation is that many are drowning in data but starving for wisdom.

The qualitative evidence matters as much as the numbers. In focus groups he hears the same sentences: people do not go to HR because they do not trust it, they expect it to become formal, or they use it only as a last resort. The alternative he listens for from managers is a phrase: I see you, I hear you, I appreciate you, I understand you, I value you. That, he argues, is the business case for discretionary effort, innovation and the willingness to challenge. Imagine 10,000 employees each giving 5% more discretionary effort because they are happy at work, he says, and you have created a whole new department.

He is equally direct about the cost of the opposite. Nobody is innovative at home watching reruns of Frasier because their boss is bullying them or the system is breaking them, and the received wisdom that this is acceptable has to be challenged.

Why does culture change lose momentum within 18 months?

David Liddle gives two reasons: culture becomes an initiative, or it gets subcontracted to HR. Before answering, he corrects the introduction: the training numbers quoted belong to his team of more than a hundred associate consultants, not to him alone. The first reason is that culture becomes an initiative, often one born from a crisis, with no resilience built in, and it is overtaken by the next initiative. The second is that culture gets subcontracted to HR, which often sits in a silo and may not want to be its sole custodian.

The organizations getting it right treat culture as shared ownership and build what he calls culture hubs, where people answer together who owns the culture and what they want it to look and feel like. He borrows a line from a TomTom advert he remembers from London: you are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic. His version for the workplace is that culture is not being done to you. You are culture, in every word you speak and every email you send.

What should every people leader do in the next 90 days?

Listen. David Liddle's one non-negotiable action for every people leader is to go and hear what their people need. He tells leaders to use their ears: go and give your people a jolly good listening to. Come down from the executive floor, ask how work is at the moment, what people need and how you can support them, and then actively listen to the answers. After years as a mediator, coach and consultant, the single universal truth he reports is that what people really want is to feel heard and to feel valued. His worry is that dialogue is being designed out of organizations while formality and command and control gain ground.

How do employee listening platforms help detect cultural drift early?

By giving managers the data to spot problems early and act on them close to the source. On real-time employee listening platforms, David Liddle's point is about proactivity: using data to inform decisions, spotting problems early and resolving them as close to the source as possible. The pattern he sees too often is a culture that avoids issues and then pays for an expensive overreaction. What a listening platform gives managers, in his account, is the tools for action. It will not always be right, but people can see action, momentum and connection. Acting quickly also matters psychologically: it moves people out of a fight-or-flight response to bad news and toward the state in which they do their best work.

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David Liddle

About the guest

David Liddle

Chief Executive Officer, The TCM Group

David Liddle is the Chief Executive Officer of The TCM Group, President of the People and Culture Institute and Editor-in-Chief of The People Leader magazine. He led one of the UK's restorative justice and mediation charities before completing an MBA with distinction and founding The TCM Group in 2001.

He is the creator of the Transformational Culture Model, the People and Culture Operating Model and the Resolution Framework, and the author of three books: Transformational Culture, Managing Conflict and People and Culture: A Practical Guide. He was inducted into the HR Most Influential Hall of Fame in 2026.

Full episode transcript

Season 07, Episode 03 · David Liddle with Darcy Mehta · 36 min

Frequently asked questions

Who is David Liddle?

David Liddle is the Chief Executive Officer of The TCM Group, President of the People and Culture Institute and Editor-in-Chief of The People Leader magazine. He led a mediation and restorative practice charity before founding The TCM Group in 2001. He created the Transformational Culture Model, the People and Culture Operating Model and the Resolution Framework, and has written three books, including People and Culture: A Practical Guide. He was inducted into the HR Most Influential Hall of Fame in 2026.

Why does David Liddle say the grievance procedure damages culture?

Because of what it teaches. In his account the grievance procedure, and the disciplinary process beside it, seed relationships based on right, wrong, win, lose, attack, defend. He describes them as retributive and punitive, about blame, shame, punish and destroy, and says that defensiveness and blame then become culturally normal. They show up in how managers handle disagreement and in how people are treated when they challenge something or make a mistake.

How much does workplace conflict cost, according to David Liddle?

On CultureClub X he puts the cost at 28 billion pounds a year in the UK, which he describes as about a thousand pounds per employee per year. He raises it alongside a question he has asked leaders for 25 years: who benefited from your last grievance or disciplinary process, and how did it benefit the organization? He says nobody has ever told him there was a benefit.

Does putting people first create an entitlement culture?

David Liddle says leaders often ask him this, and his answer is no. In his view, trusting people, listening to them and engaging with them is how an organization reaches what its people already know: the answers to today's problems and to tomorrow's. He argues that the innovation and creativity this releases is what generates competitive advantage.

What are the four kinds of value David Liddle says a people function creates?

Shareholder value, measured in profit. Social value, the impact on the firm, the planet and the local community. Stakeholder value, the impact on everyone with a stake in the workplace. And strategic value, the relationship between the chief people officer and the chief executive officer, which he says drives alignment on the people plan and strategy. He uses the four to help a people function work out what value it creates today and where it wants to get to.

What is a culture hub?

It is David Liddle's name for a forum that brings people together to own culture jointly, instead of leaving it to HR. A culture hub answers questions such as who owns the culture of the organization, what people want it to look like and feel like, and how everyone can work together on it. He offers it as the alternative to treating culture as an initiative or subcontracting it to one function.