What was the most difficult employee relations case you have managed, and why?

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My most difficult case was a situation where a male employee raised a grievance against a female colleague for harassing him and his family . He had quite a lot of evidence screen shots of messages she had sent etc. He also contacted the police. They visited her and she then made an allegation that he seriously sexually assaulted her at a hotel that they both stayed at for a work event a few months prior. Talking to her manager, she had made a complaint after that stay, but only that the hotel had advised the male member of staff's wife that she was also staying there.

It got incredibly complex and highly emotive very quickly with the police, sexual assault charities, family members, trade unions and the individual's families all wanting to have their say and the statements from both sides having very personal and distressing content.

Trying to pick through it all was horrible and in the end, we focused on the evidence and chronology, which went back several years (the female employee only making the complaint after the male employee went to the police about her harassing him and his family, the police not taking her sexual assault allegation forward and there being many many more texts and calls from the female employee to the male, that the other way around etc).

Ultimately there was never going to be an outcome that anyone was happy with it, as the bit I found so hard was that everyone saw the organisation and HR as the bad guys despite the situation not being of our making at all.

It was a long time ago now, but I often think about it and what I would do differently. The only real answer I can come to is retire immediately if anything remotely like that landed on my desk in the future!