HR is supposed to be the safe port. The function employees turn to when something goes wrong, when a manager oversteps, when a colleague crosses a line, when a workplace feels unsafe. But what happens when the complaint is about HR?
It’s not a theoretical question. And in 2026, it’s becoming harder to ignore.
The TCS Nashik case, which surfaced in early 2026, is one of the starkest recent examples. Investigators examined the role of an HR manager amid allegations that earlier complaints had not been adequately addressed. Some complainants had allegedly approached HR with concerns, but no action was taken at the time. Following the TCS Nashik case, companies like Infosys also came under scrutiny.
HR professionals, like anyone else, can be the subject of complaints about bias, misconduct, discrimination, favouritism, or harassment. And yet, most grievance policies in India don’t account for it.
There’s no named alternate owner, no parallel escalation path, and often no clear instruction on what to do when the designated complaint-handler is also the respondent. For both employers and employees, that gap needs to be addressed.
The Numbers Behind the Silence
The data on workplace harassment in India is sobering enough on its own. The Udaiti Foundation recorded a 29% increase in POSH complaints registered by NSE-listed companies, from 1,807 cases in 2022-23 to 2,325 in 2023-24. Even more troubling: a 67% increase in unresolved cases.
A 2024 Walchand Plus report found that 40% of women experiencing insecurity didn’t know that POSH protects them. Moreover, 53% of HR managers admitted confusion about the law.
Against this backdrop, the idea that employees will confidently file complaints against HR, knowing their documents, communications, and case management all flow through that same function, isn’t realistic. The silence in complaint registers doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. It often means employees don’t believe filing will change anything.
The Conflict of Interest Problem: Why HR Can’t Investigate Itself
As a general principle in Indian HR investigation practice, the investigator should have no conflict of interest vis-à-vis any of the parties involved. It’s a clean standard. But most grievance policies don’t operationalise it for the one scenario where it matters most: when HR is the respondent.
HR teams in Indian organisations typically control documentation, policy interpretation, communication channels, and often the complaint intake itself. An HR professional investigating a complaint against a teammate, a reporting manager, or a senior colleague isn’t just potentially biased; they’re structurally compromised. Even good intentions don’t fix structural conflict.
The principle of nemo judex in causa sua (no one should be a judge in their own cause) is embedded in the POSH Act’s Rules. IC members with a conflict of interest must step aside from any inquiry. The same logic applies when HR-as-a-function has institutional proximity to the respondent.
And there’s a quieter consequence. When employees believe HR will protect its own, they don’t file. The complaint goes unrecorded, the behaviour continues, and the organisation’s annual POSH report shows zero cases, which gets mistaken for zero problems.
What the Law Provides (And What It Doesn’t)
India doesn’t have a single statute covering all workplace grievances. But several laws create structures that become especially relevant when HR is implicated.
The POSH Act, 2013, is the clearest intervention. The Internal Complaints Committee (IC) operates independently of the HR department. The IC is constituted under Section 4 of the Act, must have a senior woman employee as Presiding Officer, at least two internal members committed to women’s welfare or legal knowledge, and one external member, typically from an NGO or with expertise in sexual harassment matters. At least half the IC must be women.
When the complaint falls within the scope of the POSH Act, the ICC is the mandatory channel, not HR. The respondent’s seniority or function doesn’t change that.
Recent directions from the Supreme Court in Aureliano Fernandes v. State of Goa (affirmed in December 2024) directed every state to institute a SHe-Box for complaints and mandated that appropriate district authorities survey organisations to constitute an ICC and direct those without one to do so immediately.
The Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, requires every employer with 20 or more workmen to constitute a Grievance Redressal Committee (GRC) with equal representation from management and workers. The GRC operates independently of HR and is often the most appropriate body for non-POSH grievances when HR is the respondent.
What neither law explicitly does is name the alternate owner when HR itself fails. That gap is an organisational design problem, and it falls on employers to close it.
External investigators, like employment lawyers, compliance specialists, or certified HR investigation firms, become necessary when the seniority or proximity of the HR personnel involved makes an internal investigation untenable. This is particularly relevant when the complaint is against a senior HR leader, a CHRO, or someone with access to the organisation’s investigation infrastructure.
Beyond these three structures, employees retain the right to approach the Labour Commissioner if internal mechanisms fail, and the Labour Court or Industrial Tribunal as a last resort under the Industrial Disputes Act.
The HR Perspective: When You’re Both Custodian and Respondent
Here’s the part most complicated to unravel: what this situation looks like for HR professionals themselves.
Being in HR doesn’t exempt anyone from being named in a complaint. But it does create a unique professional exposure, because the function is simultaneously expected to manage the process and step back from it.
For HR teams, this has practical implications that policy rarely addresses. Who takes over the caseload when an HR professional is named? How does the HR head recuse without creating a leadership vacuum? What happens to the documentation trail if the person being investigated is also the system administrator?
The honest answer in most Indian organisations is: no one’s thought it through. The response tends to be improvised, slow, and often inadequate, not because of bad intent, but because no one built the contingency into the policy.
HR leaders who want to protect both their function and the organisation’s employees need to get ahead of this. That means three things specifically:
- Nominate an alternate owner in writing: Every grievance policy should name a fallback, legal, compliance, or designated senior management member who assumes ownership when HR is implicated. This should be documented before it’s needed, not decided when the complaint arrives.
- Train ICC members to function independently of HR: The ICC shouldn’t depend on HR for logistics, documentation storage, or communication. Where HR has historically served those functions, a parallel process needs to exist. External ICC members, in particular, should have direct access to the organisation’s legal counsel rather than routing through HR.
- Audit your own conflict exposure: HR leaders should periodically review which individuals on the team have dual roles, for example, HRBP for a business unit and ICC member for that same unit. Those overlaps create documented recusal obligations and should be resolved proactively.
This isn’t about anticipating wrongdoing. It’s about understanding that accountability systems only work if they’re designed to function when HR might be on the wrong side of the table.
For Employees: Your Options Beyond the HR Inbox
If you’re an employee whose complaint involves someone in HR, or if a complaint you’ve already filed feels stalled or closed without resolution, you don’t have to accept that as the end of the road.
- Senior management or the CEO: If HR controls the internal grievance channel and is also the subject of the complaint, direct escalation to a business head, COO, or CEO is appropriate. Document this escalation in writing.
- The Grievance Redressal Committee: If your organisation has a GRC constituted under the Industrial Disputes Act, you can approach it directly. GRC proceedings are independent of HR, and the committee’s equal management-worker representation is designed precisely to prevent one side from controlling the outcome.
- The Internal Complaints Committee: If your complaint involves sexual harassment, the ICC is your primary channel, not HR. The POSH Act gives the ICC quasi-judicial powers, including the authority to recommend action against the respondent regardless of their seniority or function.
- The Labour Commissioner: If internal mechanisms have failed or aren’t available, a complaint to the Labour Commissioner’s office is the next step. Labour authorities can investigate, mediate, and direct employers to comply with their statutory obligations.
- Labour Court or Industrial Tribunal: The most formal external route, and typically a last resort after internal and conciliation processes have been exhausted. It is worth consulting an employment lawyer before pursuing this route to understand timelines, documentation requirements, and available remedies.
One thing worth noting plainly: retaliation for a good-faith grievance is prohibited. If your workload, role scope, access to opportunities, or working relationships change materially after you file a complaint, document it. That documentation matters both internally and if the matter goes external.
What Organisations Need to Build Before They Need It
POSH compliance is no longer an HR-only obligation. It’s a board-level governance matter, with companies now required to include POSH disclosures in their boards’ reports under company law. That shift in accountability creates a new mandate: organisations can’t treat grievance infrastructure as an HR housekeeping item anymore.
Don’t just focus on rules—focus on building a culture where everyone feels safe, respected, and heard,” advises Aparna Gonate, POSH, DEI, POCSO and EAP Strategist. Her words higlight the need for a culture that truly values safety beyond obligation.
The gap that most Indian organisations share isn’t legal knowledge; it’s policy architecture. Here’s what’s missing:
- A named alternate owner: Policies that say “report to HR” don’t say who takes over when HR is the respondent. One clause naming the GRC, ICC, or an external investigator as the default in this scenario would resolve most of the ambiguity employees currently face.
- Structural independence for the ICC: Where HR currently provides logistics, documentation, or communication support to the ICC, that support needs a parallel structure. The ICC should be able to function even if the entire HR team is recused.
- Post-resolution review: Most organisations close the case and move on. But the conditions that gave rise to the complaint, such as power dynamics, reporting lines, and access to complaint channels, often remain unchanged. A 60-day post-resolution review of systemic factors should be standard, not optional.
- Proactive communication of available structures: Employees can’t use structures they don’t know exist. The GRC, ICC, and SHe-Box portal should be communicated as active, accessible mechanisms, not buried in onboarding decks no one reads again.
How the Process Should Work
When a complaint involves an HR professional, the standard grievance flow needs to be rerouted before it begins. Here’s how that should look, from both sides of the table.
Step 1: Identify who takes over
The organisation’s legal, compliance, or ethics team should assume ownership of the complaint upon receipt. If none of these exists, a senior member of management with no reporting relationship to the HR respondent should be designated. The HR department steps back entirely from case management.
Step 2: Activate the right structure
Depending on the nature of the complaint, this means routing it to the GRC (for general workplace grievances), the ICC (for POSH-covered complaints), or initiating an external investigation. The choice isn’t optional; it’s determined by the nature of the complaint and the organisation’s applicable legal obligations.
Step 3: Document from day one
Both employers and employees should maintain written records from the moment the complaint is raised. Employers must acknowledge receipt in writing, within three working days, under the model grievance procedure norms. Employees should avoid verbal-only complaints; they create no accountability trail and are difficult to follow up on.
Step 4: Conduct the investigation with procedural fairness
The respondent must be formally notified of the allegations, given an opportunity to respond, and treated as innocent until the investigation concludes. Witnesses should be interviewed separately. The investigation report should document methodology, findings, and recommendations, not just a conclusion.
Step 5: Communicate outcomes to both parties
Once the investigation is complete, both the complainant and the respondent should be informed of the outcome and any action being taken. The level of detail disclosed to each party should be carefully considered, particularly in witness credibility assessments, as such disclosures can trigger secondary conflict if shared broadly.
In the End…
A grievance process that only works when HR isn’t involved isn’t really a grievance process. It’s a system that protects structure over people, and most employees figure that out quickly.
For organisations, the fix isn’t complicated. It requires naming an alternate owner, writing policy language that accounts for this scenario, and building the GRC and ICC into your communication to employees as active, accessible structures rather than regulatory footnotes. The Industrial Disputes Act and the POSH Act already provide the legal scaffolding. What’s missing is the organisational will to operationalise it.
For employees, the message is simpler: you have more options than the HR inbox. Know your structures, document everything, and don’t let the absence of an obvious path convince you there isn’t one.
The organisations that build these systems before they’re needed aren’t being pessimistic about their HR teams. They’re being honest about human nature, and serious about accountability.
FAQs
Can I file a complaint against an HR professional in India?
Yes. HR professionals are not exempt from workplace complaints. Depending on the nature of your complaint, you can approach the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) for POSH-related matters, the Grievance Redressal Committee (GRC) for general workplace grievances, or escalate directly to senior management.
What should I do if HR is both handling my complaint and is the subject of it?
Route your complaint around HR entirely. Approach the ICC, GRC, or a senior leader such as the COO or CEO directly. Document every step of your escalation in writing.
Does the POSH Act apply when the respondent is from HR?
Yes. The ICC operates independently of HR, and the respondent’s seniority or function does not change the mandatory process. If your complaint involves sexual harassment, the ICC is your primary channel regardless of who the respondent is.
What is the Grievance Redressal Committee (GRC) and when should I use it?
The GRC is constituted under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, in organisations with 20 or more workmen. It has equal management and worker representation and operates independently of HR, making it the appropriate body for non-POSH grievances when HR is implicated.
Can my employer retaliate against me for filing a complaint against HR?
Retaliation against a good-faith grievance is prohibited. If your role, workload, or opportunities change materially after you file, document it. That record matters both internally and if the matter escalates externally.
What if internal mechanisms fail entirely?
You can approach the Labour Commissioner’s office, which can investigate, mediate, and direct employers to comply with their legal obligations. The Labour Court or Industrial Tribunal is available as a last resort, though consulting an employment lawyer before pursuing that route is advisable.
