Employment tribunals are an expensive business, often running into tens of thousands of pounds. Avoiding them by identifying and solving problems before they snowball is the best way to avoid the stress and expenditure. Read on for practical advice on keeping our of tribunals.
Immigration Advice Service helps you to avoid tribunals through our Employment training tribunal. Visit our website to learn how your business could benefit.
Use Watertight Employment Contracts
When you hire a new staff member, you will provide them with a written contract of employment. The contract will establish the worker’s pay, rights, and obligations. Great contracts make such matters clear beyond doubt, whereas generic contracts, often found online or generated by large-language models, can lack specificity. Weak contracts can lead to tribunals if you and your employee disagree on what the contract means.
It is also important to recognise that your worker’s responsibilities and position within your company will evolve as they spend more time working for you. Stay on top of their promotions and other developments by regularly reviewing their contract.
Unambiguous workplace policies have a similar effect. They ensure that staff understand their obligations and know that they will be held accountable if they behave inappropriately towards their colleagues.
Problems Happen, But Act Quickly
Time after time, disputes come to employment tribunals that should have been solved when they were much smaller problems. A tribunal is not necessary before such issues escalate.
Great employers act proactively to solve disputes and follow clearly established procedures. Throughout any workplace mediation, they show fairness, consistency, and transparency. It is also important to avoid jumping to conclusions or showing preferences even when senior and popular employees are involved.
The best time to solve workplace disputes is before they have to enter into formal mediation processes. That is because grievance and disciplinary procedures, while strong as safeguards from further damage, fail as conflict resolution tools. They frame disputes around a us vs them dichotomy that locks parties into opposing positions. Formal procedures are also difficult to recover from and may lead to valued staff members feeling that they have to leave the company.
Keep Your Staff Trained
Tribunals often arise when small businesses lack a dedicated human resources team. Instead, managers have to wear an ‘HR hat’ and hope that they are doing the right things. This is a disaster waiting to happen within the employment law landscape.
Minimise the risk of not having a dedicated HR team by ensuring your managers have access to adequate training. This will help them to identify workplace issues that could be disruptive and understand when they should intervene. Fantastic training will also give your managers the confidence to seek external specialist advice when necessary.
Training can also help your staff to understand the common workplace occurrences where disputes are most likely to arise. An example is when an employee is dismissed, as they may wish to take action against your business if they think they were dismissed unfairly. Avoid such claims by ensuring that the following occurs whenever a staff member is dismissed:
- You are dismissing them because of one of the five fair reasons for dismissal: capability (consistently poor performance), conduct and misconduct, redundancy, statutory restriction (illegal activity), or ‘Some Other Substantial Reason’ (SOSR).
- You follow a fair, reasonable, and consistent dismissal procedure.
- The dismissal follows the terms set out in their contract, such as their notice period.
Know the Law
Trained staff aren’t only skilled at spotting disputes that could become tribunals. They also have a great knowledge of the law, particularly around workplace discrimination.
Discrimination occurs when an employee is treated differently based on any of the nine protected characteristics. Examples are their race or sex. It can also occur if your business assumes something about an employee’s protected characteristics.
Discrimination disputes most often arise when you are recruiting or dismissing employees. Make sure that your staff understands the need for fair hiring procedures and proper disciplinary procedures to avoid them. It is also essential that your business takes any claims of discrimination incredibly seriously, especially if the discrimination is alleged against one of your senior members of staff.
Keep All Disputes Well Documented
Following the steps detailed above will go some distance in preventing your business from having to resort to employment tribunals. However, there will be some cases when an employment tribunal cannot be avoided.
Protect your business from appearing poorly in the tribunal by ensuring that any disputes are thoroughly documented. It is essential to record the actions that your business and managers took in any attempts to solve the disputes, along with clear reasoning for why the action was taken. On top of these actions, maintain a full paper trail of the dispute, including details of how and when it emerged and when it was formally brought to your management’s attention. Any meetings held with the disgruntled employee should also be minuted and correspondence with them retained.
The reason that keeping thorough documentation is essential is that it prevents evidence gaps. Any moments in the tribunal where it is your word against your employees are points where your business is at risk
How Can Immigration Advice Service?
Immigration Advice Service isn’t just a leading immigration law firm. You can also use our services to significantly reduce the risk of facing an employment tribunal.
Our course covers a range of essential topics for your human resources and management teams to understand. Your team will learn the difference between legal and practical risks and how to identify and manage them. 92% or customers taking part in this course found it useful and beneficial, giving them confidence to succeed without fearing employment tribunals.
Visit our website today to learn more about the course, or call us to enroll your human resources and managerial teams. We also offer extensive immigration law services if your business is looking to hire foreign workers.
