BUSINESS HELPDESK HELP DESK
AVOIDING THE TRIALS OF A TRIBUNAL
Halborns, the employment law firm that provides the BMF Intelligent Employment Plus Service, shares their expertise
IF YOUR BUSINESS has ever received a tribunal claim you will know that this is not welcome news. If you haven’t, you may well believe that your business operates in such a way as to make a tribunal claim impossible. Sadly, that is rarely the case. There is always room for improvement.
Here at Halborns, supporting businesses to defend tribunal claims is our bread and butter, as well as helping our clients to avoid them entirely! Here we share a few golden nuggets from our experience over the last twelve months, giving you the opportunity to sharpen your processes, make positive changes and, hopefully, avoid future tribunals.
Will it go to court? Latest figures show that the average wait to attend a hearing from the date the claim is issued is just under a year (335 days to be precise). In practice this means that issuing a claim is no longer a sure way to a fast buck for employees and if settlement is on the cards, a long wait to tribunal can be helpful and tactically benefit for you. It’s worth reminding claimants during negotiations to consider the benefits of receiving early payment versus a long wait for potentially no reward at tribunal. Do you really have a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination?
We’ll often hear that a business has a zero-tolerance stance on discrimination – but if we dig a little deeper, we’ll see that this hasn’t always been the case. If you’re landed with a discrimination claim and you’re going to tell a tribunal that you take a zero-tolerance approach
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in your defence, you’ll need to be prepared to provide robust evidence. For example, failing to deal with discrimination in one instance, but deciding to dismiss in the next is at best likely to leave you on the wrong side of an unfair dismissal claim. Consistency is key.
Is your people team too involved? With all the best intentions, sometimes team members or HR managers get a little too involved during a disciplinary process. It’s vital that the individual responsible for making the decision on the outcome of the process does just that. We’ve seen instances where the people team has become so involved and keen to ensure the ‘right decision’ is taken that they end up influencing the decision-maker to such an extent that any dismissal is tainted and unfair. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your people team supporting the disciplinary
process, but they must steer clear of influencing the decision. One of the best ways to avoid undue influence is make sure you’ve trained any disciplinary managers appropriately to deal with the hearing, so they understand the legal framework and feel confident on the factors they need to consider when making their decision
Putting your best foot forward
They key to putting your best foot forward with any tribunal claim is securing the right advice, early. Defending tribunal claims is our bread and butter – our commercially-focussed, straight- talking advice will help you to explore the potential for early settlement to save time and (often significant) cost, or to build a robust defence in the event a claim progresses to a full hearing. Having the right employment law advice and partnership in place can help you to prevent a claim landing in the first place
– this is where BMF Intelligent Employment Plus can help. Unlimited advice for all your day- to-day people issues means you’re able to better manage risk, ensure your people processes are fair and consistent, and your decision- making is as robust as possible. This update is accurate on the date it was written, but may be subject to change which may, or may not be notified to you. This update is not to be taken as advice and you should seek advice if anything contained within affects you or your business. BMJ
Investing in the right industry-expert partnership now can save potentially significant costs in the future. To find out how BMF Intelligent Employment Plus can work for your business, contact
info@halborns.com, call us on 0115 718 0333 or visit
www.halborns.com
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net May 2022
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