Overview
It’s a fact of business that in spite of your best intentions and efforts as an employer, you probably won’t always agree with your employees about your working relationship with each other. And sometimes, resolving these differences of opinion needs extra help, which is where we come in, especially if an employee is threatening you with an employment tribunal action.
An employment tribunal is like a specialist court dedicated to employment-related disagreements. The most frequent and complex disagreements resolved by the tribunal usually involve one or more accusations made by an employee that their employer has, for example, unlawfully discriminated against them, unlawfully dismissed them, isn’t lawfully paying them what they should or has unlawfully transferred them to a new employer.
It’s quite normal for your employee to throw several accusations at you at the same time so you may find yourself accused of unlawful dismissal as well as unlawful discrimination (for which there are many different types, ranging from race, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation to religion and beyond). The good news is that however many of these accusations you’re facing, the process is pretty much identical.
The majority of disagreements will follow the process described below and there are typically 6 key steps for employers when this happens. Some of these disagreements are simple and speedily resolved after taking only a few of these steps. Others may require a longer process when agreement on a solution isn’t reached quickly.
