By the time an employment tribunal claim lands on an HR director’s desk, most of the damage is usually already done. Not because the dismissal was wrong – often it wasn’t – but because of a string of small, forgettable failures that nobody thought mattered at the time.
I see it constantly. The reason for sickness absence that was never properly investigated. An email that sat unanswered for three weeks. An overpayment clawed back without warning. A request to bring a particular companion, refused for no real reason. None of it deliberate. None of it, on its own, actionable. But when an employee is already unhappy, these small things stop looking like admin and start looking like a pattern – and a capable claimant’s solicitor will thread them into a story of unfair treatment.
That is the first lesson of managing tribunal risk: it is rarely one big decision that sinks you. It is the accumulation of little ones. So agree the minor requests. Let someone bring the companion they want. Give the extra few days leave. Where there is no genuine detriment to the business, the goodwill is almost always worth more than the point you are trying to win.
The second lesson is about the clock. When a claim does arrive, you have 28 days to file your ET3 response. Not three months. Twenty-eight days. Almost all HR teams sit on a claim for a fortnight, assuming they have longer, then come to us in a panic with a week left to build a defence that needed three. Miss that deadline and you can find yourself shut out of defending the claim at all. The narrative you fail to lock in early is the one your opponent writes for you.
The third lesson is the hardest, because it is human. HR teams are often too close to the case to see it clearly. You were in the meetings. You know the employee. You have a firm view on whether they have been treated badly or are simply chancing it. That closeness is exactly what stops you making the cool, early, honest assessment that every strong defence depends on. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is decide, quickly and without sentiment, that a case is better settled than fought, particularly now, with tribunal backlogs pushing hearings years into the future and quietly raising the incentive to resolve things sooner.
None of this, you will notice, is really about knowing the law. The law shifts. Procedure and human behaviour do not. Get the basics right – a fair reason, a fair process, the ACAS Code followed properly and far fewer shortcuts – and the majority of straightforward claims never get off the ground.
This is one of seven modules in our free video programme, How Not to Get Sued, made for HR directors who want the kind of insight you would normally only get sitting across the desk from an employment lawyer. If you want to go further, our 30-day course takes each module into much greater depth, with practical tools you can put to work straight away. Join the waitlist to find out when they both go live
https://hownottogetsuedwaitlist.scoreapp.com
Claire Rolston
Founder and CEO CLR Law
claire@clrlaw.co.uk