Legal Guide to Employment Dispute Tribunals: Protecting Your Business Interests

When your business hires staff, you need to understand employment law and your employee’s rights. For example, your employment contracts may mention some of your policies and procedures. Failing to abide by employment law and treat your staff fairly can result in employment disputes. As an employer, where you find yourself in a workplace dispute, you must protect your business interests. Disputes can lead to employment dispute tribunals, cost your business time and money, and affect your reputation. This article will, therefore, explain how to protect your business interests in employment dispute tribunals.

What is an Employment Dispute Tribunal? 

An employment dispute tribunal is a judicial body consisting of an employment judge and possibly two other non-legal members. An employment tribunal’s role is to decide on unresolved employment disputes. Your employee may claim against you in a tribunal where they believe you have breached their employee’s rights. For example, in the case of discrimination during their interview process. Taking a case in an employment tribunal means they may get compensation or another legal remedy. 

You should protect your business interests if you face an employment dispute tribunal, and we look at some ways you can do so.

Avoiding Employment Disputes

An effective way to protect your business interests is to reduce your chance of facing an employment tribunal. A fundamental way to do this is to follow employment law and have robust procedures to manage your staff and employee relations. For example, you should:

• ensure your employees have well-written and clear employment contracts;
• regularly review policies and procedures; and 
• ensure your employment procedures are up to date with changes to employment law.

Also, understanding common reasons for employment tribunal claims helps you avoid them as well as to resolve them better. These include, for example:

• unfair dismissal;
• discrimination;
• breach of contract;
• wage disputes; and
• workplace harassment.

You can also protect your business interests by resolving employment disputes internally before they go to an employment dispute tribunal. For example, by exhausting other dispute resolution mechanisms such as:

• grievance procedures, which you should document;
• appeals procedures;
• mediation; and 
• settlement discussions.

You must also willingly participate in the ACAS Early Conciliation (EC) process, which must occur before your employee can lodge a claim.  

Legal Representation

Getting sound legal help when you face an employment tribunal claim is vital to protecting your business interests. A good solicitor will be able to:

• let you know if the claim you face is valid;
• create a good initial response to their claim in the ET3 form; and
• advise you throughout the entire tribunal process.

Winning Your Case

Without meaning to state the obvious, winning rather than losing an employment dispute tribunal will protect your business interests. Losing a case risks enormous costs for your business as well as damage to it, such as to its reputation. Losing your tribal case can mean paying:

• compensation;
• damages;
• loss of earnings;
• costs;
• expenses; or 
• benefits your employee claimed.

If you manage to protect your business interests by winning your case, not only do you avoid these costs, but you may be able to claim back your costs from the claimant. This can occur where they had no reasonable prospect of success or acted unreasonably.

One way to increase your chance of winning your case is to build a good defence strategy, which includes:

• gathering essential evidence such as emails and documents;
• interviewing witnesses and preparing them to help your defence; and
• asking a solicitor to form legal arguments for you.

2025 Key UK Employment Law Changes Factsheet

This factsheet outlines key developments in 2025 affecting workforce management. In particular, the proposed Employment Rights Bill (2024) will drive significant changes, anticipated to start late 2025.

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Key Takeaways

Protecting your business interests is essential if an employee lodges a claim against your business within an employment tribunal. One way is to avoid an employment claim. You can do this by having robust procedures to prevent disputes. Also, understanding what causes employment disputes can help you avoid them, as can using early dispute resolution methods when issues arise. A further way to protect your business interests is to get good legal advice from the outset and throughout a tribunal claim. An excellent solicitor can even tell if the claim is invalid at the start. It is also essential to win your case as this will reduce costs considerably and any damage to your business. One way to do this is to provide a good defence strategy.

If you need help understanding how to protect your business interest in employment dispute tribunals, our experienced disputes and litigation solicitors can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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