Last updated on May 3rd, 2024 at 08:34 pm

There was a 29% increase in the number of unfair dismissal claims taken to employment tribunals in the UK during 2008/9 and the average compensation was almost £8,000.  As a small business, or even a not so small one, can you afford to pay out £8,000 to someone as compensation?

It seems that there are 10 main reasons why businesses lose cases that relate to unfair dismissal claims, if you employ staff it is worth checking the list to see how many of them you can apply to your business and start to think about how to rectify the situation.

1.  There were no disciplinary procedures in place – how can you discipline someone and dismiss them if there are no procedures that everyone knows will be followed ?

2.  There are procedures in place but these were not followed – if your procedures say that you will do x,y and z then why are you not following them ?

3. Standards or company rules are not made clear either at induction or at any time after that – I have heard of companies that have fired staff for personal use of the Internet at work and have then been penalised for unfair dismissal because it was not made clear that such use of the Internet was not allowed.

4. The employee did not get a fair hearing or a chance to explain – if you are dismissing a member of staff because they are taking a lot of time off sick have you given them the chance to explain that they have an ongoing illness for example ?

5. No record was kept of any written warnings – how can  you prove that  you have followed the right process if you have not kept a record of the warning on file ?

6. The employee was not given enough time to improve performance or correct shortcomings.  As tempting as it may be, if you warn an employee that they are not meeting agreed targets you can not give them a week to improve,  it may take longer than that for the improvement to show.

7.  You didn’t make clear the consequences of continued misconduct or performance – if the next step after a written warning is dismissal you should say so, in the warning that you give the employee.

8.  The circumstances leading up to the event that caused dismissal were not fully investigated.  You can not say “you’re fired” to an employee without investigating what has happened.  Are you sure that the member of staff did actually do what ever it was they are accused of for example ?

9. Not all the circumstances were taken into account when you decided to dismiss – for example if a member of staff that has been with  you for 20 years suddenly starts getting into work late every day or is taking a lot of sick days, or someone was facing provocation when they acted unusually, have you looked at why this happened ?

10. Not acting consistently when compared with other members of staff – I have worked in companies where one person is allowed to start work sometime between 9:15 and 9:45 and everyone else has to start at 9am.  If members of staff were not in the office at 9am on a regular basis they faced disciplinary procedures until it was pointed out that this was not acting consistently.

If you want to “beat” an unfair dismissal claim at a tribunal you stand much more chance if you have a set of procedures that everyone is aware of, that these procedures are followed and that all staff are treated the same.  If you don’t then there is a much higher chance of being taken to an employment tribunal by an ex-member of staff and having to pay them compensation.

As a small business owner you know that employment law seems to be constantly changing and employers can find themselves by the tide of red tape.  If you do not have your own HR department if may be worth talking to HR advisors such as Armida in East Sussex, Totally Balanced in Leicestershire or Stallard Kane in Lincolnshire to see if they can help you keep up to date.