How you can prevent employment tribunals and reputational damage to your business

As a business owner, your eyes are firmly fixed on success. Choosing the right employees can make or break your business. But it’s not just the selection process that has a lasting impact on your business revenue. As an employer, it’s your responsibility to keep your employees’ content, adhere to their employment contracts and ensure everything interaction (good or bad) is handled professionally and legally.

This is why many businesses invest in employment law experts such as watershed.law to guide them through the implementation of company policies, workplace correspondence, training and to help them actively avoid tribunals and legal action against their company. In this post, we’ll explore some standard practices that can help prevent employment tribunals and reputational damage from harming your business. Read on to find out more.

Focus on management training

Your policies and attitude towards a positive working environment for your employees are only as strong as the management team who are representing and implementing these guidelines. When an employee has a grievance or has issues about harassment, bullying or other serious issues, then management is usually their first point of call. Therefore, your management must be up to date and be able to handle these issues competently, be fully aligned with legal legislation and follow processes to the letter. This approach will not only get a better result for your employee with the grievance but also keep your business out of court.

Understand your role and employment law

While it’s easy to place legal concerns and processes in the hands of other areas within your business. As an employer, you must have a good understanding of employment law and are actively protecting your workers. Developing new policies with guidance from legal teams and working closely with HR can prevent employee grievances from being taken further and safeguard your business reputation in the process. Many employment tribunals are won because employers haven’t followed the correct procedures or have gone against employee legislation.

Keep written records of every event

One of the best pieces of advice that employers can follow is to keep written records of every process and interaction with employees who have raised a claim against you. You may be up to date with the latest in employment legislation and employment laws, but if you don’t have the evidence to back up or support your decisions then it might be difficult for you to prove that you have acted legally and fairly in your responses. Get into the habit of creating accurate and thorough records of the processes, communications, and decisions you’ve made. This can help safeguard your business and your reputation in and outside of a tribunal.

And finally

Get advice as quickly as possible

If you’re concerned about your legal position over a claim against your business, then you should reach out to your legal team for employment law advice as quickly as possible. Investing in fixed fee employment law services means you’ll have comprehensive legal advice whenever you need it. Helping you maintain your reputation and prevent tribunals from occurring from the outset.