I read some stats today that I can’t ignore:
- Single tribunal claims are up 39% year on year.
- 64,000 individual cases are open and waiting to be resolved.
- And more than half a million claims in total are sitting in the system right now.
I’d hazard a guess that many of these cases started the same way and could have been avoided. Someone had a problem at work, didn’t feel safe raising it and the problem grew and grew until it became formal.
The flip side of the coin is that employees who are happy and feel safe bringing up issues generally tend not to lodge formal complaints that can cost their employer thousands of pounds.
October is Speak Up Month. I think that now is a great time to look at how you run your business and whether your employees would actually come to you with a problem before it escalated.
The rule changes that make silence more expensive
Thanks to the Employment Rights Act and the changes its bringing, the window for claims is getting wider and the potential payouts are getting bigger.
From 1 October 2026, tribunal time limits are doubling from three months to six months. Employees will have twice as long to decide whether to make a claim.
From January 2027, the unfair dismissal compensation cap is being removed entirely. And the qualifying period is dropping to six months.
Meanwhile, the tribunal backlog is at record levels, with hearings in some regions being listed into 2028 and 2029.
Why small businesses are more exposed
In a team of five or ten people, everyone knows everyone.
That sounds like it should make it easier to speak up, but often it does the opposite.
Employees in small teams worry about rocking the boat. They worry that raising something with their manager means raising it with the person who signs their payslips. So, they say nothing. The problem festers. And by the time you hear about it, it’s already a formal complaint or a resignation.
What a speak-up culture actually looks like
“Speak-up culture” doesn’t mean suggestion boxes or anonymous surveys which nobody reads.
It means that your employees genuinely believe that raising a concern won’t be held against them. That takes deliberate action on your part.
Here’s what I see in businesses that get this right:
- Managers who respond to concerns without getting defensive. If someone raises an issue and the response is irritation or dismissal, that’s the last time they’ll raise anything.
- An informal resolution route that sits outside the grievance process. Something as simple as a conversation framework which managers can use before anything becomes formal.
- Regular check-ins where employees are actively asked how things are going, with genuine follow-up on what they say.
- Clear, repeated communication that raising a concern early is welcomed. Say it out loud. Put it in your onboarding. Keep saying it.
Employees need to hear it more than once before they believe it.
The cost of silence vs the cost of listening
The average unfair dismissal payout in 2023/24 was £13,749. Discrimination claims averaged far higher, with age discrimination topping £100,000.
Those figures only go up from January 2027 when the compensation cap for unfair dismissal is removed.
Compare that to the cost of a conversation where a manager listens to a concern, takes it seriously and resolves it before it goes anywhere.
There is no cheaper risk strategy than making it easy for people to tell you when something is wrong.
How we can help
We help small businesses to build processes where problems get raised and resolved early, before they become grievances or claims. That includes training managers on honest conversations and designing simple informal resolution routes that actually get used.
If you’re sitting on a team issue that you’ve been putting off, the sooner you act the cheaper it is.
Dealing with something like this in your own business? Our HR advice and support is there to help you talk it through and get it right.