No HR Department? October Just Doubled Your Exposure

From 1 October the window for bringing most employment tribunal claims goes from three months to six. Samantha Newton FCIPD on why that lands hardest on the smallest employers.

Most people reading this employ somewhere between three and thirty people. There is no HR department. When something goes wrong with a member of staff, you handle it. In the evening, usually, after everything else.

That is the group this change affects most, and it has had almost no coverage.

On 1 October the time limit for bringing most employment tribunal claims doubles. Three months becomes six.

What it applies to

The everyday things, not the exotic ones:

• letting someone go, fairly or otherwise
• discrimination
• money docked from someone’s pay that they say should not have been
• someone raising a concern and then being treated badly for it
• breach of contract

Redundancy pay and equal pay already ran to six months. This brings almost everything else into line.

Two clocks, and one bad idea

The six months only applies to something that happens on or after 1 October. If it happened before, the old three month limit stands.

So a parting of ways on 29 September carries a three month window. One on 2 October carries six.

Which leads some people to an obvious and wrong conclusion.

No, this is not a reason to get someone out of the door in September.

A decision that will not stand up does not become safe because there is less time to challenge it. It just fails sooner. And a process visibly rushed to beat a deadline is the sort of thing that reads very badly indeed at a hearing.

Why this is harder for a small employer than a large one

A business with an HR team has a system. Files, templates, someone whose job it is to write things down. Six months later, the record still exists.

A business of eight people has you.

The conversation happened in the yard, or on the phone, or over a coffee. You remember it clearly today. In April you will remember the gist, and the other person will have had six months to build a very detailed account of the same conversation.

That gap is the whole risk. It is not about being in the wrong. It is about being unable to show you were in the right.

What it costs to find out

The most recently published tribunal award statistics, covering April 2023 to March 2024, put the median unfair dismissal award at £6,746 and the average at £13,749. For disability discrimination the median was £17,218 and the average £44,483.

Two things behind those numbers.

Unfair dismissal compensation is capped. Discrimination is not. Different orders of risk, and worth thinking about separately.

And the award is not the bill. In the employment tribunal each side normally pays its own legal costs. Winning does not get your fees back, and it does not give you back the fortnight you spent on documents and witness statements instead of running your business.

What this looks like in practice

One business lost a contract and had to remove four roles. The instinct was to move quickly and quietly.

We confirmed it was a genuine redundancy situation, got the selection basis right, and ran the consultation properly.

Four exits. No claims.

Speed was not the thing that protected them. The record was.

Three things worth doing before October

Not a project. One afternoon.

1. Pick one place where anything about an employee gets saved, and use it. A folder is fine. Your memory is not.
2. Take anyone currently on a formal process, long-term sickness or a performance conversation and ask yourself honestly: if this ended badly tomorrow, what could I actually produce? Not what did I intend.
3. After any difficult conversation, write up what was said and what you decided, the same day. Ten minutes. It is the cheapest insurance in this article.

The other date, and this one matters if you have customers

On 30 October the harassment rules also tighten. Employers will need to take all reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment, and will be liable for harassment of their staff by third parties. Third parties means customers, clients, contractors and suppliers.

If you run a restaurant, a shop, a salon, a site or anything else where your people deal with the public, that is a real change and it deserves its own conversation before the end of October.

The honest summary

This change does not make employees more likely to win. It makes them more likely to still be able to claim.

If you deal with difficult situations quickly and informally and rely on them going away, you have just been given a longer runway to fail on.

If you handle things properly at the time and write them down, very little changes. Nothing about 1 October alters what properly looks like. It only doubles how long you might have to prove it.

If you have a live employee situation and you are not certain it would stand up, the Employee Situation Check takes three minutes and shows you where the risk actually sits

Samantha Newton FCIPD is an independent HR and Employee Relations consultant and founder of Magenta HR Consulting, working with owner-managed businesses across the Cotswolds, Oxfordshire and the wider UK.