Workers are necessary assets for the growth and success of your company. They assist in driving your business ahead by completing the daily duties you’ve assigned to them. Your firm will barely thrive without the assistance of employees.
That said, no matter how you’ve invested in your workers, it’s occasionally necessary to fire them for various reasons. These include theft, poor job performance, excessive absence, misleading job application, use of drugs while at work, sexual harassment, and other unethical acts.
While you can terminate workers’ contracts for valid reasons, sometimes it can leave your company open to legal action. This is true, especially if the reason for dismissal is considered wrongful. Wrongful dismissal occurs when an employer breaches a worker’s contract.
Consequence Of Wrongful Dismissal Claims
Your business will suffer in various ways if faced with wrongful dismissal claims. One of them is financial loss. For instance, you might be forced to hire a solicitor to defend you in court. Besides, the court might force you to compensate the wrongfully dismissed employees. This adds extra cost to your business, thus hurting its profits.
Apart from that, you’ll likely waste a lot of time finding lawyers and attending employment tribunal or court sessions. Therefore, your business might suffer because of poor management.
Protecting Your Business From Wrongful Dismissal Lawsuits
As you’ve seen in the previous section, your business will suffer to a great extent if faced with wrongful dismissal claims. For that reason, you should find effective ways to protect it. You can achieve that by:
- Familiarizing Yourself with The Law
One of the most effective ways to protect your business from wrongful dismissal is to prevent it from happening in the first place. You can achieve that only if you understand and apply the law. For that reason, you should familiarize yourself with the law.
Two major classes of law may apply in wrongful dismissal cases. That’s the labor law and wrongful dismissal law. You must read between pages to understand these laws and how they may apply within your jurisdiction. This enables you to comply with the rule of law when firing employees. As a result, you’ll protect your business from wrongful dismissal claims.
Though that’s the case, reading and interpreting law isn’t as easy as you may think. This is true, especially for anyone who isn’t a professional lawyer. Therefore, reading and interpreting labor and wrongful dismissal laws might not work well for you. For that reason, you may consider hiring an attorney.
Your lawyer will help read and correctly interpret the law for you to ensure you don’t deviate from the set guidelines when dismissing workers. However, you must find the right solicitor in the market.
There are various factors to consider when selecting a wrongful dismissal lawyer. These include educational qualifications, experience, availability, quality of services, and reputation. You can visit this website or any other similar platform to find the right wrongful dismissal lawyer for you.
- Developing Effective Workplace Policies and Procedures
Working with a lawyer or having a more profound knowledge of the law is good. However, creating effective workplace policies and procedures is even better. This involves drafting and documenting the policies and procedures your company will employ when hiring, disciplining, and terminating workers. You should also detail the procedure for dispute resolutions.
After creating workplace policies and procedures, ensure your workers know them. Besides, it’d be good to remind employees to adhere to company rules and regulations. This lets employees know what awaits them in the case of wrong acts. As a result, you’ll minimize the chances of your company facing wrongful dismissal claims.
You also need to note that dismissing workers without first warning them can cause your company to face wrongful dismissal claims. For that reason, make sure you give written warnings to first-time wrongdoers.
However, some instances may require you to offer a summary or immediate dismissal to workers without first warning them. But you must make your workers aware of those instances that may lead to their dismissal without notice. This also helps protect your company from lawsuits.
- Documenting Everything
Evidence plays a critical role in any lawsuit. This is important regardless of whether you’re the plaintiff or defendant. Lawyers will ask you to provide evidence before making their final judgment. For that reason, you can consider documenting any worker’s wrongdoing.
You can document many things to help defend yourself in a wrongful dismissal claim. One of them is warning letters. So, any time you issue a warning letter to a team member, ensure you file a copy of the same.
There are also other things you can document on your phone. For instance, if you find workers fighting, the best deal could be to take photos. You can also record a worker talking in a language you consider unacceptable in your company. This helps prove that a particular worker breached the company’s rules. This goes a long way towards protecting your business from losing a wrongful dismissal claim and paying damages.
- Finding Liability Insurance
You can carefully follow the law and dismiss workers. However, these workers may feel their rights were violated, thus rushing to the court or employment tribunal to seek justice. That’s to say that no matter how you follow the law to fire workers, some will always file wrongful dismissal claims against your business. For that reason, you can consider finding liability insurance.
If you want to protect your assets from unforeseen risk, finding liability insurance enables you to protect your company against wrongful dismissal lawsuits. This is important since, no matter how right you think you are, the judge may rule in favor of your workers.
When employees win a wrongful claim against your company, you might be required to compensate them. This hurts your company’s finances.
However, you can save a lot of money if you’ve already subscribed to a liability insurance claim. The insurance company will be responsible for paying any legal charges and any potential lawsuit for damages. However, you must partner with a suitable liability insurance service provider.
Takeaway
Protecting your business from wrongful dismissal is the way to go if you want to boost your finances. It ensures you aren’t wasting money on court cases. You can implement the strategies discussed in this article to protect your business from wrongful lawsuits.
