Discrimination, harassment, and wage disputes are some of the reasons why thousands of UK organisations are faced with employment tribunals every year. The period from April 2023 to March 2024 saw the total number of employment tribunal claims rise from 86,000 to 97,000, representing an increase of almost 13%. These claims present a variety of challenges and can have positive and/or negative impacts and outcomes for employers and employees.
To gain a better understanding of these tribunals, we used AI-driven audience profiling to garner insights from opinions expressed on various online platforms to a high statistical confidence level. We focused our study on an audience of 173,526 business leaders in the UK over the year ending 17 February 2025. This is what we found.
Index
- 20% of business leaders in the UK lost a significant amount of time to employment tribunals
- 28.2% say positive policy changes come about after tribunal cases
- 24.5% of business leaders say understanding regulations is the biggest challenge of the tribunal process
- 33.8% of UK business leaders have legal compliance measures preventing employment disputes
- 40.5% of our audience would like greater transparency from employment tribunals
- Technology (16.9%) and healthcare (16.5%) make up our audience’s primary focus
- 32% of our audience’s organisations are based mainly in Sheffield
- 33.2% of UK business leaders have faced discrimination claims
- About The Data
What Additional Indirect Costs Did You Incur?
20% of business leaders in the UK lost a significant amount of time to employment tribunals
Our research shows how diverse the additional indirect costs incurred by our audience were:
Our audience of business leaders in the UK experienced a wide range of additional indirect costs associated with employment tribunals, with 20% naming theirs as significant lost time, followed by 15.9% saying that they had concerns about lost time. Considering that an estimated 33.7 million working days were lost due to work-related ill health and non-fatal injuries in the UK in 2023 and 2024, this can be a steep indirect cost for many organisations.
Reputational damage was an indirect cost for 14.6% of our audience. This can have serious repercussions for businesses in the UK. In 2022, research found that a single negative article online could see a business lose up to 22% of prospective customers, while four or more negative articles could see this increase to 70% of prospective customers. 90% of customers said that wouldn’t support an organisation with a bad reputation.
Money was also among our audiences’ indirect costs. 13.8% said they experienced significant legal fees, while 7.3% were faced with significant training costs. Other monetary indirect costs included necessary legal payments (6.6%), burdensome administrative costs (4.1%), manageable administrative costs (2.6%), unnecessary settlement burden (2.4%), insignificant training costs (0.4%), and significant insurance premiums (0.1%). To put this into perspective, the average cost of workplace conflict for employers in the UK was £28.5 billion.
For some audience members, other indirect costs included an effect on employee morale (5.4%), significant staff turnover (4.2%), and operational disruption (2.7%).
What Was The Typical Outcomes Of Those Tribunal Cases?
28.2% say positive policy changes come about after tribunal cases
As is evident in the graph below, our research revealed a variety of outcomes for employment tribunal cases:
The indirect costs of employment tribunals can be challenging for employers, but tribunals can have positive outcomes. 28.2% of UK business leaders reported positive policy changes, while others said their cases resulted in successful mediation (4.1%), a positive reputation (2.5%), or were favourable for employees (1.7%). Surprisingly, research found that the overall success rate of civil and commercial mediation was at 92% between 2020 and 2023, which is significantly higher than what might be indicated by our findings.
18.4% said that tribunals didn’t always result in dismissal. This experience was shared by the 3.7% who said that outcomes were not dismissal and the 0.2% who said that employees were reinstated. 6.2% said they weren’t always required to pay compensation. However, this isn’t always the case. 11.3% of our audience said that tribunals resulted in settlements, 8.1% said they were costly for businesses, and 6.2% said the outcomes often were compensation.
When it comes to compensation, awards can be steep, although costs vary according to the claim type (unfair dismissal, different types of discrimination, etc.). In 2023-2024, the average award for unfair dismissal was £13,749, while the average race discrimination award was £29,532, average sex discrimination award £53,403, and the average age discrimination award was £102,891.
According to our audience, other employment tribunal outcomes included a negative impact (8.1%) or did not always include compensation (6.2%).
What Were The Biggest Challenges In Navigating The Tribunal Process?
24.5% of business leaders say understanding regulations is the biggest challenge of the tribunal process
The graph below indicates the biggest challenges that our audience faced during the employment tribunal process:
Two challenges emerged as the biggest faced by our audience, with 24.5% saying that theirs was understanding regulations, while 24.4% said theirs was effective communication. UK businesses are not strangers to the challenge of understanding regulations, even if those regulations were internal. In 2019, it was reported that 56% of organisations lacked a clear corporate governance framework. The lack of effective communication may be one of the reasons for the increased backlog in tribunal cases. According to the Ministry of Justice, the number of open cases increased by 18%, while disposals decreased by 4%, between April and June 2024. The result was a 4% increase in tribunals’ total caseload in 2024.
Crucial settlement negotiations were one of the biggest challenges for 16.2% of our audience, while 9.2% said they struggled with gathering evidence. This was followed by the 9.1% who named time management. A 2025 report found that businesses in the UK spent an average of 4.8 weeks managing employment tribunal claims between July 2022 and July 2024. The law firm’s report also revealed that 44.7% of HR professionals spent between five and six working weeks dealing with claims during this period.
Misunderstood regulations, miscommunication, drawn-out negotiations, and long wait periods might help explain some of the other top challenges faced by our audience, such as reputational impact (8.3%) and emotional stress (0.2%). Some business leaders also experienced challenging financial costs (7.3%) and complicated settlement negotiations (0.7%).
What Measures Do You Have In Place To Prevent Employment Disputes?
33.8% of UK business leaders have legal compliance measures preventing employment disputes
Some businesses in the UK put various measures in place to prevent employment disputes. Find out which measures our audience used:
Implemented by 33.8% of the 173,526 business leaders comprising our audience, legal compliance topped the list of measures put in place to prevent employment disputes. There’s no discounting the importance of compliance for organisations in the UK. Research from Thomson Reuters found that 90% of organisations they surveyed had compliance programmes covering bribery and corruption, followed by data protection (88%) and modern slavery/human rights (60%), among others.
25.9% of our audience implemented essential employee training, while others rely on regular feedback (11.9%) and exit interviews (11.8%). Feedback and exit interviews undoubtedly form part of the open communication used as a measure to prevent employment disputes by 8.3% of our audience. In line with this measure are the open policies that another 8.3% of the audience implemented.
The relatively low percentages of our audience who implemented communication-based measures such as exit interviews and feedback is in keeping with a 2023 survey that found 55% of UK employees do not have formal exit interviews when they leave their job, while 38.2% were not asked to provide feedback when they left their last job.
Despite the lack of interest from management, those surveyed said they would be happy to talk about salaries (73.3%), company culture (72.3%), mental health impact (72.3%), and brand perception (67.5%).
What Changes Would You Like To See Improved?
40.5% of our audience would like greater transparency from employment tribunals
There’s room for improvement in the UK’s employment tribunal process. The statistics below show which improvements our audience would like to see:
While the indirect costs, outcomes, and challenges of employment tribunals and the prevention measures implemented are manifold, our audience was restrained when naming the improvements they would like to see in the tribunal process. 40.5% said they would like greater transparency, while 30.8% said more access to legal support should exist. Better communication was named by 28.7% of UK business leaders.
Surprisingly, these desired improvements are quite different to those named by lawyers in an Employment Lawyers Association survey. Among the improvements they would like to see include more administrative staff to process (100%), additional judges to sit (99%), more use of remote hearings (94%), more case management use (93%), and changing the number of tribunal panellists (51%).
Which Industry Best Describes Your Primary Focus?
Technology (16.9%) and healthcare (16.5%) make up our audience’s primary focus
Our audience represents a spectrum of industries. Take a closer look at the numbers below:
No industry is immune to employment disputes, as can be seen from the wide range of those represented by our audience’s organisations. At 16.9%, technology lead the way, followed closely by healthcare (16.5%) and manufacturing (12.2%).
Research published in 2025 found that UK tech companies were concerned about different types of disputes, including cybersecurity and data privacy (45%), AI (44%), employment (32%), commercial and contract (25%), and tax (25%). Their employment dispute concerns revolved largely around competition scrutiny, equal pay, and workplace investigations. With disputes sometimes arising from a high level of work dissatisfaction, it’s of concern that a 2024 survey revealed that 27% of doctors and 37% of nurses are considering switching employers.
11.8% of our audience said their organisation focused primarily on finance. According to a 2024 Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) report, there was an increase in the number of reported non-financial misconduct incidents over three years, with the most reported being bullying and harassment (26%) and discrimination (23%). 41% of incidents were in the “other” category.
Other industries represented by our audience of UK business leaders include construction (11.5%), transportation (9.1%), retail (8.2%), education (7%), hospitality (6.1%), and professional services (0.8%).
It’s worth noting that, in 2024, more than 3,500 female retail workers won a legal battle for equal pay in a landmark case against Next. As a result, the retailer may need to pay an estimated £30 million in backdated pay.
Where In The UK is Your Organisation Primarily Based?
32% of our audience’s organisations are based mainly in Sheffield
Our audience is drawn from the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, as you can see from this charted distribution: 
While 32% of our audience’s organisations are based primarily in Sheffield, 15.9% are based in Glasgow and 14.3% are in Liverpool. Other cities represented by our audience include Cardiff (9.3%), Manchester (9.1%), Birmingham (7.7%), Leeds (7.5%), and London (4.3%).
According to the Employment Lawyers Association survey, employment tribunals perform better in some areas than in others. Those surveyed named the worst-performing regions/towns as Central London (35%), South London (16%), the South East (13%), East London (12%), West Midlands (6%), the North West (6%), Scotland (5%), the South West (4%), and Wales (3%).
Which Types Of Claims Have You Faced?
33.2% of UK business leaders have faced discrimination claims
Employers can face a range of employment dispute claims from discrimination to environmental safety issues. Find out what our audience has had to tackle: 
Listed by 33.2% of our audience, discrimination claims were the most common type they faced. Unsurprisingly, a recent survey found that 45% of UK adults felt that they experienced unfair discrimination at work or while looking for a job. 21.8% of our audience of business leaders said they had faced claims related to serious harassment, while 19.1% said they had claims around whistleblowing. According to CIPD, 8% of UK employees have experienced harassment, 4% experienced sexual harassment, and 15% experienced some form of bullying.
Other claim types faced by our audience include claims related to wages (10%), redundancy (7%), and valid constructive dismissal (3.4%). At 2.9% and 2.7% respectively, breach of contract and environmental safety issues were at the bottom of the list.
Methodology
Sourced from an independent sample of 173,526 UK business leaders expressing opinions across X, LinkedIn, Quora, Reddit, TikTok and Threads. Responses are collected within an 85% confidence interval and 5% margin of error.
About representative sample
- 28% of our audience was aged 65 years or older
- Slightly more than 50% of our audience is female
- 28% of our audience was aged 65 years or older
