Advice from an HR consultant in Bury St Edmunds on why creating a culture where people speak up early can save your business thousands.
I’m working with more small business owners right now who are dealing with formal complaints that came out of nowhere.
Except they didn’t come out of nowhere. The signs were there for months. The employee just didn’t feel comfortable saying anything until it was too late.
Tribunal claims are up 39% year on year, with over half a million cases sitting in the system. Most of those started with a problem that nobody felt safe raising.
Here’s what I want you to take away from that, and what we can do about it.
What’s actually happening with tribunal numbers
Right now, 64,000 individual cases are open and waiting to be heard. Some regions have hearings listed into 2028 and 2029. The backlog is enormous.
But the numbers only tell part of the story. The Employment Rights Act is bringing changes that will make unresolved workplace issues even more costly for employers.
From 1 October 2026, the time limit for bringing a tribunal claim doubles from three months to six months. Your employees will have twice as long to decide whether to take formal action.
Then from January 2027, two more changes land. The compensation cap for unfair dismissal is being removed entirely. And the qualifying period for unfair dismissal drops to six months.
Put simply, more people will be eligible to claim, they’ll have longer to do it, and the potential payouts will be uncapped.
Why smaller teams are more vulnerable
You might assume that a close-knit team of five or ten people would find it easier to raise concerns openly. In practice, the opposite is often true.
When your team is small, the person you’d raise a concern with is often the same person who decides your pay or your future in the business. That dynamic makes people hold back. They don’t want to be seen as difficult. They worry about the consequences.
So the issue sits there. It grows. And by the time it surfaces, it’s already a formal grievance or a resignation letter on your desk.
As a small business owner, you’re already stretched. You’re making decisions on the go, dealing with customers, managing cash flow. It’s easy for a simmering team issue to fall to the bottom of the list. But that’s exactly how small problems become expensive ones.
The financial reality of silence
The average unfair dismissal payout in 2023/24 was £13,749.
Discrimination claims averaged far higher. Age discrimination cases topped £100,000.
Once the compensation cap is removed in January 2027, those unfair dismissal figures have no ceiling. The financial exposure for your business increases considerably.
Now compare that to the cost of a manager sitting down with a team member, listening to their concern, and working through it before it escalates. There really is no cheaper way to manage risk in your business.
What it takes to get people talking
October is Speak Up Month, and it’s a good prompt to ask yourself an honest question: would your employees actually come to you with a problem before it spiralled?
Building that kind of openness doesn’t happen by accident. It takes deliberate effort. And it definitely doesn’t mean putting up a suggestion box that nobody uses or running an annual survey that goes unread.
It means your people genuinely believe they won’t be penalised for raising something uncomfortable. Here’s what that looks like in practice.
Managers who listen without reacting defensively. If someone plucks up the courage to raise an issue and is met with irritation or dismissal, they won’t do it again. Neither will anyone else who sees that reaction.
A route for informal resolution that sits outside the grievance process. A simple conversation framework that managers can use to address concerns before they become formal. Something structured enough to be useful, but light enough to actually get used.
Regular one-to-one check-ins with genuine follow-up. Not a tick-box exercise. Actually asking how things are going and then doing something with the answer.
Consistent messaging that early concerns are welcome. Say it during onboarding. Repeat it in team meetings. Keep reinforcing it. People need to hear it multiple times before they believe it’s real.
Our HR consultancy services in Bury St Edmunds include helping businesses put exactly these kinds of processes in place, so that problems get caught early rather than left to grow.
Questions worth asking yourself
If you’re reading this and wondering where your business stands, consider these:
- When was the last time a team member raised an informal concern with you or a manager? If you can’t remember, that’s worth paying attention to.
- Do your managers know how to respond to a concern without escalating it or shutting it down?
- Have you ever told your team, clearly and directly, that raising issues early is encouraged?
- If someone left tomorrow, would you be confident there wasn’t an unresolved problem behind it?
How we help
We work with small businesses to put simple processes in place so that problems get raised and dealt with before they turn into grievances or claims. That includes helping managers have honest, productive conversations and designing informal resolution routes that people actually feel comfortable using.
If you’ve got a team issue that’s been sitting on your to-do list, the sooner you address it, the less it will cost you.
As an outsourced HR consultant in Bury St Edmunds, I’d love to have a chat about how we can support you. Give us a call on 01473 653000 or drop us an email at hello@pshumanresources.co.uk.
A quick conversation now could save you a lot of time and money later.
