avoid the recruitment trap....

Personnel Today recently reported on the numbers of vexatious litigants presenting dubious claims to the Employment Tribunal. In plain english this means people who make claims in the Employment Tribunal against a company usually for discrimination when they have no basis at all for their claim. Most of the time, these claims arise from recruitment advertisements which use phrases such as "recent graduate" "energetic person" etc which are seen to exclude a proportion of the population and consequently could be regarded as discriminatory.

You don't need to be an employee to make a claim for discrimination. In order to defend these types of claims in the Tribunal you need hard evidence that the claimant has made these types of claims before. It is believed that in one case 35 claims were made by one individual who had not even turned up to the Tribunal for 80% of them!

Defending these type of claims is costly as is entering into any form of settlement with the claimant. It is always best practice to carefully review your recruitment adverts prior to publishing them and try to ensure that they cannot be perceived as being discriminatory. if you are faced with such a claim and you doubt the veracity of it then do seek advice as Solicitors and HR professionals are being encouraged to share information on these types of claims which will assist in defending against them. For further information contact Judith@cc-legal.co.uk or visit our website at www.cc-legal.co.uk