New statistics reveal interesting and unusual facts around the typical ET claimant.
Do you employ white, heterosexual males over the age of 45? If you do, then you’re more likely to have an Employment Tribunal claim lodged against you according to official government findings. The recently published Characteristics of Employment Tribunal Claimants, looks at the profile of complainants and the type of claims that were made at Employment Tribunals in 2013. The analysis shows that employment tribunal claimants are more likely to be aged 45 or over and that just under three fifths of claims were made by males. In addition, the statistics reveal that 82 percent claimants were white, two thirds regarded themselves as belonging to a religion and 94 percent identified themselves as heterosexual.
Richard Smith, Head of HR at Croner, part of global information services business, Wolters Kluwer, says: “These statistics reveal some interesting and unusual facts around the typical claimant; mostly they are the middle aged white male but we also noticed that people with disabilities are more likely to present claims than we might have expected and that claims from ethnic minorities account for almost 20 percent of the ET caseload (compared to a population of under 10 percent). As might be expected certain claims types are disproportionately experienced by some groups e.g. age discrimination in the mostly over 45 age group, redundancy pay claims for older workers and unsurprisingly 100 percent of claims for pregnancy discrimination came from females!”
The analysis also reveals that private sector businesses with less than 25 employees are more likely to be faced with an employment tribunal claim than larger organisations. Typically facing claims in relation to redundancy (44 percent), breach of contract (41 percent) and the Wages Act (40 percent). Richard says: “Smaller businesses find it harder to deal with the complexities of employment law and typically have fewer internal resources to resolve disputes before they progress to an employment tribunal. We often find ourselves helping businesses of this size who want to do the right thing but need expert guidance to negotiate the sometimes tricky provisions of UK employment law and so provide better outcomes for both the employer and employee and minimise the wasted costs and effort involved in litigation”.
