The situation
An unfair dismissal claim arrived in a small business owner’s inbox. No warning. Just an email. They had no idea what it meant. No idea what the former employee could claim. No idea whether anything they’d already done had made it worse. That’s normal. Most small businesses have never dealt with one. There’s no HR manager to hand it to.
What happened next
Kane Independent Consulting went on site the following day. The first job was not the response. It was working out what the claim actually was, versus what the owner feared it was. We went through it line by line. What the claim meant in plain terms. What the former employee could realistically go for in damages. What they could not go for. This part mattered most. The exposure was narrower than the owner had assumed. Then we drafted the response together. We set the negotiating parameters before any conversation started. What the business was willing to move on. Where the line sat.
The forward work
A claim is a symptom. The cause is usually missing paperwork. So the second half of the engagement was building what should have been there already. Paper trails. Documented processes. The things that stop the next issue becoming a claim at all.
The outcome
The owner started the day in shock. By the time we walked out of their office, they had a written response, clear parameters, and a plan for what happens next. An unfair dismissal claim is not the end of a business. It’s a process. And a process can be worked through.
