Recording a meeting in secret will not automatically wreck your unfair dismissal claim
“The EATStands for Employment Appeal Tribunal. It hears appeals from employment tribunal decisions on points of law, not on the facts. It is not a way of simply asking for a second opinion on the outcome. held covert recording is not an automatic breach of trust; the 10% compensation cut stood.”
A secret recording will not sink your unfair dismissalA legal claim you can bring if your employer dismissed you without a fair reason or without following a fair process. You normally need two years of continuous employment to qualify, though some dismi... claim or your compensation on its own. A tribunal weighs why you made it and what is on it before deciding how much it should count.
- Say you plan to record a meeting, unless you have a genuine reason not to. It is safer, and it is what tribunals expect.
- Already recorded a meeting without saying so? Keep it focused on your own situation. Recording confidential information about colleagues or the business is treated far more seriously.
- If you have a covert recording and are considering a tribunal claim, get advice before deciding whether and how to use it.
The situation
A financial accountant at a charity clashed with a senior manager during a departmental restructure. After she interrupted a private meeting and refused to leave, her employer warned her that the incident would be treated as a disciplinary matter. Later the same day she met the charity's HR director to discuss what had happened, and secretly recorded the conversation on her phone. She went on to raise a grievanceA formal complaint raised by an employee against their employer, triggering a legal obligation to investigate and respond. about her treatment, and was dismissed several months later after a mediation process broke down. The recording only came to light once her case reached a tribunal.
What the tribunal found
The tribunal had already found the dismissal unfair on separate grounds. The employer argued that the covert recording should reduce her compensation to nothing, saying any secret recording of a confidential meeting is automatically a serious breach of trust. The tribunal disagreed. It found she had no intention of trapping anyone with the recording. She had been flustered when she switched her phone on and was not even sure it was recording. She never used the recording during the internal process, and only produced a transcript because she was legally required to during the tribunal case. The employer's own disciplinary policy left covert recording off its list of serious offences. The tribunal trimmed her compensation to reflect the recording. It did not reduce it to nothing.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal backed this approach. It confirmed that secretly recording a meeting does not automatically destroy the trust between employer and employee. Recording on a phone is common now, and the reasons vary widely. One person might be trying to manipulate a conversation. Another might just be anxious and want a record of what was said. What mattered here was that the recording covered a meeting about her own situation, rather than someone else's confidential information, and that her intentions were straightforward. Tribunals can reduce compensation for an employee's conduct. But that power has to be applied to the facts of each case, weighed on its own terms.
Phoenix House Ltd v Stockman. UKEAT/0284/17/OO and UKEAT/0058/18/OO. Employment Appeal Tribunal. 5 July 2019.