Message evidence for employment tribunals.

Why messages decide tribunal cases.

Search the published Employment Tribunal decisions on GOV.UK and the pattern is plain. On 3 September 2026 the phrase "text messages" appeared in 3,519 decisions, "WhatsApp" in 2,573, "Microsoft Teams" in 471 (plus "Teams messages" in 174 and "Teams chat" in 127) and "Slack" in 245. These are counts across the whole database since 2017, and a few will be ordinary uses of a word, but the direction is not in doubt. Researchers at the University of Salford, writing in The Conversation in June 2025, counted 48 tribunal cases involving WhatsApp messages in 2018 and 562 in 2024.

The claims that fill the tribunal turn on what was said, when, and by whom.

• Harassment (Equality Act 2010, section 26): unwanted conduct related to a protected characteristic with the purpose or effect of violating dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The messages are the conduct.
• Whistleblowing (Employment Rights Act 1996, section 43B): a disclosure of information the worker reasonably believes is in the public interest and tends to show one of the listed wrongs, which since 6 April 2026 include sexual harassment. The disclosure is usually a message, and so is the treatment that followed.
• Constructive dismissal (ERA 1996, section 95(1)(c)): you resigned because of the employer's conduct. The conduct, and the timing of your resignation against it, sit in the message record.
• Unlawful deductions from wages (ERA 1996, section 13): what was agreed and what was paid, often settled in a chat about shifts, rates or expenses.

What to do in the first week.

1. Preserve the originals. Do not tidy, edit or delete anything, including messages you regret. Disclosure covers documents that harm your case as well as those that help it, and the tribunal's guidance calls concealing or withholding a relevant document a serious matter.
2. Export complete records, not screenshots. A screenshot is a picture of a selection. An export is the record, every message, timestamp and sender in place. Screenshots and photos still have a role as exhibits; the timeline should come from exports.
3. Watch the retention clocks. On Slack's free plan only the last 90 days are visible, and since 26 August 2024 messages and files older than one year may be deleted on a rolling basis. In Teams, an employer's retention policy can remove older messages, and a message a user deletes is recoverable through Microsoft's export tools for only 21 days unless a hold is in place.
4. Keep what you lawfully hold, and nothing else. Your own phone and accounts are yours. Copying the employer's confidential files to a personal account is a different matter (Brandeaux Advisers v Chadwick [2010] EWHC 3241 (QB)). For those, rely on disclosure.
5. Make a subject access request. Ask your employer in writing for a copy of your personal data, naming Teams, Slack, email and any other system. It is usually free. The employer must respond within one month, extendable by up to two months if the request is complex, and the ICO says it cannot refuse because you are in a grievance or tribunal process and intend to use the data for litigation (the Court of Appeal agreed in Dawson-Damer v Taylor Wessing [2017] EWCA Civ 74). The search need only be reasonable and proportionate, a standard the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 has now written into the law (section 78, in force since Royal Assent and treated as effective from 1 January 2024).
6. Keep a diary of dates. The act complained of, the resignation, the grievance, the Acas notification, the certificate, the SAR. Each one drives a deadline.

How the tribunal will look at your messages.

Disclosure runs both ways. The Presidential Guidance on case management (Guidance Note 2) lists emails, text messages and social media content among relevant documents, and requires disclosure of any relevant document in your possession, including those that may harm your case. Expect a case management order with a disclosure date, an exchange of lists, and clean copies.

One agreed bundle, in date order, with page numbers. The bundle contains only the documents to be referred to, usually prepared by the respondent, in chronological order, every page numbered. Documents exchanged for the case may be used only for the case.

Electronic bundles from 4 June 2026. Where the tribunal orders electronic documents and at least one party is represented, the new Presidential Guidance requires PDF, pages numbered electronically from 1, the number on each page matching the PDF's own page count and any printed copy, a searchable text layer throughout, and bookmarks for significant documents. Unrepresented parties are encouraged to comply as far as they can.

Witness statements in date order, pointing at pages. In England and Wales a statement stands as your evidence in chief: chronological, numbered paragraphs, quoting the bundle page for each document relied on. In Scotland the presumption since October 2022 is that evidence in chief is given orally; written statements are the exception.

Covert recordings. The tribunal is not bound by the courts' admissibility rules (rule 41). In Vaughan v London Borough of Lewisham (2013) the EAT held that a covert recording is not excluded merely because of how it was obtained, following the earlier decision in Amwell View School v Dogherty (2006), but it must be disclosed with a transcript, and making it can itself be misconduct (Phoenix House v Stockman, EAT 2019). Using someone else's private messages is riskier still: in FKJ v RVT [2023] EWHC 3 (KB) an employer that deployed a former employee's private WhatsApp messages against her tribunal claim faced a High Court claim for misuse of private information.

The numbers.

• 50,000 single claims received in 2025/26, up 39% on the year before. 64,000 single claims open at the end of March 2026, up 55%.
• Median time from receipt to clearance: 27 weeks across 2025/26 and 32 weeks for claims cleared between January and March 2026. Clearance means disposal by any route, and most claims settle or are withdrawn; the Ministry of Justice does not publish a median time to final hearing.
• About a third of claimants represented themselves in 2023/24, the latest year with a published breakdown.
• Compensation limits from 6 April 2026: a week's pay is capped at £751 and the unfair dismissal compensatory award at £123,543, or 52 weeks' gross pay if lower.
• Vento bands for injury to feelings, claims presented on or after 6 April 2026: lower £1,300 to £12,600, middle £12,600 to £37,700, upper £37,700 to £62,900.
• If you represent yourself and win a preparation time order, your time is valued at £46 an hour.

Frequently asked.