When discrimination starts, many employees find themselves navigating it alone.

It’s normal to feel unsure — unsure what’s happening, unsure who to trust, unsure what you should be documenting (if anything at all). This doubt is often the reason why people freeze and do nothing, not because they want to protect themselves, but because they genuinely don’t know where to begin.

And even if they do begin, without any guidance, it can be extremely easy to make small, unintentional mistakes that have a significant impact on your chances of ever seeing justice.

Which is why we've written this post to cover the mistakes we see employees make most often.

We’ve seen too many situations where an employee was terminated without having any evidence to support their claims other than their word.

Many employees delay collecting evidence, because they hope their situation will get better and assume they will know when they’re about to be terminated and have time to collect the evidence they need then.

Ironically, many of these employees told us they thought their situation was improving just before they were let go. And unfortunately when this did happen, they lost access to their accounts immediately and had no time to collect any of the evidence they needed.

We get that capturing everything can feel overwhelming, so we often tell people to just start with what happened today. Take screenshots. Write down what was said, who said it, and when it happened.

Keep doing this as new events occur. If and when you have the time and energy, go back and capture it. But for now, starting today is better than having nothing.