Innovating Employment Justice in Tunisia: A Case Study in People-Centred Design

In Tunisia, employment disputes are often characterised by complex processes, long delays, high costs and significant power imbalances. In many respects, employment justice processes represent the opposite of people-centred justice. Many employees lack legal awareness of their rights, with legal information being hard to find and challenging to understand. Advice and representation are difficult to obtain.

This creates a justice gap, leaving many employees and businesses without effective pathways to resolve their problems.

This case study examines the development and impact of the Employment Justice Platform (EJP) in Tunisia, a web-based tool designed to enhance the accessibility, efficiency, and usability of employment justice for both individuals and businesses. We spoke to stakeholders and participants to explore the needs for innovation in employment justice, the policy and organisational contexts, as well as the project stages of gathering stakeholders, ideation, design, and prototyping.

Developed through HiiL’s Justice Innovation Lab, the EJP is the result of a human-centred design process that brought together diverse stakeholders, including representatives of the Tunisian Ministry of Social Affairs, the Employment Inspectorate, lawyers, academic researchers, civil society representatives, and private-sector experts. The tool simplifies the justice journey by using an intuitive question-and-answer interface to provide legal information and advice about various aspects of employment law and inform people about their rights and obligations. This helps users to identify the specific legal aspects of their problems and the pathways available to them. Importantly, the platform helps to directly resolve legal problems by referring the parties to a particular office of the Labour Inspectorate. The inspectorate can assist parties in dispute resolution, serving as a neutral party to facilitate communication and identify mutually beneficial solutions that meet all parties’ needs. 

By encouraging fair, mutually beneficial settlements over litigation, the EJP aims to significantly reduce the financial and emotional costs for employees and employers while simultaneously alleviating the heavy caseloads faced by Tunisian courts. As the platform is handed over to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment Inspectorate for national integration, this study highlights the potential for people-centred approaches to shift institutional culture, fostering dispute resolution systems that are more responsive to users’ needs and deliver fair and lasting resolutions.