We’ll help relieve the pressure on you and ensure things go smoothly in what’s often a sensitive and emotional experience for those concerned.
There are lots of ways we do this: from giving you guidance on the law to advice on how best to make it work in your circumstances, helping draft communications, hosting meetings where it helps to have someone else in the room and taking care of the paperwork.
And we can be as remote or as involved as you choose. Many of our customers find that just having us on the phone or email is enough to get them through the process successfully.
The chances are that you’re facing one of the main situations that trigger a redundancy process: the closure of a business or premises, or a changed business need where certain work just isn’t economic any more or you can’t do so much of it and in response your workforce either needs to shrink or be released altogether. Where multiple employees may be affected, this is usually called a ‘collective redundancy’ situation.
The main purpose of the redundancy process is to ensure that employees who are doing their job well get a fair chance to challenge your conclusion that their role is no longer needed, and also to be considered for other roles within your business to avoid being let go.
The law on redundancy is reasonably straightforward, but there’s a lot of it and much of it relates to correctly following the legal procedures from the very start - definitely before you start talking to the employee(s) about what’s going on and how it impacts them.
In fact, the minute you know that you’re going to have to start planning for a change, we’ll be keen to speak to you. If you’re aware of your employment law obligations before you plan then you can build a robust procedure into the steps you need to take. (For example, our advice may affect when you plan to give notice on a property.)
We’ll share our practical tips and tailored checklists, and our experienced team members will steer you through each element of the process to keep you on track and demonstrate you’ve done the right thing. The time-scales and volume of these procedural steps can be particularly challenging to manage at times, especially where you need to let go of over 20 employees.
Like all our customers, you’ll be keen not to drag things out so you don't cause (potentially) affected employees unnecessary anxiety or disrupt your continuing operations. (It’s a commonly experienced fact that the moment employees learn that their jobs might be in jeopardy, workforce output plummets by a significant percentage.)
If an employee believes you’ve got it wrong, you could find yourself facing a tribunal action for unfair dismissal. If you contact us at the outset, we’ll guide you through the correct redundancy consultation process for your given circumstances.
