5 Tips for a Fair and Lawful Redundancy Process
Prepare for Redundancies during the Coronavirus Pandemic
Making redundancies can not only be difficult for the employee being made redundant but the employer and employees who remain within the business. Employers need to ensure sensitive handling to create a fair treatment of redundant employees and the morale of those who remain in the workforce. From a legal perspective, an unfair redundancy is an unfair dismissal, which can result in legal consequences.
Do you understand the obligations, such as an employee’s rights?
Do you have consistent and correct procedures in place to follow?
Here are 5 tips for employers to ensure they remain fair and lawful when dealing with redundancies:
- Consider alternatives to reduce or avoid redundancies
- Offer voluntary redundancy
- Change working hours or move employees into other roles
- Let go of temporary or contract workers
- Follow your redundancy policy and procedures to ensure transparency and fairness
- Only use the redundancy process for redundancies
- Create a redundancy plan
- Follow the step-by-step guide for managing staff redundancies by ACAS
- Remember your statutory duties
- Inform employees and hold consultations – during the COVID-19 pandemic, you must still consult your employees either face-to-face or remotely
- Explain the basis for selection to avoid discrimination
- Work out statutory or contractual redundancy pay for employees who have worked under/over 2 full years
- Give redundancy notice – Top Tip: You can avoid the additional cost of paying for the unused holiday when you require employees to take accrued holiday during their notice period
- Offer an appeals process
- Document everything and evaluate how the process was followed
- All the options you have considered before deciding on redundancies
- The selection process
- Letters and notices
- Consultation notes
- Get help
- HR consultants have the experience and knowledge to manage redundancies from start to finish
- Support staff by providing counselling to ease the stressful experience and to manage uncertainty
Remember, the way you treat your employees during these challenging times will be remembered by those around you.
If you are considering making redundancies and need help with the technicalities as well as avoiding the pitfalls, Cobalt HR can provide professional guidance throughout. Our team has a full understanding of how to best support businesses dealing with redundancies.
Enjoy this blog? Why not check out our blog on ‘How to build a Learning Organisation the Right Way in 2022’ by clicking the following link: https://cobalt-hr.co.uk/how-to-build-a-learning-organisation-the-right-way-in-2022/