Reducing staff hours: an alternative to redundancies?
Reducing staff hours: an alternative to redundancies?
Redundancy
Peninsula Group, HR and Health & Safety Experts
(Last updated )
Peninsula Group, HR and Health & Safety Experts
(Last updated )
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Reducing staff hours: an alternative to redundancies?
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HR management outsourcing is when a team of experts manage your HR by looking after your contracts, policies, and procedures.
These are the HR essentials every business needs. Without them, your staff could bring successful claims against you, you could lose thousands in legal fines, and even face prosecution. Never underestimate the benefits of HR support for a small business.
We have years of experience in providing HR for SMEs and HR management outsourcing. Contact us to see how we can support you, including HR advice for small businesses - as well as medium and large companies.
Good human resource management is having round the clock support when you need it the most.
Whenever there’s a staff challenge or an important legal update, you just pick up the phone and get the help you need – no matter the time or place.
The main benefits of HR outsourcing are:
- Cost saving: Reduces the expenses for such things are hiring, training and employing an in-house HR team.
- Time saving: Saves time for staff members away from HR tasks.
- Improves expertise and compliance: Provides ongoing advice and support to ensure complete and total compliance.
- Reduces risk: Reduces the risk of any payroll and compliance failures.
Outsourcing HR is cheaper than hiring internal staff and saves you money overall when it comes to your HR service. Plus, you avoid making mistakes that could cost you heavily in claims and legal fines down the line. Every business should consider HR support as a way to avoid claims.
Peninsula is one of the leading HR outsourcing services in the UK, and by working with us you get access to our HR advisory service. Contact us for your outsourced SME HR today.
The key functions of HR outsourcing services are:
- Payroll and benefits: Helps a business to manage employee wages, tax processing, and employee enrolment.
- Recruitment and onboarding: Helps with job descriptions, sourcing new candidates, interviewing, and ensuring a smooth onboarding process.
- Compliance with employment law: Helps to ensure compliance with ever-changing employment legislation.
- Employee relations: Helps to manage grievance and disciplinary procedures, and any ongoing support that's required.
- HR admin: Helps to handle and manage daily tasks, such as employee records, sorting employment contracts, and processing any leave requests.
- Training and development: Helps to create and deliver staff training programs to improve employees' skills.
Our HR expert explains the implications of the extended ‘protected period’ for pregnant employees and returnees from family-related leave when considering redundancy:
Poundland owner Pepco has agreed to take on up to 71 Wilko stores, with staff working at the sites given priority for jobs once the sale has been completed.
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Taking a hard-working employee aside to tell them that their job’s at risk might be the toughest task you face as an employer.
But there are ways you can avoid it.
Revamping staff roles. Withdrawing job offers. Changing terms & conditions. We’ve explored these steps and more in an earlier article on .
But today, I’m going to focus on how reducing staff hours can help you trim your expenses and retain your workforce, ready for when business picks up again.
Let’s get started.
What are reduced hours?
Reducing staff hours means asking your employee/s to work fewer hours so you can pay them fewer wages and save money for your business.
It sounds simple. But there’s a lot you need to do before you can make any changes.
First, you need to have a good business reason for cutting people’s hours. Examples could be:
Reduced demand for the business’s product or service
A change in work duties
Earlier/later working hours
A local lockdown due to COVID-19
Then, you need to work out whether your employees’ contractsallow you to reduce the hours that they work.
If they do, you should still follow a careful process and consult your staff before you cut their hours.
But if they don’t, you’ll need to revise the contracts and ask your workforce to agree to the changes…
How do I change an employment contract?
As a general rule, you can only make changes to someone’s contract if:
Your employee agrees to the change
A representative of the employee agrees to the change on their behalf
It’s best to hold a consultation with your employee if you need them to agree.
This can just be an informal, one-on-one meeting, where you explain your reasons for the change and consider the employee’s ideas and concerns.
Some contract changes can be agreed verbally by the employee or their representatives. But even after a verbal agreement, you should confirm the change in writing.
Changes to terms within a written statement of main terms must be confirmed in writing within a month of the change, and you should consider whether you need to re-issue a new statement of main terms under the .
This way, you’ll also have proof of the agreement to prevent any mix-ups and help protect you if you face a dispute.
But what happens if your employee won’t agree?
Can I force the changes upon my staff?
If the alternative is redundancy, your employees will likely settle for fewer hours.
But if not, you might still be able to force through the changes. This involves dismissing and then rehiring a worker under a new contract containing the reduced hours.
Forcing changes should be a last resort, and you need to consider:
Whether you’ve already tried everything to reach an agreement with the employee
If the changes are crucial for your business
The potential harm to staff morale and productivity
The risks of legal action
Workers who face forced changes might be able to claim unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal.
So if you’re thinking about dismissing and rehiring your staff, it’s worth getting expert legal advice to make sure it’s the right choice.
You might find that reducing the size of your workforce is a better option…
What if I still need to let staff go?
You should only look at job losses once you’ve explored all the alternatives. And like forcing contract changes, the road to redundancies is tough and riddled with risks.
Peninsula write you a watertight business case. They remove any costly legal risks. And they even handle those tough employee chats, so you don’t have to.
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