Peninsula Face2Face: Redundancy procedures - avoiding the pitfalls
Peninsula Face2Face: Redundancy procedures - avoiding the pitfalls
Redundancy
Peninsula Group, HR and Health & Safety Experts
(Last updated )
Peninsula Group, HR and Health & Safety Experts
(Last updated )
Read our article: 'Peninsula Face2Face: Redundancy procedures - avoiding the pitfalls'. Contact us today for more information about our Employment Law, Health & Safety, and HR services.
Loading content...
Peninsula Face2Face: Redundancy procedures - avoiding the pitfalls
FAQs
Got a question? Check whether we’ve already answered it for you…
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.
Peninsula Team
Redundancy
Award-winning services
Take the first step towards a safer business. Answer a few questions about your HR and Health & Safety management and we’ll direct you to the support you need
0800 158 2313Speak to an expert 24/7
Dealing with a redundancy situation can often be a very daunting and emotionally difficult time for any business (especially small businesses), sometimes involving long-serving, loyal employees who find their jobs at risk.
Offering ‘redundancy’ is sometimes considered an easy method of removing an employee even when there is no true redundancy situation. For example, due to poor performance.
This isn’t a legitimate redundancy situation, as there is no downturn in work of a particular kind at a particular site. Unless there is a genuine redundancy situation, a tribunal judge will find that this was an unfair dismissal and it can be an expensive mistake for employers to make.
One of the key points that a Tribunal will consider is whether the employer has explored all avenues to try to avoid having to dismiss employees. Redundancy dismissals should be a last resort.
For this reason, the first step should be to put together a sound and compelling business case or rationale, which clearly explains the reasons this situation has arisen, what other steps you have taken and what other options you have considered.
This will usually include:
What alternatives to making compulsory redundancies have been considered (i.e. voluntary redundancies, early retirement or a reduction in sub-contracted work)?
Is this a unionised environment?
Which roles (not people) are ‘at risk’, or likely to be affected by the changes?
How will you consult with those affected?
How many positions need to go? How much financial saving is needed?
What are the timescales involved? Are there external time pressures?
How do you propose the business will look at the end of this process?
Once you have answers to these questions, you can start a consultation. Input from employees can be vital in finding suggestions you hadn’t thought of previously.
From your employees’ point of view, the big question is who should be selected and how you will decide this. This is an area that is often overlooked. Get this wrong and this could be very costly for the business, in a time when you can least afford it.
This will usually involve scoring employees in the same/similar roles against each other in ‘pools’. Failure to follow a fair and transparent selection process may give rise to a successful unfair dismissal claim, regardless of a genuine redundancy situation.
Scoring involves setting criteria that measure employees’ abilities, skills and experience against each other. The criteria should be a mixture of objective criteria and essential skills deemed necessary for the running of the remaining business, and you have to avoid any categories that might be discriminatory.
These criteria are often the source of contention. They must therefore be simple, clear and you must consult with your employees on how you propose to score them. Without this, a tribunal may consider that the scoring has been contrived to achieve a premeditated, and therefore unfair, result.
Peninsula Face2Face can help you to avoid pitfalls within redundancy consultation processes, which can often be extensive and complicated. Our on-site Peninsula Face2Face Consultants can either conduct the consultation meetings on your behalf, from start to finish, or we can just be on-hand to offer guidance with specific situations.
For further information on how our Peninsula Face2Face Service can help your business, reach out to us for redundancy advice. Whether it's aid with a redundancy procedure or any other form of employee meeting, please give a member of the dedicated Peninsula Face2Face team a call on 0844 892 3911.
Blog
Peninsula Team Peninsula Team
Blog
Blog