Due to COVID 19, many companies are having to make redundancies when an employer has to make redundancies.
There are a lot of procedures to follow in order to comply with the law. In this blog, we are going to be talking you through how you can best select employees to be made redundant while not disrupting your business or the other employees.
1. Identify the areas
When making the initial selection of employees who can be made redundant it is important to look at areas within your business where there are either an excess of employees or lack of need for a particular area. For example, there may not be enough work to keep on 10 employees full-time in a certain area or there may not be any work for certain employees anymore. These are the areas where you will make your selection from.
2. Decide 'the pool'
As mentioned above the pool is a list of employees whose jobs are no longer as demanding or relevant. For many companies, this pool may seem obvious but it is important to not all employees even those not currently occupying roles but capable of work. It is important to note that if in the unfortunate event that the entire business closes down there is no need to undertake formal redundancy selection.
3. Establish a clear objective
When establishing the selection criteria it is important that your reasoning behind your decisions can be backed up. As the employer, it is your job to establish the pool. You can then run this past your employers and explain your reasoning behind this. It is at this stage that some employers may put themselves forward for what’s called voluntary redundancy. This is when an employee approaches the employer and asks to be made redundant they are then entitled to work a notice period and offered a voluntary redundancy pay.
It is important that during this time you think carefully about who is going to be left after all the redundancies are made, it can do more harm than good to the company if you lose your best staff. While making these cuts may be necessary skills and experience are retained is crucial.
Any assessment should be carried out by a line-manager with direct knowledge of the employees’ work, ensuring that the criteria are applied fairly and consistently. Extra care needs to be taken to not discriminate against anyone. An example of this would be penalising someone based on any absences or attendance issues in relation to disability, pregnancy or maternity.
4. Maintain accurate records
Arguably the most important thing when making redundancies is to ensure you are keeping accurate records at every stage of the process. This includes all information on every employer and storing it with HR. This is so that in future if a dispute does arise and you are required to present the information you can access these documents easily.
While we understand making redundancies are never easy it is vital that you follow the proper protocol and abide by the law. If you’re not already using our software, we offer a free 14-day trial so you can test the waters.
If you need to speak to a professional, feel free to contact us and see how we can help.