Royal Mail is planning to make 6,000 redundancies by August 2023. Royal Mail isn’t the only large organisation planning to make significant changes to the workforce. Now that the UK is facing a potential recession, people are wondering, will redundancy rates increase?
Redundancy in the workplace
A redundancy situation may occur for numerous reasons. Redundancies can happen if a business closes, or relocates. A business may also make a member of staff redundant if their workload has been replaced by a new process or member of staff. In many instances, staff are made redundant if there is a lack or cessation of work.
For any case of redundancies, singular or large cases, employers must take due care and attention. Most employers will never be in the unfortunate situation of making thousands of employees redundant. However, the process of making one member of staff redundant is just as important as thousands of redundancies.
The Redundancy Process Explained
What are the types of redundancy?
Standalone/Self Select;
In this case, the employee is the only member of staff and risk and is also the only employee who performs that role.
Pool/Group Redundancy:
This type of redundancy occurs when multiple employees are performing the same job, but only a percentage are made redundant. For example, if there are a team of ten salespeople and only two of the group are made redundant.
How long do redundancies take?
When redundancies occur, most employers will enter a consultation period. This is the process of an organisation making the role redundant. In this period, businesses will consider a range of facts, and communicate decisions with the employee at risk of redundancy.
This time is known as a statutory consultation period. The time frame of this period depends solely on the number of redundancies a business intends to make and not the number of people at risk.
What are the different statutory consultation periods?
If businesses are intending to make up to 19 people redundant, there is no statutory consultation period.
If businesses are intending to make up to 20-99 people redundant, the consultation period should last for at least 30 days.
If businesses are intending to make up to 100 people redundant, the consultation period should last for at least 45 days.
What do I need to do if a Statutory Consultation Period is required?
In this case, you are required to provide details in a HR1 Form to the Redundancy Payment Service (RPS). Those at risk should also have the option to elect representatives that the Employer can liaise with throughout the consultation process.
Typical redundancy questions
This process can be time-consuming, confusing and difficult for employers. It is usually quite a challenging period, and employers can have difficulties and questions like
- How much redundancy money will I owe?
- What is the specific process of making a role redundant?
- One of those at risk has announced she is pregnant, what do I do?
- Those at risk are challenging my grounds for invoking redundancy procedures, what are my options?
- How do I choose from a pool of employees to make redundant?
- How do I draw up a Redundancy policy?
- Can I just make my part-time staff redundant?
- How do we elect representatives?
If you need answers to questions similar to the ones above, you may need professional advice. We offer a range of support packages at NORI HR and Employment Law to help with issues like redundancy. Like our HR 360 package that includes 24/7 support.
