Job Cuts In The UK—Avoiding The Pitfalls

The UK furlough scheme, which at its height helped pay the wages of 11.6 million employees, ended on 30 September. Approximately 1 million employees were registered on the scheme at that date. Employers will now be looking carefully at their businesses to see if they can absorb those previously furloughed employees, or whether job cuts are needed. Other employers, who may not have used the furlough scheme at all, may also seize the opportunity to see whether they are properly manned in the right areas, or whether their workforce needs to be trimmed.

In this Advisory we will examine the steps employers need to take when embarking on a program of job eliminations, known in the US as a "reduction in force" and in the UK as "redundancies." This Advisory is written from the perspective of a US company making redundancies in the UK and looks at ways of carrying out those job cuts in a way that is considered fair and reduces the risk of litigation. However, the