Redundancies—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 one 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 staffed in the right areas, or whether their workforce needs to be trimmed.

In this Advisory we will first look at some of the steps employers can take to reduce overheads without cutting jobs. If those steps do not provide the solution and redundancies are still needed, we will then consider some of the key issues employers need to bear in mind when running a redundancy program. Getting the process wrong can land employers with very expensive claims.