Between us, the team at Narrow Quay has decades of experience of advising on and supporting organisations going through redundancy processes.
In the current economic climate we are increasingly being called on for assistance and I wanted to share with you how we can assist your organisation in these difficult times.
Alongside this blog, we have put together a couple of podcasts discussing the sort of things you should be considering when you are contemplating making some redundancies, one aimed at small-to medium-sized businesses and one aimed at larger organisations and we recommend you listen to these too.
If you decide to go ahead with making redundancies then we can support you at every stage. Based on our experience in assisting employers with redundancy processes, we have found that the following options are the ones that employers want. Depending on whether or not you have any existing HR resource, or the size and experience of your in-house HR team, you may want assistance with some or all of the following. We are happy to discuss them with you and provide bespoke cost estimates.
Support with a Redundancy Process
- Individual consultation meeting support: A fair redundancy procedure always involves a need to consult individually, regardless of whether you are also obliged to collectively consult with your staff (more on this below).We can support you with those individual consultation meetings. We can either conduct the individual meetings for you, meeting with staff virtually or in person, or, alternatively we can provide a support role and attend the meetings alongside someone from your organisation. If we are attending with someone then our role is to chiefly assist with guidance on the process that needs to be followed.
- Calculating entitlements: We can assist with calculation of statutory redundancy payments, notice and holiday pay.
- Preparing the documentation: We can prepare timelines, scripts for all the meetings, take notes of the individual and collective consultation meetings and draft letters to send to the affected employees before and after their consultation meetings.
- HR support: We can provide HR support throughout the consultation process, being a point of contact, answering any questions, helping to keep the process on track, identifying if any legal support is needed and generally being your HR support and sounding board.
Larger-Scale Redundancies with Collective Consultation
If you are proposing to dismiss 20 or more employees in a 90-day period, you will need to run a collective consultation process as part of your redundancy exercise.
In addition to the above, we can also assist with the following:
- Appointing employee representatives: If you need to elect employee representatives, we can draft the necessary communications to go out to staff to take you through the election process and can assist with any queries which arise out of this process.
- Training: We can provide training for employee representatives, taking them through the requirements of the role and the process to be followed in a consultation. We can also provide a similar session for managers if required.
- Timetabling: We can assist with setting up the consultation process, including helping to prepare a timetable, drafting the communications to employee representatives and generally keeping the process on track.
- Collective consultation meeting support: We can attend both face-to-face and/or virtual collective consultation meetings to provide HR support and guidance. We can take a note of what is said at the collective consultation meetings. We can also work with you to prepare a Q&A document based on the questions that have been raised and circulate that to the employee representatives.
This is a short guide to outline the help that Narrow Quay HR can offer if you are undergoing a redundancy consultation process.
Related Resources
- Podcast – Redundancy Support for Collective Consultation Redundancies
- Podcast – Redundancy Support for Small Scale Redundancies
- Collective Consultations In a Redundancy Situation
- Narrow Quay HR On the Practical Issues When Consulting With Employees Remotely
