Does Consultation Always End in Redundancy?
When an employer plans to make staff redundant they must enter into a consultation with those affected.
A firm will normally place you in consultation if they are thinking of making you redundant but are trying to think of an alternative, such as redeployment or a pay freeze or cut.
What is Consultation?
The aim of consultation is to find ways to avoid the firm making redundancies or reducing the number of redundancies involved. Employers must enter into consultation with a spirit of co-operation and be willing to listen to the views of their employees. In an ideal world both employee and employer will work together to find an alternative to redundancy.At the start of the consultation process an employer must provide you with written details of the following:
- Why redundancies need to take place
- The number of jobs at risk
- How they plan to select redundancies
- How long the consultation period will last
- What you will be entitled to at the end of the redundancy period
If an employer says you don’t need to come in it is normally a good indication of what their thinking is about your future job. If they are determined to keep you and find an alternative to redundancy it makes sense that they would want to keep you up-to-date and working right through until the consultation period is over.
Collective Consultation
If your employer is planning to make 20 or more employees redundant within a 90-day period, they should consult with employee representatives, this could be a trade union representatives or elected employee representatives instead, this is known as collective consultation.They must also notify the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.If there are to be between 20 to 99 redundancies consultation must start 30 days before the first redundancy. It must start 90 days in advance where there are 100 or more proposed redundancies.
Individual Redundancy Consultation
If an employer only plans to make one member of staff redundant or less than 20 they should still consult employees individually regardless of the number they plan to make redundant. This will normally involve them speaking to you directly about why you have been selected and looking at alternatives for redundancy.Special Circumstances
There may be some cases where it is not reasonably practicable for an employer to meet the full requirements of the consultation process, for example if the firm is being put into liquidation or administration.If the company is in serious financial difficulty it might need to make redundancies quick so it will make them on the spot. They might be able to justify this in an employment tribunal because they will argue it was for the good of the company.
Where redundancy is inevitable a consultation process will also not be necessary, if it is a small company which is only making a few redundancies and there is no chance of an alternative being found, the company could also argue it was in the best interests of the company to not have a consultation period.
What Happens When Consultation is Over
When your employer has finished their consultation they are obliged to tell you in writing what decision they have made. If you are to be made redundant they must give you the reasons why in writing,Once the consultation period is over your employer will not have to give you any notice of your redundancy and they can make you redundant on the spot.
If at the end of our consultation period your employer decides to not make you redundant you will go back to work as normal.
Consultation does not always end in redundancy and in many cases employers will place more staff than is necessary in consolation so they can be seen to be taking a fair and responsible approach to redundancies. But when an employer does place people into redundancy it will almost always results in some redundancies being made.
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