Most employers are keen to avoid dismissing staff in whom they have invested time and money but this is not always possible.
Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), sometimes referred to as “gagging clauses”, are rarely out of the news.
On 5 December 2022, following its Making Flexible Working The Default consultation, which has now concluded, the UK government announced that it will be introducing reforms to the law around employees’ rights to make flexible working requests.
I was interested to read the recent reports in the Guardian and BBC News that Elon Musk has sent an email which requires all staff to sign a commitment to working “long hours at high intensity” and being “extremely hardcore”. They report that the alternative is that they will receive three months’ severance pay.
The Government has announced the annual increase to minimum rates of pay that are to take effect in April 2023. For those aged 23 and over this will mean at least £10.42 per hour before deductions for tax, National Insurance and pension (if applicable) are made.
When planning a redundancy process, it’s crucial to understand the legal framework and the rights of your workforce from the outset. We recommend beginning with these five steps to help you comply with your statutory obligations and minimise the risk to the business.
In times of economic turmoil, redundancies are seldom far away. Against the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis, unease in the financial markets resulting from political uncertainty and the continuing legacy of the Covid-19 pandemic, many companies are making cutbacks and having to find efficiencies in order to survive. Indeed, the last few weeks have seen news headlines about mass-layoffs at Twitter, the Independent and Royal Mail.
“Pooling” is a term that comes up in many redundancy situations but employers and employees are often confused as to what it means. Put simply, when more than one person does a job and there is a need to remove some (but not all) of those roles from the business, pooling is a way that the employer can fairly identify who should be made redundant.