A redundancy announcement can be very tricky to do. A lot of employers are particularly worried about what to say at the general meeting, which starts the redundancy consultation process. What you will find, though, is that what you are saying is a shock to those listening to you. Even if they have guessed that this is coming, hearing you say it out loud is scary. We don’t usually have any difficult questions at this stage – staff save them for their first one to one meeting, or for later in the process.

Do not worry about making this statement “nicer”. Keep it short and to the point. Those listening to you will not be able to hear or appreciate any nuances, as they will be in shock.

Here is our suggested script for the general meeting. [Read more…]

The process normally is three weeks consultation – it is a grey area.

The ACAS guide is that it should be a reasonable consultation period.

I have argued with clients, who then didn’t stay clients for very long, that one day was a reasonable consultation period.

No, it’s not and you don’t want to be paying a lawyer £250 to £350 an hour to argue that it is with a judge.

So what has been seen as fair and reasonable is if you are closing down the business entirely, which is unlikely in a golf club but not impossible, then two weeks because it is absolutely closing dead, there’s nothing left, fine

But if you are keeping on the business then it’s going to be three weeks consultation period is seen as fair to get people used to the idea of being made redundant to look for other roles within the old club and then to make the termination at the end

So you’ve spoken to them individually. You’ve offered them all the jobs that are open, you don’t make any decision at this stage about whether they are suitable for them or not.

You don’t say, “Oh but that s not going to pay enough so therefore, I’m not going to offer it”. You offer every single role in the golf club to every person and every person has the right to apply for it.

It doesn’t mean they have the right to get it, but they have the right to apply for it

And then the next stage is they have about a week to think about which jobs they want to apply for.

And then you would say, “Who wants to apply for this job?”

And then if it’s one person that’s a really straightforward process of having a meeting and if they’re suitable, obviously, that they then get that job.

If there are several people you will have to work on the criteria’s to make sure you get the right people in that role.

If you only have one person in your redundancy pool, the courts see that as unfair dismissal.

They see it as a not a fair redundancy process they see it as the employer trying to get rid of one employee.

And that is, unfortunately, going to be the case that many committees are going to say “oh well we just need to get rid of the club manager because they’re the most expensive person.”

It’s like, no the whole club really needs to be put at risk of redundancy.

There is a way to justify that only one person in the whole club is affected by the redundancy.

I’m not sure how believable its going to be that it was only the club manager that there was nobody else in F&B who was at risk of redundancy because the club carried on working but F&B didn’t.

So why wasn’t F&B put at risk of redundancy?

And the thing is, you do not want to be paying the lawyers £250, £350 an hour.

If it’s a barrister you’re paying by the day, not by the hour to try and argue your position to a high court judge who really does not care about your individual position.

They’re just going – no, that is not how the law works, therefore, that’s unfair dismissal, you didn’t follow the right process, 25% uplift, years pay, the club is now bankrupt anyway.

costs of redundancy, so that you have this in mind is you need to do three weeks consultation. Which is a normal salary and you’re paying tax and national insurance on that. Plus, their notice period, which again, is their normal salary with tax and national insurance paid on it.

You can pay them in lieu of notice that’s what pylon means, P-I-L-O-N, payment in lieu of notice. It used to be you could pay PILON tax-free you can’t do that anymore. I think it changed two years ago, certainly it’s gone now. If you pay them PILON, you would have to pay out any holiday they haven’t taken and you’d have to come to an agreement on any time off in lieu that they were owed.

If you put them on gardening leave, then you can get them to take their holiday or at least in theory during their gardening leaf period and to have their time off in lieu during their gardening period.  Then the cost on top of that is the statutory redundancy pay. Which is one week’s pay or the cap for every completed year of service, and it’s the lower amount.

So, if their week’s pay is lower than the cap of 538 pounds that’s what they would be paid. Okay, that’s tax-free. There is waiting, if you are 41 or older while you’re working for a company, for a club, then you get one and a half times waiting.

What you need to do if you go onto that link that will bring you to the government website. And that’s what we use as well. You need their date of birth, their weekly pay, how long they’ll have been with you uh when you make them redundant, and it will work out how much they’re entitled to. And then you know what you’re going to have to pay to park company.

And then some clubs will say well we don’t have the money to do that. So, then we need to be thinking about different strategies.