How to put together your consultation document for redundancy

Transcript

Hello and welcome. My name is Eve Springbett, and I’m an Assistant Director in the HR Department here at EPM. Today I am going to be sharing some tips on how to put together your consultation document for redundancy.

Consultation is a process in which you explain to employees and trade unions your proposed changes and receive their feedback and input in return.

In the event of reduction by 20 or more employees, there is a legal duty to consult; this is set out in section 188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act (TULRCA) 1992. When making reductions of 20 or more employees, the consultation process should begin at least 30 days before the first redundancy takes place and at least 45 days before in the event of reducing by 100+ employees.

This legal duty does not apply where there are fewer than 20 redundancies. However, within the education sector, it is common practice to do so and it is often a requirement of your internal redundancy procedure or policy and to consult with employees and trade unions.

Employees and the relevant trade unions should be provided with information around the need for the reductions and the information should be both accurate and relevant to the situation. A consultation document should contain written information about the process and include the following points:

• Reasons for the employer’s proposals. These should be sound and genuine business reasons and supported by financial information if the aim is to achieve a cost-saving. This information will often mirror, or be similar to, the information contained in your business case for redundancy if you have produced one, and that often will go to Governors or Trust board before a process is embarked upon.
  
  
• Numbers and descriptions of the job roles at risk, including pay grade, hours and job descriptions.
  
  
• The total number of employees employed by the School.
  
  
• The proposed method of selection. How you will decide which employees are selected for redundancy, particularly where you have more than one person carrying out the same role and you are only looking to make some of those post-holders redundant?
  
  
• The proposed method of carrying out the dismissals, with regard to the School’s procedure, including the period over which they are to take effect, may differ for different employees.
  
  
• The method of calculating the amount of redundancy pay.
  
  
• The fact you will continuously seek voluntary solutions to mitigate against the need to make redundancies will take place throughout the whole process, not just the consultation.

There is no set period that the consultation should last for, but your own School policy may specify a minimum time frame that you should stick to. Typically, we would see consultation periods of 10 working days up to 30 working days, dependent on the circumstances.

A consultation process allows you to explore options with your employees and their trade union representatives. For instance, ways of avoiding a reduction, voluntary solutions, or how employees are selected for redundancy. You should consider and respond to any suggestions made by employees and trade unions, although you can reject any ideas that you do not think are reasonable, setting out your reasons why.

If the restructure requires a selection process, then the criteria and method for selecting employees should also be included in the documentation, and the opportunity for responses and comments should be given before the criteria is applied.

It is really important to consider the language used in the consultation document and avoid sounding like the decision has already been made. The process must be genuine and an outcome shouldn’t be predetermined. Therefore, terms like ‘proposed’ and ‘potentially’ can be used to portray the desired message.

Thank you for listening.

If you require any additional information regarding consultation documentation and bespoke HR advice for your School or Multi-Academy Trust, please contact us at services@epm.co.uk or call us on 01480 431 993, we will be happy to answer any questions.