Planning For Life After Furlough

Many businesses acted quickly to furlough staff and reduce hours and pay for those remaining in work. The Government’s guidance on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme keeps being updated and has left many unanswered questions. Due to the urgency of the situation, businesses couldn’t wait for the answers.

This means many businesses may end up with employees receiving payments that may not be recovered from HMRC, as well as facing Tribunal claims for unlawful deductions from wages or breach of contract.

In the rush to furlough, have mistakes been made leaving the business exposed and what can you do now to mitigate that exposure?

We can help if you want to discuss any of the following:

• The process you followed in furloughing staff and the documentation you used – is this sufficient and are you paying employees the correct sums in line with what you can recover from HMRC?
• Making redundancies, including starting redundancy consultation during furlough leave and possibly issuing termination notices.
• Making cost savings such as reducing hours and/or pay and removing benefits.
• Changing employee duties in response to changing workloads, including helping out/secondments to other parts of your business.
• Requiring employees to take holiday at specific times of reduced work.
• Amending employment contracts where necessary to reflect changes for the foreseeable future
• Recruitment post-lockdown including incorporating lay off or short time working clauses into your employment contracts.

Should you wish to discuss this, or any other employment/HR issue, please contact one of our employment law experts below.