Operational efficiency HR toolkit
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Managing your workforce
during the COVID-19 crisis
COVID-19’s effect on business has
already been seismic.
On 20 March the government
announced unprecedented measures
to support employment. Employers
will be able to apply for a grant to
cover 80% of the salary of employees
up to £2,500 per month, backdated
to 1 March where those employees
are placed on ‘furlough’. Furlough is
where staff are granted absence as
there is no work for them to do.
We do not yet know whether
furlough will also apply where
employees cannot work, for example
as a result of the school closures,
rather than where there is no work
for them to do. More details will
follow but we do know that this
scheme will be administered by
HMRC and the first grants are
expected to be paid in April.
As a short-term measure
employees may be prepared to take
paid holiday over the coming weeks.
Some employees, faced with not
being able to work for personal or
family-related reasons, may be
prepared to take extended leave of
absence. As an agreed variation of
contract, continuity of employment
rights would be preserved.
One option for employees is using
parental leave; this allows for 18
weeks of leave per child who is
under 18. Normally restricted to
four weeks per year, the employer
can relax this requirement and allow
more leave in a year and/or the
taking of leave as single days as
opposed to in full weeks.
Those with babies could consider
whether they want to convert any
remaining maternity leave into
Shared Parental Leave to allow them
to transfer entitlement to the parent
affected by the falling work demand.
If feasible, they can share up to 50
weeks of Shared Parental Leave and
37 weeks of Shared Parental Pay
between them.
Some organisations, like
supermarkets and delivery services,
have an urgent need to recruit more
workers. Organisations with reduced
demand could relax exclusivity
provisions in contracts so that their
employees can take up short-term
appointments with others.
Some employers may still need to
consider lay-off, short-time working
or even redundancies. Lay-off and
short-time working can only be
imposed where there is a contractual
right. If not, then employees may
agree to them to preserve their
employment in the longer term. If
the layoff or short-time working
lasts for longer than four weeks in a
row or six out of 13 weeks, they may
claim redundancy payments if they
have more than two years’ service.
If an employer imposes these
measures without consent it risks
claims for unlawful deductions from
wages, unfair dismissal, breach of
contract, redundancy payments and
protective awards.
If redundancies are necessary
then, at the time of writing,
collective consultation (if 20 or
more employees are involved), fair
selection, individual consultation
and consideration of alternative
employment are required.
There is a limited exemption
where ‘special circumstances’ render
it not reasonably practicable for
employers to comply.
The situation is rapidly changing
and employers need to stay aware of
the latest government advice and
guidance. Some creative thinking
and an open dialogue with workers
can potentially minimise the
requirement for compulsory action.
Annelise Tracy-Phillips is
a senior associate at
Burges Salmon
Your HR because you can’t be strategic New
Retirement Living
Standards calculator
Wealth Wizards, provider of
workplace digital fi nancial
adviser MyEva, has
launched its online
Retirement Living Standards
calculator to help employees
plan for their future. As part of the Finwell
Gold MyEva package the app helps employees
understand how much income they might need in
retirement based on lifestyle choices, like how often
they might want to go on holiday. Employees can
visualise three kinds of future – minimum, moderate and
comfortable – and calculate what they need to save
now to prepare for them.
Price: £3.90 per employee per month
Visit: myeva.com/foremployers/
Q&A:
Aggregate on why it James Roberts, organisation director at Aggregate Why did you choose
Vevox?
We needed a better way of
engaging with everyone. The
driver was around how we
could we capture more
diversity in the organisation
and elicit more innovative
ideas from people who would
not necessarily speak up in a
typical meeting. We chose to
implement the Vevox real-time
audience engagement app to
address these issues.
How does it work?
We make the app available to
employees in advance and
then ask them to highlight
issues and topics they would
like management to address.
It is used most widely for the
Q&A section at the end of
debates but also for snap
polls during meetings. It
gives senior management a
quick take on the balance of
opinion on hot topics affecting
the business.
What are its best
features?
There are many but two of
the best features are the ability
to take snap polls during
meetings, which gives senior
management a quick take
on topics impacting the
business, and the ability to
gather anonymous feedback
from employees on which
aspects of their roles they
feel don’t work for them,
enabling the business to
make important tweaks
where applicable.
44 HR April 2020 hrmagazine.co.uk
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/hrmagazine.co.uk