We were asked to advise a small business with just five employees. The business could not afford to keep all five of their employees and the owner of the business asked us to advise him how to reduce numbers. It became apparent that all the staff were valued and, if one employee left, there would be too much work for the others to carry out. We advised the employer to consult the staff to ask them all to agree to take a pay cut. This duly happened. When the fortunes of the business improved, the employees' pay was restored. All of the staff are still there and the business is now thriving.
We were asked to handle a large scale redundancy programme for an international Plc. The redundancy programme involved applying the laws relating to collective consultation, including the election of employee representatives. Failure to comply with these laws would have resulted in awards of 90 days' pay for each employee and would have cost the employer several million pounds. With our assistance, no such claims arose.
We have advised a substantial number of businesses over the last few years on this topic, ranging from Plc's to small owner-managed businesses. Whilst a number of tribunal claims have arisen, we are proud to say that, in those cases where we were asked to advise from the start, no such claims have been successful.