Avoiding Redundancies
Reuters news agency has reported that Job-seekers in the US, faced with the highest unemployment in 25 years, are using all sorts of gimmicks to give themselves an edge in the job market. These include handing out resumes at traffic lights, washing cars in a company parking lot, staging a sit-in in a company lobby to demand a meeting with a director and sending a cake designed as a business card with the candidate’s picture. A less direct (and frankly disturbing) approach was the one taken by the job-seeker who went to the same barber as the company chairman to have the barber speak on his behalf.
One job-seeker attached a shoe to a resume as “a way to get my foot in the door”. It’s difficult to imagine our reaction if we received a single shoe through the post at DC Employment, but I suspect it might involve a controlled explosion of some sort.
In the UK, if you can get past the parliamentary expenses and swine flu headlines, there are rumours of, whisper it, some sort of economic recovery. UK employers have definitely been looking at ways of avoiding redundancies and DC Employment Solicitors’ Laurence Dunn has penned a very useful article on the topic, an extract of which is below (we will provide you with a link to the full published article in the near future).
Flexible Working to Avoid Redundancies
Many businesses have been forced to reduce staffing costs to survive the economic downturn. Traditionally, redundancy has seemed the obvious solution to make these savings, but many businesses have realised that this can cause long-term damage, through the loss of employees’ valuable knowledge, skills and contacts. Those businesses recognise that more productive outcomes can be achieved by using temporary flexible working solutions.
Flexible working has become more widely known since 2003, when ‘family friendly’ legislation giving carers the right to request flexible working arrangements was introduced. However, despite the legislation being progressively extended to employees who care for adults and older children, in 2007 and 2009, it does not give employees the right to work flexibly, as there are a number of business grounds available to employers to refuse a request.
There has been a tendency (generally speaking) for UK businesses to regard ‘family friendly’ flexible working as an unwelcome threat, rather than a means of enhancing the business.
More progressive businesses have been able to deal with the consequences of the economic downturn, by developing their existing ‘family friendly’ flexible working arrangements to help reduce wage costs, over a temporary period. Typically, this will take the form of asking staff to agree to arrangements under which they can be required to work fewer hours, or even to take sabbaticals, over a given period, with corresponding salary savings.
Flexible Working In Practice
One example is KPMG (the accountants), which introduced a ‘family friendly’ flexible working policy to its 10,300 UK employees, in 2006. Under that scheme, 15% of its employees have requested flexible working over the last 3 years and, in 99% of cases, those requests have been granted. The firm’s scheme won a ‘City Award’ in 2007 for diversity and equality, in recognition of its contribution to the work/life balance of its staff.
With the arrival of the current economic downturn, many of KPMG’s competitors announced wide scale redundancies. Instead of making redundancies, KPMG was able to persuade more than 85% of its staff and partners to agree to a temporary flexible working scheme, called “Flexible Futures”, under which the firm could require any of those volunteering to reduce their working hours on a temporary basis. This could involve either a reduction in the working week by 1 day, or the taking of between 4 and 12 weeks sabbatical at 30% salary, or both.
Two City law firms have also announced very similar temporary flexible working schemes, following KPMG’s announcement.
The extension of flexible working in this way has enabled these firms to reduce the level of staffing in parts of the business that are quiet, whilst retaining its employees with their specialist skills, knowledge and contacts.
The Resulting Benefits
It is not just the service sectors who have introduced temporary flexible working to reduce the number of redundancies. Several of the UK-based car manufacturers have used elements of flexible working (negotiated with the workforce) as a means of reducing the number of redundancies and thus retaining their skills base. It is anticipated that this will leave those businesses better placed to take advantage of any upturn in the economy.
It remains to be seen how many more businesses will choose to use the flexible working approach, rather than the traditional redundancy approach, as economic circumstances force them to contemplate making salary savings. DC Employment Solicitors has worked with a number of clients where the flexible working solution has been adopted, with the consequent saving of jobs and retention of key skills for the business.
In Addition
This week a Royal Navy Captain has banned brussels sprouts from his ship claiming they are the “devil’s vegetable”. Presumably he was made to eat them as a school boy and never quite recovered from the trauma. Well, we all have our battle scars, skipper. My school considered semolina pudding to be the food of the Gods but while having been forced to eat it once a week for four years hasn’t left me with any desire to set eyes on the stuff ever again, I haven’t considered banning it in our office.
But the Captain wasn’t alone in his food banning last week. A school in Plymouth banned pupils from bringing bananas to school because one of its teachers has a life threatening allergy to them. And how about the school in London which banned the making of daisy chains (concern about contracting disease from the notoriously germ ridden common daisy)? And the booklet launched by a minister of education which warns against musical chairs? Apparently it encourages violence….
