Our team has extensive experience of supporting employers with implementing redundancy exercises and changes to terms and conditions, from the largest exercises requiring collective consultation through to individual situations.
We can support you with structuring a redundancy programme and identifying when collective consultation obligations are triggered, including in complex cases of staggered redundancies. We can guide you through the approach to selecting employees for redundancy, including seeking volunteers. We have worked with numerous employers to devise a strategy and process from announcement through consultation to final implementation, taking account not only of legal obligations but of the impact on employee relations and potential reputational issues and the need to achieve your goals. We are experienced in managing relations with employee representatives and trade unions throughout the process.
We can also use our award-winning technology to prepare all the individual documentation that you require throughout the process.
Trade unions frequently use periods of disruption to organise within a workforce or take industrial action and we have extensive experience of advising on dealing with trade unions.
Employers often wish to manage the risk arising from a redundancy exercise with enhanced severance payments in return for settlement agreements. We are experienced in advising on appropriate and legally compliant redundancy packages and the process for implementing them through settlement agreements or ACAS. We frequently support employers both in individual negotiations and in implementing such packages across large numbers of employees. Where litigation results, we have extensive expertise in defending Tribunal proceedings whether brought by individual employees or their representatives.
In insolvency situations, we have advised administrators on some of the most high-profile and sizable insolvency proceedings that have ever been opened in the UK, both in the UK and leading teams to advise globally. We have frequently advised administrators on a full range of employment issues including on pre-pack administrations, management changes, large-scale redundancies and issues arising from the sale of assets and application of TUPE. We also have experience acting for administrators in defending claims for protective awards.
Global Transformation Projects
Our lawyers have many years of experience advising global clients on large-scale multi-jurisdictional restructurings and redundancies.
With global employers frequently organising employees across jurisdictions, managing global reduction in force exercises becomes ever more complex. The rules about selection of employees and consultation requirements and potential penalties vary widely between jurisdictions. Not only do employers need to take account of the differing laws and employee relations environments in each jurisdiction, but steps taken in one jurisdiction can frequently impact the position of employees in other jurisdictions. Careful planning is needed to co-ordinate implementation across jurisdictions to minimise risk while avoiding unnecessary delays to implementation.
We have extensive experience of working internationally to design and implement global reductions in force. At Littler we understand not only the laws but also the legal requirements but the employee relations environment and expectations in each jurisdiction. We regularly partner with clients to design a pragmatic strategy for implementing a global exercise and can support with the central management of the project as well as the local implementation. We regularly advise on approach to consultation with employees, works councils and trade unions at a national level and with European Works Councils and notification requirements to governmental authorities that reductions in force are compliant and reflect the need for ongoing relations with consultation bodies.
