Are you considering a restructure? Will that include redundancies?
You may find that in business, restructures can be necessary to stay in line with the current strategic plan for your business. It could be that you are suffering a turn down and require a restructure to maintain profitability.
It is important when considering or implementing a restructure or redundancy that you also consider the effect this will have on your employees.
Whether you are a small business or not will greatly determine the overall cost of making any role redundant. There are a number of requirements under the appropriate Award or Enterprise agreement with regards to consultation. These things can be difficult to navigate if you have never done this type of thing before or if you have not restructured to this extent. We recommend that you first start with your obligations so that you can be sure that you are compliant throughout the process.
What are your obligations?
The best thing to do is to know what you want from the sale/purchase. It is always a good idea to speak to a lawyer so you can understand any legal requirements you may have with the sale.
How do our employment lawyers help you?
We can help you with the process of making positions redundant and communicating those changes with your employees. We can also help you establish your requirements and obligations so that you may remain compliant.
Frequently Asked Questions
We have restructured our business and need to make a position redundant. What do we need to keep in mind to ensure we are ticking all of the boxes?
Firstly, make sure that you have complied with any notification requirements under the appropriate award or enterprise agreement, then make sure that you have an understanding of any redeployment and/or payments that you need to make.
We have made an employee’s position redundant and offered them an alternative position however, the employee does not want to accept that position. Do we have to pay out a severance package to that employee?
This is a complicated question, there is no real mechanism to unilaterally decide that you will reduce any redundancy payment to $0. It is important that you consider making an application in the Fair Work Commission to reduce the redundancy to $0.
We really do not like one of our employees. They are good at their job but we do not like working with them. Can we claim their position is redundant so they get a redundancy package? We want to give them something more so they don’t complain about us getting rid of them?
Making a position redundant is usually because you have identified that the position does not need to be done by anyone due to a restructure or downturn.