BWF members such as yourselves frequently use our Member and Technical Helplines for assistance on a wide range of Employment, Health and Safety, Contractual and Technical issues. We’re putting up a frequently asked question every Tuesday in order to help members and illustrate the type of advice we are able to provide. If you have any questions that you would like to see featured, we would be happy to assist. This question and many others like it can be found in our Question Centre. If you want further advice on any of the issues, don’t hesitate to ring the helpline or browse our extensive publications library, which includes our ‘Discipline in Employment’ guide, redundancy guidance, age discrimination advice, procedures for dealing with ill health absences, and, of course, the BWF’s Employee Handbook. This week: We recently made a number of employees redundant. Since then we have become much busier. Is there a requirement to offer them their jobs back? No. Although an employer’s obligation to offer suitable alternative employment to an employee begins as soon as notice to terminate his or her contract has been given and continues throughout the notice period, it ends once the contract has been terminated. After the contract has ended the employer is under no duty to offer any employment that becomes available to the ex-employee, but neither is it precluded from doing so. You can employ anyone you want to. It doesn’t matter if they have been employees of yours previously or not. There are certainly advantages to taking on people who you have previously employed. You know what they are like, the standard of their work and obviously you also do not have to teach them your systems and procedures.
As redundancy was not as a result of anything the employee did, there is no reason why the employment relationship cannot restart. However, you do need to make sure you take some precautions to try to avoid, or at least minimise, any potential difficulties.
If you are not offering to re-employ all the people you previously made redundant then you must think carefully about how you are selecting who you are offering a job to. Consider if any of your employees were contesting their selection for redundancy and whether you are confident that you can justify choosing to re-employ someone else. Also, be sure that you can explain why you were not aware of the potential for this level of work at the time you made your redundancies.
To be on the safe side, there should be a break of least four weeks from the date that previous staff’s employment ended to ensure that you will be re-employing them as new employees. Also make sure that you issue them with a new contract clearly spelling out that no previous service will count towards continuity of service.