Sign Pennsylvania Banking Living Will Now

Industry sign banking pennsylvania living will now

just reminded me to do so it's not put that on now and for confidentiality and purposes if you want to rename yourself and maybe just put your initials on there and that's absolutely fine I have seen some screenshots on social media where there's names and questions and if you zoom in you can see and those names so by all means change your name ality is quite key so just a quick introduction my name's Sarah I am one of the directors of strategic PA recruitment and I'm a former EA been an executive assistant for 20 years in the oil and gas industry and also semiconductor industry I am CIPD qualified and loft and lift and breathe the EA role and really understand the importance of the position in an organization and for in an executive CEO director cetera I wanted to create a company that really takes those values and really understands the impact a good EA can have on an organization also founded five years ago BB OPA Network which is a thriving community of executive and personal assistance and networking is is definitely a passion of mine just hand over to Maryann so hello everybody welcome from myself I'm Maryann and I actually come from a sales and marketing backgrounds working for many years in the travel industry particularly North America in Canada so I specialized in cultivating and enriching client relations and I carry back through today as well along of course with networking so they're aligned together formed uniquely recruitments at last year and here we are today so moving on to the next blind so before we start I just wanted to tell you a little bit more about strategic pay recruitment as a company in a nutshell were boutique recruitment agency providing executive system and personalization research services to businesses across button share Berkshire and Oxfordshire as I said we launched late last year and we had a really exciting start 2020 and building relationship and our brain and then of course coded hit and it really impacted the business landscape and kind of almost kind of put our brakes on little bit but we've been keeping really positive and we've been pushing through and a post I saw on social media really sums up exactly where we stand as a company and it said just three word has come back stronger so that's what we are planning to do and so why work with us well our one of our biggest things is about connecting people and building relationships it's the heart of everything we do as a company we believe in creating long-term partnerships with everybody which we work with and we're independent we care a great deal about our business because we have the time to we understand the executive assistant role inside and out and use our experience to ensure the passion of the assistant position shines through we value professions and honesty fans can't buy versity and these are actually our core company values and they're always at the forefront of what we do our approach to business encapsulate these values and as a partnership Sarah and I really do wear our hearts on our sleeves and we believe in providing the best service our five-year partnership with the BB Opa Network which is the thriving network for assistance is key in what we do and it's cigar partnership we also believe in matching candidates with the key stakeholders in terms of style and cultural fit as well as key skills and experience all about being really really important our business is not a numbers game we are really unique each role we work with is approached on a project-by-project basis and given our utmost attention from the first contact to placement we don't want to be a high street agency of hundreds of lows we are boutique we are niche and do well our hearts on my sleeve so what you speak with us is what we get absolutely and which brings us to introducing our first online legal HR webinar and Chris I'm an easy one so and Chris is a partner in the Employment Group Holland and leads its immigration team he has specific expertise advising clients who are involved in disputes and employment tribunal proceedings he regularly assists on high court injunctions and specialize and specializes in GP transfers so on a day to day basis Chris deals with a range of HR inquiries including advising on the employment aspects that arise as a result of sales businesses and he is independently commended for his practical and commercial voice thank you so much for joining us and really appreciate no problem and thank you very much for having me sir a pleasure to be here obviously would have been nice to have done this face to face but we are it's nice to have to do this it shows how far we then we've come that we're able to live have these meetings and have them arranged say efforts new almost say that we've having not done anything works there Mariano they're raised today turn up and speak and I'm just gonna share my screen so and there with me if there's technical faults okay okay so as I say the conversation for the last few months it's been all about coronavirus and unfortunately you get to hit me it's quite is great to hear Saracen summarize my usual practice the last three months has been nothing but coronavirus and everything this virus related say it will be nice at some point to get back to some sort of normality but unfortunately we're we're not there yet and who knows how long it will be before we are and that brings me on to what weird what I'm going to talk to you about today which is the corona virus job retention scheme looking at it as it is now and what its going to become in the next few weeks and and then ending the session today looking at some of the practical issues you might face and some of the decisions you're going to need to take over the next few months and Sara mentioned ceremony both mentioned there'll be time for questions I talk to you for about half an hour to 40 minutes and but there will be time for questions but I'm happy to leave if you put them into the chat area that's probably easiest and interrupting is probably tricky but yeah by all means do keep your questions coming and we'll have time for them at the end okay make a start so current version v1 of the CJ RS and it's worth remembering this scheme has only been around since 20th of March and it feels like it's been around a lot longer than I for a very established scheme and for those of you had to grapple with the incredible pace of developments of it it's been it's been an under an enviable task and I think it's been last count with 14 different versions of the guidance to Treasury directions and it's the first time my career I've been advising on law that isn't law but it's um it's only been interesting and the scheme itself introduced the concept of furlough which again not many of us were familiar with before it came in in effect it's a greatly enhanced form of layoffs and it allows you suck it to agreement employees confer low employees and reclaim from the government eight and the associated employment costs as a grant up to a cap of two and a half thousand pounds per month now you might remember back in march was intended to be in place to the end of May became apparent that was going to be insufficient so I was extended to June and has now been extended to October and that's clearly necessary the latest figures from HMRC you see on the slide so 9.1 million jobs have been furloughed 1.1 million employers have been furloughed employees and the cost is a survivor watering twenty point eight billion pounds you can see how how important has been to preserve jobs and that's why at the moment the unemployment figures all the people claiming figures released a couple of days ago so there's only six hundred thousand newly out-of-work employees unfortunately it's probably going to get higher but at the moment this is doing a great job of keeping people in employment the scheme itself has been subject to numerous updates as I said but there is only really one material condition that underpins it at the moment and that's an employee who's been furloughed cannot do any work so can't make any money or perform any services for the employer and to do so would be an abuse of the scheme and this morning I've said my original note said that they'd been very little in the news about abuse and then of course this morning I don't if any of you heard on the news and parent leased up to a third of employers employees in a survey said that they've been asked to do work whilst a load that's obviously quite a worrying level and and if that's the case then clearly widespread abuses is perhaps a happening and I certainly know the last month and Jim Hara had said that he felt that this scheme is a magnet for abuse and so hata Marcy are probably at some point events take quite a hard line in relation to how this scheme has been operated we don't know how abuse is going to be assessed we really don't know there's so little detail about it all we can say at the moment is that HMRC will look at this we know how HMRC operate and our advice from the stars been to make sure you just document everything you agree with Feraud employees because the audit trails can be so important and it relies the scheme relies on people self reporting abuse of self reporting if they've not been or I've been asked to work and if your documentation isn't consistent of what's actually happening in reality that's going to create more problems than HTML so probably going to come and audit more in more detail however considering the scheme itself the absolute bar on being able to work it dissuades employers from unfollowing employees for obvious reasons we become responsible for employment costs and that creates a problem because the unintended unintended unlocking needs employers to start bringing their employees back to work and if the choice is between bearing limited employment costs or taking full responsibility for them that just isn't a realistic option at the moment so that's why we have this concept of flexible furlough so the announcement came in mid May we were promised a more flexible furlough scheme and further details were provided from 29th May one of the government dania updates and then further guidance and more detailed guidance was released last Friday and there's a habit of these things being released on Friday I don't know if you've had to be following you know that it's always Friday they release the guidance or just before a bank holiday some point but you you have no time to do anything about it I had also hoped that I would be talking today about a treasury direction that been released at the same time as the guidance that hasn't happened and it is the treasury direction that will be the guide for HMRC and that is that is the document that has the detail that will be applied so there's a slight caveat to what I'm about to say but I think given what we know from previous certain versions of the directions they will apply consistently what the guidance is said so I'm way too much value but there may be some slight changes once we get the Treasury direction but what we do know so from the first of July employers can bring back to work employers that have previously been furloughed on a flexible basis they can work for any amount of time on any shift pattern and you can still claim under C GRS for the hours not worked by those employees and the guidance seems to give employers complete flexibility about the nature of those working arrangements and that's that's necessary I don't think anybody in this stage can say we'll put parameters on that flexibility was no one the need need flexibility boys need flexibility moment as adductor relaxation have locked down and can reassess what their requirements from a practical perspective and when claiming under the new scheme employers need to report and claim for a minimum period of a week and those claims can't straddle calendar months so there's been a bit of confusion about this I know there's been a question that's been sent in about this particular issue it isn't clear they are say hey Tomas is saying at minimum claim period is a week that doesn't mean you can't furlough employees for longer but you have to make sure that your claims are no less than seven days unless they are going to straddle months in which case they have these things called orphan days where you can make claims for up to up to seven days it's really confusing I think the only way we're going to know how it's going to work will be once it comes in in July and but really you cannot claim Freddie more than a month in one go because if it goes into the next calendar month then the next month of the scheme will kick in I'll explain what I mean by that later the requirement with agreement with employees is that you have to actually agree and confirm in writing the new flexible arrangements now previously you just let a notify employer that they've been furloughed so now it'll be the case you need to reach agreement with those employees and again I think that's that makes sense and you need to you're going to need to agree new working arrangements with employees in the same way you would in any other circumstances employees have got they've they've been furloughed for some period of time it's gonna take a bit of time to adapt and employee employers don't really know yet how Greg you're gonna need those guys to come to work and what sort of working arrangements are going to need so that obviously needs discussion and needs agreement before you implement it as to reporting you need to report the hours of work rather than just days so if you agree a week on week off system the report so the agreement needs to reflect that you're agreeing a week on week off but by stating the number of hours that will be worked because again the claim requires you to say what hours have been worked and what hours are usually worked and there's some complicated calculations on the government web server how you do that and that needs to be consistent with what's that worked so the document you agree with the employee needs to be consistent with the claim you make for audit purposes and then finally it's a fairly obviously if an employee works they need to be paid their normal salary so that will be there unfurl and their non furlough pay if you agree to salary reduction before furloughing an employee then that would be the salary pay them if not and the salary any salary reductions need to further than its normal pay and obviously tax and I will be payable on those amounts as before and the first date for the to make a claim under the new scheme is the first of July as have said so either it's a more flexible scheme and the trade-off for that scheme is that the next set of claims so from the first of July a claim cannot exceed the maximum number an employer is claimed for under any previous claim under the under the version 1 of the scheme that's actually more stringent than it sounds because if you had say furloughed groups sued on three weeks on three weeks off say furloughed 50 of your employees went in at any given time your maximum claim is 50 employees reality is you furloughed 100 but the maximum claim you can make under the new scheme will be 50 so that's quite a that's quite cut is it's it's not that's not been particularly clear and I wonder if that will change slightly because in theory you have potentially 100 eligible employees but only 50 you can claim before so that does have the effect of limiting amount you can claim for as of the first of July and they'll administer that limitation by closing scheme so I'm sure you know now that the scheme will close from the end of June and if you hadn't furloughed employees for the first time by the 10th of June so obviously that day is past and you cannot you can no longer do so so I'm fortune the opportunity has been lost and I say that there is one exception and that was the announced last Tuesday by the government confirming that those on long term stature maternity paternity adoption leave who returned to work during the next few months can be furloughed as long as your employer has previously furloughed someone so you have to have made use the scheme you can't be the first person that's been furloughed aside from that that exception it's it's going to be closed in jus under two weeks and there's also a cost attached to this flexibility and just take you on to the next slide so first thing to say is was the tapering will start to apply from August June and July are unaffected so the payments are as they have been since March in August onwards there's going to be a gradual tapering down of the contribution by the government so in August you'll see on slide still a two percent contribution to wages but employers will now be responsible for national insurance contributions and pension contributions and the government published some figures they've quoted quite regularly saying based on an average claim value of one thousand three hundred ninety pounds per month and this amounts to around five percent of gross employment costs per employee so they're saying a relatively low level but even five percent some employers at the moment an increase in cost five percent might be unmanageable so again we have to see how it how it goes in the first few weeks in September again you take us down seventy percent of wages up to a cap of two thousand one hundred and eighty seven fifty and so again employers at that point have to pay and I see some pension contributions and top up 10% to make up to the eighty percent cap now if you're paying more obviously you need to pay more but that you have to pay you employees at least the 80 percent of the government committed to and again the government of estimated that's around 14 percent of gross in front costs own and then finally in October when the skin comes to an end he goes down to 60% so the cap is 197 5 the our same program it doesn't work so employers up to top up 20% to get up to the age of same cap and to half plus employers nurse reassurance and pension contributions so I've just don't just look at the figures when the CGS comes to an end in October they're saying that's around 23% of gross and from Costco employees are still quite a high percentage of costs being funded by the government and if by September October you're still heavily reliant on it difficult decisions going to have to be taken as you come to the end of the scheme because what you don't want to do so the whole point of the schemes to avoid a cliff edge they don't want lots of redundancies but in reality that might have to happen but what you don't want to be doing is leaving you're too late ok very briefly and show how relevant this is but I mentioned the self-employment income scheme which has again been very popular and it's been 2.6 million claims cost of 7 1/2 billion so again event of a very expensive scheme and I'll keep it brief not going to run through the detail of it but effectively allows individuals to claim 80 percent of their average monthly trading profits and that's assessed on self self-assessment tax returns or accounts and paid in a single installment covering 3 months worth of profit but capped at seven and a half thousand pounds and again second and they were very keen to make it clear this would be a final grant there's not going to be in any extension of this scheme either again eligible individuals can claim a taxable grant worth seventy percent so it decreases in the same way as a CTRs has and again that's capped at 65 seven oh six thousand five hundred and seventy pounds in total and eligibility criteria are the same for both grants individuals have to confirm their business that's been adversely affected by coronavirus so as a prerequisite but again I'm not particularly high hurdle and finally unlike the CJ RS you don't have to claim the first grant to be eligible for the second one so there's no you haven't decided to who didn't need to claim to the first con it doesn't you're applying for a second grant and when it opens in July I'm sorry in August okay so that's a it's a very broad and quick summary of the changes practical planning is what we're now going to look at so you see I've posed some questions on the slides I mean there's probably many more there's a lot to consider here you know for example I'm not Jim I'm not generally going to touch on issues of people who are self isolating and extremely vulnerable that sort of thing today but I'm gonna look at sort of practicalities things you'll have to consider as you as you gear up and hopefully things start to improve over the next few months so the first question I've been asked a lot is what happens in June and July so what what do you do between now and the scheme coming in on the 1st of July because lockdown is easing businesses are reopening and hopefully people will start to see an increase in work and will need to bring stuff back if it's permanently returning that's straightforward depends on the terms you've agreed with your staff and they were placed on furlough but subjects what that says you can simply issue them of notice say you want there further to come to an end and then require them to return to work there might be a phone call you may need to give notice in writing again it depends what you agreed and again email should be fine as well that's quite straightforward the difficulty arises if you think you might need them for just a few days to set things up and then won't need them again until flexible furlough kicks in on the 1st in July so you can still bring stuff back for a couple of days as you've always been able to however if you then furlough again in June you will have to furlough them for a three-week period it looks like now that that creates a problem because the scheme then or the claim will straddle the two different schemes of straddle two months which as the set has been mentioned the guidance says from the first of July claim periods will no longer be able to overlap months employers who previously submitted claims with periods that overlapped calendar months will no longer be able to do this going forward and that's necessary to reflect the changes I mentioned earlier so simple option is to avoid it avoid the issue by way to get to the 1st of July might not be practical and if that isn't an option then what I've read is that you should be let's make two separate plans the first one being up to the 30th of June with a second one being for the balance on the first digit light and until further ends the difficulty of that is we don't know how HMRC respond because that clay might not be for three weeks and in fact is very likely not to be for three weeks and usually they would simply reject to claim this for less than three weeks hopefully they'll just join the dots and see them it's the same employee their furloughs continue just under two different schemes but we don't know yet so we do have to wait and see so if you can where you should but nothing that may Again's are saying why not be practical so you may have to take a bit of a chance on that I'm sure there will be some clarity cuz I've read that I think this issue has been raised already so looking at the flexibility the skin's going to provide the question I've been asked to consider with my employer appliances do they want to make use of it and if so how do they make use of that flexibility so firstly if there is insufficient work for employees to return then the scheme operators before you just continue to make your plans but you have to make them income in two months rather than over a three-week period as you may have been doing you don't need to do anything differently the only thing the only addition i've made to that as if you'd said will will let you know what happens at the end of June because that was the point which sorry going to lend you mainly just update your employees but if you haven't got the work you could continue to keep you encouraged her load however obviously the aim of the government was the hope of the government is that work load will increase employees will bring back larger numbers employees and that they would do that flexibly rather than cherry-picking a few employees to return on normal hours and then leaving all this fully firmed now in fact if that plan is to pan out then scheme ends in October everybody back to work would there be part-time or full-time and that would hopefully then avoid the large-scale redundancies which is obviously the purpose of this scheme now there's a lot of benefits to this flexibility to embracing this flexibility you'll have the chance to benefit from a larger skill set help those employees feel like they're part of the future because it's you've been furloughed you'll feel more and more removed from the business you've been potentially furloughed for three months is a long time to not meaning work and it also allows employees with other short-term challenges so there's obviously a childcare issue at the moment the schools the way they are and allow you to sort of manage them a term about it being sort of all-or-nothing choices is at the moment but I've a lot of my clients are quite reluctant they have concerns about flexibility and I think it's just about flexible working generally and this sort of comes from 202 reasons for this and the first one is there's clearly going to be administrative complexity attached the new scheme now yes I said I've spent a long time this week trying to get my head around these these examples is far from straightforward and it payroll are gonna have challenges and how chomper of them have real challenges trying to figure out you know what is required for the purposes of making a scheme and some some employers just won't want that hassle so they will stick to what they know and keep employees furloughed until they're absolutely ready to have people back on the terms on which they normally employed and as I've keep saying if you do have employees back back flexibly make sure they're the documents reflect the claim so the for all the purposes there must be consistency between the two grievance you reach and the claim you make and secondly there's also and I think of concern about instituting large-scale flexible working and the impact that will have on potential redundancy processes there is a bit of concern that if you bring back all of your employees part-time if you then need to make redundancies and there'll be quite a strong argument to say that all employees should be retained but just on a part-time basis and there's a reluctance on employers to potentially embrace that I think that's slightly overplayed and really just focusing on hopefully building their work play back up to where they were before that should that's absolutely aim but if the reality is that you already know you're going to be over resourced come the end of October then all like I says you should consider any flexible furlough arrangements alongside likely requirements from the end of October just trying to trying to tell you things up and tie things up and look at everything in the round but certainly from what I've heard making use of flexible furlough is going to be best achieved by doing so working in blocks so one week on one week off it's certainly easier to claim than agreeing reduced hours each day because there is a complexity around the calculation now it might be that once everybody knows it's how this works he'll become more straightforward but so at the moment people are looking more at block days rather than reduction in hours across a number of days but again we'll see how this how this goes over the next few weeks and the next point on my slide we talked briefly about communication and consultation and it's a fairly obvious comment and I apologize for making it but employers really do need to be keeping in contact with their furloughed employees there is all employers our duty of care and from that perspective only this pandemic has created anxiety huge amounts of anxiety across the board and but particularly for furloughed employees who feel you know concerned about their job security that's high on the list of factors as contributing to this anxiety that it's always the case of insufficient communication from employees will add to concerns and therefore maintaining that communication is really important and I'd say that even if it's not to relay positive news people will speculate if you don't if you don't say anything and that's generally going to be worse than the reality but even if it isn't it's still better to know rather than speculate what the outcome might be I mentioned earlier so the scheme has been in place for three months now so if you have employees have been furloughed throughout that period at some point you're going to need to sow the seed three employees to either return partially or fully and as if the business can support it or if that can't happen to ensure employees understand the business may need to take some hard decisions and it's just setting the groundwork should the business need to make redundancy should you need to make redundancies that's obviously not an easy message easy for me to say and I don't have to do it have to advise on it so I appreciate I can see here and say that but my experience is that it is much harder to make those decisions on I've seen it's harder to implement if there's been limited communication beforehand it's it's a very easy criticism to throw back at employers you've not been telling you've not been keeping me up to date so now is the time if you to start relaying these messages to start updating them and close on what's going on if it is the case that redundancies are likely to be the only realistic outcome then the first step in the process is to identify the potential number and that dictates whether you need to collectively or individually consult so just move on to the next slide so I'm going to talk a little bit about collective consultation now I'm not going to go into a lot of detail this is a this is a session on its own and and it's it's quite low heavy we're trying to avoid getting into too much detail you know one's interested in the case law this is behind this and to be honest it's going to be tested in a way we've never really seen before given what the challenges are at the moment and however the test for collective consultation from the top the first bullet in the slide are you proposing to dismiss as redundant 20 or more employees at one establishment over a period of 90 days on this so I've highlighted some of the words that have been litigated and one of them is proposing so what does that mean it's less than a decision more than mere contemplation I'm sure that provides any real assistance essentially you need to start consulting where it's not where you can actually make a difference so is something that's not already been decided it must begin while the proposals are a formative stage so and whether that needs to be collective or individual depends on them so you need to have an idea of the numbers you're talking about yes you do have to identify there might be over 20 employees because that's the trigger for collective but even so that that the fact that you need to have consigned a performative stage is true for individual or collective consultation decision cannot be taken otherwise affected it's a sham done see consultation and case law has suggested that you may propose redundancies even if there are still other auditors being considered and again I think that's true more than ever at the moment I think everybody might be thinking about redundancies but they might not be ready to make them yet that doesn't mean you can't cause a lot of disruption putting employees at risk to redundancy but we don't want to do it too late because at that point you may have made the decision and that creates a difficulty in terms of defending potential claims if it turns out you need to make redundancies there is also a question of what redundant means and the definition for collective consultation purposes is much wider it means that if you're planning to take or planning on asking employees to take a pay cut and they were to reject that request you might consider dismissal in reengagement that is classified as redundant for the purposes of collective consultation essentially it's a reason for dismissal it doesn't relate to the envision provide concern so it's not conduct not capability but he's much wide and your standard definition of redundancy so again if you're thinking about offering pay uts an alternative to redundancy bear in mind if there is mass rejection of that you then may be in a situation where you need to collectively console and getting the type anymore and that is really important and then finally I'm gonna touch on the question of establishment again this is a heavily litigated area some of you may have heard of the case in the wor worst case from 12 years ago in the last recession and as to what amounts to an establishment for collective consultation purposes and hopefully again definitions the local unit or entity to which workers are assigned to carry out their duties that's slightly narrower than it was thought it might be and that in worst case that meant branches so each branch was a separate establishments they didn't need to consult with you know that I think some like nine ten thousand employees across the Wallace business and that did mean the stores have less than 20 employees lost out in their claim and I'm not gonna say any more than that about establishment because again you could talk I could talk about it for a long time it's not massively interesting if you are thinking about redundancies over a number of sides think about the question of establishment take advice on it because if you get that question wrong then there may be a failure to collectively consult so it's an important one to get right at the outset and just on that those worth pointing out the companies are separate employers for collective consultation purposes so even if you're based at the same site there's two group companies you can each propose 19 gunmen cease and same site and that wouldn't trigger collective on consultation obligation okay so if you decide collective consultation is required you then need to decide who you consult with if you recognize a trade union you consult with the trade union it's really usually the case that is subject to what the collective bargaining agreement says so if you're only permitted to collectively bargain with a certain section of your workforce then fine you so we've then via the Union and you employee your appoint reps for the rest of your workforce but if the union is recognized across the business then you consult with them if you do need to elect representatives then you need to carry out an election and that's challenging at the moment I think there's a few points to consider and the first one is how many representatives do you need generally you want limit as limit to the number as possible because having too many reps makes it you know effectively you're doing a large-scale consultation process for too many people this is too complicated but I think you're going to need more reps at the moment because the circumstances are so unusual it's difficult for employee reps to consult with a large group of employees realistically Visine calls so you're probably gonna have to have more representatives but you've got to get the balance right now ultimately the employer you as employers need to be able to meaningfully consult with those representatives if you have too many of them there's an argument that that can't happen either you can't unreasonably exclude people from standing so that so don't exclude furloughed employees from standing they're permitted to be representatives under the scheme so they can do that job that won't be classified as work and so you the whole the whole workforce should be offered the opportunity and then when it comes to voting that needs to be in secret again a real challenge at the moment and I understand there are online providers who can facilitate secret ballots and no expert on it but I'm sure I'm sure someone would have devised a program that will allow that to happen and then once you've once you've got your representatives in place the most important point is the clock starts ticking at that point as soon as you provide the information to those representatives that's when the timeframe for collect station starts ticking and are coming to know how long you need to consult for in a moment you need to provide fairly obvious information to the to the representatives so it's the reasons for the proposal the numbers of employees you proposing to dismiss total number of employees and the establishment in question and the method you're proposing to select employees for redundancy and how you're going to implement them and how much you're going to pay in terms of redundancy pay so that that's the minimum amount of information needs to be supplied and then the representatives go off and start consultation the consultation process itself so again this may not be relevant if it's over a hundred you need to consult aside hundred more employees to be dismissed within a 90 day period in one establishment that's 45 days at least 45 days before the first dismissal takes effect between 2099 it's a 30 day process so minimum of 30 days before the first dismissal takes effect bare minimum requirements essentially the obligation is to begin consultation in good time and I'm happy to so there's no cases where an employer has complied with that minimum time period have been found not to have commenced in good time so as long as you essentially as if you stick to the timeframes Germany's gonna be hard to challenge that there's been a consultations commenced in good time you're supposed to consult and this is true for individual as well with a view to reaching agreement that's going to be tricky because agreement is not going to be forthcoming no one wants to agree to their job be made redundant or exhaust the possibility of agreement so that's the reality what alternative options are there think about the alternative options available and that brings me back to my point about part-time working if if flexible working has worked then you can see a lot of employees saying well look things will continue to pick up let's continue with this arrangement we'll take a temporary salary reduction and look at things again in six months and it really is the use employs to determine whether that is what your what your business requires how well is he working and but subject to you having gone through the consultation process there's nothing to stop you issuing notice during the minimum consultation period as long as the termination doesn't take effect the end of that period I would urge caution with that because it does sort of open up a challenge to an employee saying well I was issued notice on day 20 yeah we hadn't really finished consulting it just calls into question whether you've actually gone for a meaningful consultation process but in theory you can do that and to be honest in the current climate if you need to rely on the scheme and to fund a part of these costs and I'll come on to that in a minute and then you may well have no choice but I would I would urge caution with that and then finally I'll just mention don't forget the HR 1 that is a form you need to submit to the government telling them that you are proposing to DWP proposing collective redundancies and if you don't do that it's a criminal offense and leaves you're liable to quite chunky fine so it's an important one not to forget ok so this next slide this is the timescales for potential redundancy processes look at the number of employees is against you know the length of consultation period and their notice periods we did this because we were asked by crying to help them sadly shut down their entire business just keeping the two directors on so it wasn't a collectively of 17 employees but they wanted to mitigate the cost as best they could I needed to know these are it was really about helping them understand their cost implications of going through the process so we look to see whether firstly the scheme could alleviate the costs and there has been some suggestion that the scheme should not be used to fund notice costs you should be used it's a job retention scheme at the end of the day and I think you last week I think British Airways are a big targets and criticism by him he's saying that this is not this is not what the schemes for now that that may be right but there's nothing in the Treasury direction at the moment that says the prevents employees doing this so in theory you can give notice whilst the scheme is in effect and the government are obliged to fund part of those notice costs there's nothing to stop that happening and I think the reality is they couldn't say otherwise because employers might need to may be done this isn't they do is push them dances down road and that could cause real problems for business they just don't have the money for those go dances that going to fully fund and IVA statue dancing payments water certainly needs to be funded by employers but what they can do is looks like you'll be able to fund so taking for example if you had a hundred or more employees we'd have to go through collective consultation process that consultation process must last as a minimum 45 days a three-month notice period after that you need to start consultation last Monday so that shows how quickly this scheme is going to end when you think when you look at it in this way even for less than 20 employees he might be a risk of redundancy so that's an individual consultation process we'd say you could probably get that done in a couple of weeks it may take longer depends on the circumstances but with if you have employees of 12 weeks notice then you've only gotten to the 23rd of July to start the process to make use of the scheme and to assist with the cost of those redundancy so it feels like a long time to be in October but when you look at it in this way it's not as long as you think okay and then the final point I'm just going to look at today is holidays and this was the hot topic a few weeks ago and there was no guidance provided when photo ski was first announced the government seemed to deliberately stay quiet on what's the the implications for holiday could deploy said holiday was there furloughed wait entitled to require employees to take holiday once they were no there's no there's no real answer to that question and eventually they convened you can it wouldn't break fir know so that was that came on the 13th of May and two things to know first things you must top up to normal pay for a holiday so you can't pay the furlough rate and the second thing is that you can and require employees to take holiday time of the Working Time Regulations now some employees have done that I know I've advised a number employees who've done that and certainly the ones I've got a couple of clients who have quite have are you know niced and they fought quite strongly that that should only they should only be required to take holiday to the maximum they've accrued during their furlough so whatever they accrue they take once they fella but no more no notes a holiday from the first few months of the year and but there are some employees who have not quite the employees to take any holiday was further than us that's potentially storing up quite a major backlog of holiday so we've been thinking about whether it fits can you allocate holiday whilst an employee or if an employee starts to be flexibly furloughed and we think you probably can and you could have a situation where if an employee comes back to work two weeks out for perhaps switching with another employee the second and fourth week of their working pattern there could be allocated as holiday and I'd urge caution because we don't know whether that will be is deemed to be reasonable now there is the purpose of holidays for rest and relaxation that's what the working time regulations say can an employee genuinely be said to be having rest and relaxation on the the one the week are two they're not working it depends but I think this is a problem employers need to to tackle the government of said employees can take all of them further that effectively encouraging them to do that unless there is a reason why they can't so they're thinking they're NHS employees I think people have genuinely had to work flat out for the last few months and the benefit of doing so is that the government again will pick up a significant chunk of the holiday pay cost so it is something to consider but I would just caution that whether that's reasonable and who knows then there might be a challenge to it so I would look carefully I would only potentially consider this if you've got employees with quite a lot of accrued holiday if you're going to be doing this to leave your employees with no holiday then I suggest that's probably not a sensible idea but if you are going to do it you need to make sure you give sufficient notice so for one week's holiday you need to give two weeks notice okay and that that is the end of them that's all I'm going to tackle today and over to you for questions so I think I've gone slightly over pretty good actually Christmas we do have a couple of questions and um first of all we've got kind of a comments and it isn't it against the spirit of job retention for employees to make previously furloughed staff redundant immediately or shortly after they're fully back from employees payroll they're potentially the financial penalty for those employees taken advantage of esteem only to make redundancies at the end of the game yeah that that's a real concern I mean the short the short answer is that there's nothing in the guidance in the direction that suggests that's the case but I'm just gonna actually I didn't see there is a quote as to what this scheme the purpose of this scheme is quite just find exactly what me the company were quite clear on why they implemented the scheme in it that does leave it open them to run that argument so the purpose of the scheme is to arise from health and social economic emergence in the United Kingdom resulting from coronavirus and the corona virus disease so that does open up an argument that if you if your Adonis's are not caused by this disease so if you just if you decide actually this is more a trimming exercise does that make redundancy of employees who previously been further potentially challengeable I think it might do just making employees redundant after making use of the scheme the government have effectively admitted that was you know initially the hope was it was again he said it's a job retention schemes and some clues in the title that they didn't want employees to make people redundant but the reality is it's gone on for longer the v-shape recovery isn't going to happen so they've now said people will be made redundant so I think that's I think that situation is unlikely but using it tactically could come with risk nothing to suggest what's going to be the case but I did mention earlier HMRC are not known for their generosity so if they are looking you know that if they're looking to recover some of these costs then you know I can't rule it out who knows but I think it's unlikely I think it would go against the spirit of implementation of this scheme which ultimately you know above all else is to save as many businesses as possible even if it can't save every job ok we've also got one concave and she says you Chris if a person had made redundant shortly after further wins do you anticipate an increase in employee tribunal claims possibly related to furlough Administration what might be the type of claim yes so there's a possibility particular if you make redundancies now because the argument would be is it fair so the concept unfair dismissal is the consideration is all about the reasonableness of the process and the fairness of the dismissal is it fair to make some redundant and did you follow a fair process in doing so the availability of the scheme arguably says well you could have kept me furloughed if you make me redundant now what's to say in three months time I may not have needed to be made dumpin so you're you're moving too early this is this decisions been taken too soon and that does contradict slightly what I've said you know if you know now you're going to go over resource then you need to start taking decisions relatively soon you know you want so it buddy so there is a bit of a conflict there each case will turn on its facts I think if it's obvious you know I think that the building of the business case is really impo tant here if it's really apparent from finances from your financial forecasting from your budgeting that it doesn't matter how think how quickly things pick up we are facing a massive shortfall and we've got too many employees I think it's gonna be a harsh Employment Tribunal that says you should have kept someone furloughed and you should have out you know the fact you made the redundant is unfair just on that basis alone but you know he's certainly an argument that's is something that we've been considering you know and certainly if you chose to make someone redundant rather than placing them on the scheme then that that really is a challenge and that comes back to the question of what the scheme is for and if that role has only been put at risk of redundancy because of the corona virus pandemic the suggestion there is that you probably should have furloughed me and making me redundant now is unfair however what's what's the likely claim well the claim is for unfair dismissal but the damages would be capped because if it's the case you'd have still made that employee redundant in October the lost is are only going to be capped at that point so it's a fairly limited claim and and one thing for sure the Promotora system if anybody's involved in that at the moment it's it's in disarray so you the claim is only likely to be heard I'd say you're looking at unit after two years before anything will happen on those claims because they absolutely overrun at the moment so yes there's an increased risk and yeah I think if you get it if you get it wrong and you misuse try to decide not to use and you couldn't reasonably done so I think that could create unfair dismissal situations if an employee resigns whilst they're furloughed and provides notice do we continue to pay them furlough at 80% for the duration of the notice during the notice period yes I say it's a good question I if an employee gives notice then yes you can because they're now giving notice it slightly switched if an employer gives note so if employers give notice it depends on the length of notice if you gives if your contract requires you to provide statutory notice there's a provision in the important writer that says you have to pay normal pay for notice so you might have to pay full salary for notice if you give notice paying probably's giving notice you can pay them at the fellow rate couple questions really quickly so Katherine asked from 1st July 2020 with the minimum seven days furlough pay claim we own you need an employee to work two days in a month am i right instead we can't claim a furlough paid because they haven't work seven days a month I think that's I think it's just a claim period so you can have any any kind of working arrangement you like but you'd only be able to make that claim for the two days that there were the days they're not working so in the three days it's full time within us covering a seven day period sure remember so very clear there so then you can you can as long as you you can't just claim for the two days on their own you have to put in a claim for seven days showing the two days they've worked so that's the period in which you're not claiming for taken away from the maximum out time they would usually work and then the difference is what you're looking to recover from the scheme but that has to cover a seven day period minimum so it's a horribly massage it's quite horribly complicated by they've done and they're doing on hours rather than days so you have to work out what the normal hours are doing monthly is worked out calendar days rather than working days as well which is sort of adds another layer of complication to it yeah I said I don't envy I don't envy those people having to read and reread that section I didn't send then decided this sounds like a payroll issue I will Bluff it by saying that anybody have any more questions there did you have any more come through no I'm getting conscious of time as well no I think that's great well then I would just like to say thank you Chris your expertise is just invaluable I think what you don't know is quite small it was really helpful and also thank you to all of you guys they're coming along today and we're a small business and we really appreciate your support and moving forward we would be delighted to have fortunate they're not going to be face to face at the moment but a virtual coffee with you all and any introductions you could make for us would be massively appreciated and moving on would also really value your feedback on today and be really interested to hear what topics are current from your business right now so please do drop us an email after we can we will continue with our strategic theories and be back in touch over the next few weeks with our next topic and dance which is quite exciting and we'll just to finish with thank you so much and have a fantastic rest of your day we can it's nearly Friday good game so thank you everybody for coming yeah thank you thank you very much everyone we'll send a follow-up email thank you