How long after making someone redundant

You are under no obligation to offer your former employees their old jobs back. It is your choice. If your organisation was forced to make employees redundant who possessed skills and experience that were valuable to the organisation, it may be an attractive option to approach those former employees to see if they wish to return to their old jobs.

Employers may consider advertising new vacancies to the redundant employees, and potentially consider repayment of any enhanced redundancy packages if the employee is re-employed within a specified time period. If you wish to employ new staff you should still be aware that former employees may see your advertisements inviting applications for the new roles.

This may lead the former employees to question the genuineness of their redundancy. When considering the fairness of a redundancy dismissal, the tribunal would look at the timeframe from the start of redundancy consultation until the date of termination by redundancy.

Hiring someone new for a redundant role soon after termination may create doubt as to the genuineness of the redundancy. Technically, there is no set period of time that you have to wait before hiring for a redundancy position. However, as discussed above, timing should be a consideration to mitigate the risk of allegations of non-genuine redundancy and potential claims for unfair dismissal by redundant employees.

The deadline for an employee to make a claim in the Employment Tribunal is three months after the date of termination of their employment contract. Therefore, you may be cautious about hiring during this three month period. Remember that employers must be able to show that the redundancy situation was genuine and subsisting at the time of termination, and that the financial circumstances of the business had changed following the termination.

In other words, it is possible for an employer who has completed the redundancy consultation process and given notice to its employee to offer an alternative role to that employee during their notice period.

If this happens, section of the Employment Rights Act states that as long as the renewal or re-engagement under a new contract of employment takes effect within four weeks of the expiry of the old contract, then the employee will not be regarded as having been dismissed made redundant. If your organisation only discovers that it needs to re-hire after the redundancies of its employees have taken effect, then you will be in the position of having to reach out to your former employees to see if they will come back.

In this situation, continuity of employment is an important factor to consider. Continuity of employment refers to how long an employee has worked for their employer without a break in their employment contract.

A break is one week, from Sunday to Sunday. For example, once an employee has worked for you for 26 weeks they can request flexible working. If you contact an employee who used to work for you, and you do this within a week of the termination of their old contract and they agree to come back, their continuity of employment will not be broken.

In practice, there would have to be quite exceptional circumstances in order for your organisation to change its mind within seven days. If you would prefer the returning employee to start afresh with a new employment contract then, to be on the safe side, you should wait at least two weeks before re-hiring them. This would ensure that their continuity of employment is broken. It is advisable to inform your employee that they are starting on a fresh employment contract and will not carry over their previous service.

You should also inform them that this will affect their employment rights as outlined above and could also impact on their entitlement to any contractual rights based on service, for example, health insurance or additional annual leave. This approach ensures that there are no misunderstandings further on in the employment relationship. You should also be aware of the interaction between continuity of employment and the payment of statutory redundancy pay.

As a reminder, you must make a statutory redundancy payment to any employee who you make redundant with over two years of service. It is important to remember that if you choose to re-hire the employee then they do not need to re-pay their redundancy payment.

However, section of the Employment Rights Act states that the continuity of employment of an employee is broken for the purposes of the statutory redundancy pay scheme only, where they have been paid a redundancy payment and the contract of employment is then renewed or the employee is re-engaged. Therefore, where your employee receives a redundancy payment and is then re-employed by you, you will have to tell them that even though their continuity of employment is preserved in every other respect, they will need to work for another two years before they are entitled to a further statutory redundancy payment.

If there is a short amount of time between you making someone redundant and re-hiring them, you should be aware that HMRC may decide to investigate your organisation. HMRC suspects that in cases like these the redundancies are a sham and only carried out in order to save tax. This often means searching for ways to cut costs, with salaries often costing businesses a lot. If it does, a company can eventually get back to a pre-redundancy state of business.

Companies often need redundancy legal advice throughout the redundancy process. This includes when considering who to make redundant and after the redundancy itself.

Once the business has stabilised, employers may wish to pursue replacing redundant staff. Reemploying staff after redundancy is also a tempting notion. However, employers should proceed with caution when considering reemployment after redundancy in the UK. There are laws and regulations that merit consideration. If someone is made redundant, they can be replaced. However, until the last day before making an employee redundant, you should explore alternatives to redundancy.

Examples of alternatives to redundancy include suitable alternative employment. You can rehire after redundancy, but you must show that there has been a significant change in the circumstances of your company. These changes must show that you now need a new employee and that the company genuinely did not require the role during redundancies.

If you do decide to rehire after making redundancies, you must consider when is appropriate to do so. After making an employee redundant, you can rehire them or hire a new employee almost immediately. There is no strict period of time given for how long you need to wait. However, you may need to allow some time typically one week in between the termination of one period of employment and the commitment of the new employment.

The same is not true when considering how long after making someone redundant you can replace them. Unless there were exceptional conditions, you cannot make an employee redundant and then replace them.

This is grounds for unfair dismissal. By definition, you can only make an employee redundant if the role is no longer essential. Replacing an employee immediately after making them redundant suggests the role was essential.

A loss of employees can require advertising for new employees. However, you should proceed with caution. However, when advertising for employees, you should consider the period of time between making an employee redundant and advertising. For those curious about how soon after redundancy you can recruit, the answer is that there is no set time limit. While there is no time limit for advertising for a replacement, it can potentially cause trouble.

One question that arises frequently when dealing with redundancies is how long employers should wait before advertising to fill a role that was previously made redundant.

This could lead to claims against the employer including in unfair dismissal or in misleading and deceptive conduct. There is no magic number of days, weeks or months that an employer has to wait before they advertise a redundant role in order to be safe from legal risks. The test will be whether there is a genuine change in circumstances which mean that a role that was previously no longer required, is now required. This could arise for a number of reasons e. Employees have 21 days from the date of termination to bring an unfair dismissal claim, so conventional wisdom dictated that if an employer had waited 21 days before advertising a role, the employee would be out of time to bring a claim in unfair dismissal if they wished to challenge the redundancy.