Re-hiring after redundancies 27 June 2022 at 3:08PM in Redundancy & redundancy planning 4 replies 418 views

dory263

Our company made redundancies back in April and 3 people were made redundant. We have now had one of the staff members who was originally kept on resign in June. I know usually you can't rehire after redundancies for at least 6 months, but as she has resigned would we be okay to re-hire? Would we need to offer this job to the 3 people who were made redundant first? (to clarify, I am not a HR manager or involved in hiring, I am just a lowly staff member trying to understand what's happening as we don't get told much and it will significantly affect our team and we don't get a say)

Brie

Companies can and do rehire redundant staff.  If there was ££ paid to them for the redundancy the company may ask that it be repaid - likely on a reduced basis due to the number of months that have elapsed.  (so 80% repaid if after a month, 60 % after 2 months etc)

Of course this would assume that the redundant staff want to come back.  They may have gone on to dream jobs, may have spent any redundancy money (so many of us do), may hate management for stressing them out.  

Some managers are very happy to support redundancy especially if it gets rid of difficult to handle staff members or to make way for favourite nephews etc.  

Sandtree

dory263 said:

Our company made redundancies back in April and 3 people were made redundant. We have now had one of the staff members who was originally kept on resign in June. I know usually you can't rehire after redundancies for at least 6 months, but as she has resigned would we be okay to re-hire? Would we need to offer this job to the 3 people who were made redundant first? (to clarify, I am not a HR manager or involved in hiring, I am just a lowly staff member trying to understand what's happening as we don't get told much and it will significantly affect our team and we don't get a say)

There are no set timescales for when you can start rehiring but you would have to show a material change has occurred to avoid any successful claims for unfair dismissal. Then you are only really talking about hiring people back into the dismissed roles or something that sort of person could realistically do.

For example if an insurance company wanted to cut 200 heads from its call centre because customers are now self serving online they can actively hire for a new fully qualified actuary at the same time. 

In the example you give they are clearly not replacing those that they laid off but the person that resigned. They are under no obligation to give any preferential treatment to their former employees when placing that role.

diystarter7

Sandtree said:

dory263 said:

Our company made redundancies back in April and 3 people were made redundant. We have now had one of the staff members who was originally kept on resign in June. I know usually you can't rehire after redundancies for at least 6 months, but as she has resigned would we be okay to re-hire? Would we need to offer this job to the 3 people who were made redundant first? (to clarify, I am not a HR manager or involved in hiring, I am just a lowly staff member trying to understand what's happening as we don't get told much and it will significantly affect our team and we don't get a say)

There are no set timescales for when you can start rehiring but you would have to show a material change has occurred to avoid any successful claims for unfair dismissal. Then you are only really talking about hiring people back into the dismissed roles or something that sort of person could realistically do.

For example if an insurance company wanted to cut 200 heads from its call centre because customers are now self serving online they can actively hire for a new fully qualified actuary at the same time. 

In the example you give they are clearly not replacing those that they laid off but the person that resigned. They are under no obligation to give any preferential treatment to their former employees when placing that role.

Totally agree I was going to post similar.
A council in London paid tens of k's by making redundant about 20 staff. Then within a few months
all were back doing similar stuff under different job titles for similar money - there was a story in the press
about it but nothing happened.

If someone resigns  and I ran the co - I'd only rehire them if I thought they were good workers and also take into consideration why they left as I'd think, are they going to go again after a few months.

General_Grant

dory263 said:

Our company made redundancies back in April and 3 people were made redundant. We have now had one of the staff members who was originally kept on resign in June. I know usually you can't rehire after redundancies for at least 6 months, but as she has resigned would we be okay to re-hire? Would we need to offer this job to the 3 people who were made redundant first? (to clarify, I am not a HR manager or involved in hiring, I am just a lowly staff member trying to understand what's happening as we don't get told much and it will significantly affect our team and we don't get a say)

There is no law which states any period - could be a day if things change dramatically.

The people who were dismissed on the grounds of redundancy are in no different a pool than others in the population with appropriate qualifications for the role.  There is no need to contact them to see if they are interested.

What sort of "say" would you want?