00:00:00:10 – 00:00:17:14
Unknown
All right. Well, might move on then to kind of, I guess, some strategies for late 2021 and 2022. And I think that look, the other thing, obviously businesses are going to start looking at a mindset change from thinking about tomorrow to maybe planning six months now.

00:00:17:14 – 00:00:32:13
Unknown
And obviously Coivd disaster payments have all ended. So a lot of staff, while the Covid disaster payments were being paid, a lot of staff were happy to do reduced hours and things like that. So now that money’s gone, those people, we’re already seeing this with clients.

00:00:32:13 – 00:00:53:04
Unknown
They’re already saying, Well, I’m not continuing on my reduced hours at this point, and the employer frankly has no right to really continue those arrangements if those arrangements were sort of mutual agreement on a temporary basis. The JobSaver program, as you all know, ends 30th of November, and there’s obviously some some challenges around that because you

00:00:53:04 – 00:01:11:01
Unknown
can’t make you got to maintain your headcount and those sort of things. So we’ve got clients literally ready to pull the trigger on redundancies. December the first. But basically, most businesses will fit into one of three categories in the next few months it will either be expansion, contraction and or consolidation.

00:01:11:10 – 00:01:26:02
Unknown
And we’ll kind of go into some of the things that each business in those categories should think about in that in that time ahead. I’ll move on from that to contraction and restructuring. So redundancy is a big topic at the moment.

00:01:26:03 – 00:01:39:11
Unknown
Obviously, a lot of clients preparing for redundancies. So if business isn’t going so well, if you want to make some permanent adjustments, now’s the time to be thinking about it. Because remember that 30th of November might be the end of JobSaver

00:01:39:18 – 00:01:52:10
Unknown
But what you can do in the lead up to that 30th of November is, let’s say you make certain persons redundant. You can have the notice period actually paid over that period from until the 30th of November.

00:01:52:11 – 00:02:12:04
Unknown
So what you could effectively do is make decisions on redundancies as early as literally right now and basically have that notice period continuing through till the end of November and then obviously finalize the payments after that. So that’s something to consider, and that’s certainly something that is upon us for businesses who are looking to reduce or can

00:02:12:10 – 00:02:37:13
Unknown
, you know, kind of reduce the headcount and and financially become more sustainable. So just very quickly, what I wanted to cover on restructuring is just redundancy in general and what a good redundancy process should look like. So a good redundancy process should have at least two meetings, one which is the initial consultation about the proposed restructure, a

00:02:37:13 – 00:02:58:20
Unknown
period of consultation of generally seven days, followed by a final decision now. Unfortunately, we hear a lot of stories of businesses thinking they can just make a redundancy in one meeting, and that is certainly not the case. Section 389 of the Fair Work Act makes it very clear that you must consult with an employee about redundancy before making your

00:02:58:20 – 00:03:10:22
Unknown
redundancy, and consultation doesn’t mean just lobbing up on the day and telling them you’re being made redundant. It means engaging with that person in a process that requires that allows them to influence that process prior to an outcome.

00:03:11:04 – 00:03:27:18
Unknown
Now, look, the sort of things that might be discussed in the consultation period are things like is there any alternative roles available? Is there the ability to reduce the role from full time to part time? Those sorts of discussions may occur, and with the alternative roles, it doesn’t even necessarily need to be the same role.

00:03:27:21 – 00:03:41:05
Unknown
It could be a different role of which the person may not be suitable for, but it’s just about being transparent as to what roles exist in the organization right now that we need to fill and what roles we’re going to be eliminating.

00:03:41:05 – 00:04:01:12
Unknown
So that that’s a little bit about the restructuring process and how that would work. Again, something we would recommend getting advice on if you’re ever making redundancies because, you know, it is something that, again, just because you make someone redundant, just because you pay the redundancy pay notice, all these things, the person could still take an unfair

00:04:01:12 – 00:04:20:20
Unknown
dismissal application, saying that the redundancy was unfair for a range of reasons, either that they were unfairly selected, that it wasn’t a genuine redundancy and that the role was replaced or a myriad of other procedural reasons or failures that the employer undertook when they what they were going through the process.

00:04:20:20 – 00:04:32:07
Unknown
So that’s that’s a bit about redundancies there. And I just want to kind of give you a bit of an overview of what that what that looks like for your benefit and for the benefit of your clients when you’re talking about those things.