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I’ve got another question here from Shelly, if hours were reduced and pay was reduced over the COVID period, what is the redundancy payout calculated on? This is a really good question Shelly. And it depends all depends on how the the hours were reduced over the COVID period.

There’s two ways I’ve seen this done. The most common way I’ve seen this done is the employer has essentially had a kind of handshake agreement, if you like, or not even necessarily a handshake agreement, they just said, these are the new hours that you will do during the COVID period. And there’s been some sort of, I guess, loose acceptance of those things. So in terms of Section 789, what section 789 is, is section 789 is actually a job keeper enabled powers, that the Fair Work Act gives employers to reduce employees hours. Now, this only applies if you’re eligible for job keeper if you’re not eligible for job keeper. And if this employee specifically is not nominated for job keeper, you do not have the powers under Section 789 to use.

Now under Section 789, you can reduce an employee’s hours. And that doesn’t necessarily need to be with agreement. Well, it’s actually in fact, sorry, I’ll go one step further than that, you can reduce an employee’s hours without agreement. So normally, in the normal course of events, you can’t go to a full time employee and say, we’re reducing your hours three days a week, that that’s a unilateral variation of the employment terms. So in those sorts of situations that can trigger potentially termination and or unfair dismissal. But in this section 789 COVID circumstance, an employer can actually reduce those hours without getting agreement from their employees.

So if that’s the basis upon which those hours have been reduced, then the redundancy payout is still calculated on the full time or the hours that were in place prior to that direction being given. There is an alternative way that hours have been reduced over the COVID period.

And some employers have have have done what I would call a reduction of hours by agreement. And it depends whether this agreement was a temporary agreement or a permanent agreement. Now sometimes, if employer and employee have agreed to reduce hours temporarily, well, then you would probably go with the arrangements that were in place prior to COVID in order to determine what redundancy and notice would be applicable. However, if the employer and employee agreed on a permanent change to the terms of employment or the employment status or the hours of work, then you may be entitled to use those revised hours for the purposes of calculating redundancy payments. And notice so there’s no clear cut answer on that question, Shelly, it really depends on whether it was a section 799 direction that you will you will work less hours and these what the hours are, whether there was an agreement, but it was a temporary agreement, or whether or not there was a permanent agreement. And I think that the only situation where you can probably go with the reduced hours is if it was a permanent agreement to reduce hours on an ongoing basis. So the employment status has changed on you know, indefinitely. So I hope that answered your question.

We have put together this what we call limited time restructure package for anyone who’s looking at undertaking a restructure, and that is and that would offer the following services as part of the restructure package that we will provide you with the restructuring and redundancy plan. We provide you with advice on the payments and the related obligations. We give you the initial meeting plan the initial consultation letter, we would give you advice about the alternative jobs and selection criteria if it’s applicable, we give you advice on the further consultation discussions. The final meeting plan, the final meeting and the discussions and letters around those things. We can organize for you outplacement and EAP and we can give you a discount for the Fair Work Commission proceedings should you need us to represent you should any matters go before the commission for any for any clients with 1-3 redundancies or one three employees in that restructure costs $1500 plus GST It’s a limited time offer that we’re offering only for the purposes of this because we come to the end of job keeper. We don’t normally offer this as a one off service. We do have it included in all of our support packages for clients which are essential support performance and risk and HR managers for any clients are interested in ongoing support arrangements. They are included at free of charge as part of those support packages. So if anyone’s interested in those things, please get in touch with us at on demandhr.com.au and we can talk you through either a limited time restructuring service or assisting you on an ongoing basis with this being at no extra costs for you as part of a monthly support.