22nd December 2008

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Employing people through a recession, by Irenicon, the Employment Law Specialists

Irenicon's hotline team are advising their way through their third recession since 1980. As business owners, as well as advisors, we thought we would share some legal and practical tips that have helped our clients.

Plan your business. If you add another month or two to your sales payment cycle and assume a 20% bad debt rate where does that leave you? Set your budgets to survive on this basis.
Don't just downsize. Explore opportunities for you to change your product/prices/services and sell more.
Match your employment contracts to your business and make sure you build in the flexibility you need. If you don't you will find yourself having to pay out more than you think..
Use flexible and outsourced individuals to deal with variable and 'may be' requirements. Be careful, you may still be liable for tax and NI on self employed individuals and they may be accruing the right to paid holiday. Make sure your arrangements are properly set up so you don't get a big bill at the end for back holiday or tax and NI.
If you are taking over new contracts (particularly if they are at cheaper prices) be aware that you may inherit your competitors' staff at their original contractual entitlement and service (TUPE).
You may need to run the business with fewer staff. Make sure that any redundancy exercises are properly designed and implemented, or they will end up costing you far more money than you hoped to save.
Make sure that you are not overloading retained staff. If you overload people you can find yourself dealing with stress and bullying and harassment claims - that only leads to more stress, and a lot of financial problems.

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