Employee rep role explanation letter

Where you’re about to start collective consultation on redundancy with appropriate representatives, you might find it useful to let them first know what their role is in the process, particularly if it’s a new experience for them. You can use our letter for this purpose.

A helping hand

Where you propose to make 20 or more employees redundant at one establishment within a period of 90 days or less, you’re under a statutory obligation to consult on your proposal with appropriate representatives of the affected employees. This could either be representatives of a recognised trade union or, if there’s no union recognised, employee representatives elected by the affected employees (including an existing body of elected representatives). Our Employee Rep Role Explanation Letter is useful to send to the appropriate representatives at an early stage of the process to explain their role and duties. Whilst it’s not actually a necessary part of the information and consultation process, it may help things run more smoothly, particularly with employee representatives who have no previous experience of acting in that role and therefore may not fully understand what they’re supposed to be doing during the whole process. Our letter is intended to precede our Collective Consultation Letter.

Collective consultation

Collective consultation with the appropriate representatives on redundancy must begin “in good time” and must in any event begin:

• where 100 or more redundancies are proposed at one establishment within a 90-day period, at least 45 days before the first dismissal is proposed to take effect
• where 20 to 99 redundancies are proposed at one establishment within a 90-day period, at least 30 days before the first dismissal is proposed to take effect.

Consultation begins with the provision of information on the proposals to the representatives followed by a series of consultation meetings with them. Our letter envisages that this information will be provided - and the first consultation meeting will be set up - shortly after the letter is sent. Consultation must also be undertaken with a view to reaching agreement with the representatives on ways of avoiding the redundancy dismissals, reducing the number of dismissals and mitigating their consequences. It’s not sufficient for you to simply explain your proposals and listen to any counter-proposals.

Rep’s role

The role of the representative is to:

• receive the information you provide about the redundancy proposals
• share that information with the employees and obtain their views
• attend consultation meetings
• make representations to you and feed back employees’ views and questions to you
• keep the employees informed of progress and developments
• if appropriate, consult with you about any proposed measures.

They’re also entitled to reasonable paid time off during normal working hours to carry out their duties, access to the affected employees and to such accommodation and other facilities as may be appropriate to help them to consult with the affected employees. Our letter covers all of this information so that the reps should then be entirely clear on what their role is.