Extension of deadline to apply for voluntary redundancy

Where you’ve invited employees to apply for voluntary redundancy and given a deadline for applications, you might subsequently decide that you want to extend that deadline.

No legal obligation

Where you’re implementing a redundancy programme, you’re under no legal obligation to request volunteers for redundancy, or indeed to offer voluntary redundancy to any employee who does volunteer. However, calling for volunteers is best practice as it can avoid, or at least reduce the need for, compulsory redundancies and so can help minimise the impact on staff morale. In addition, if there are any employees who want to leave your employment, it generally makes sense for them to go as part of a redundancy programme (rather than waiting for them to eventually resign), and for you to retain the staff who genuinely want to remain in your employment. Finally, although an employee won’t be able to successfully argue that their compulsory redundancy was unfair solely because you didn’t ask for volunteers first, this may still be one of several factors that an employment tribunal takes into account in considering the overall fairness of their dismissal. You’re also not legally obliged to offer enhanced redundancy pay terms on voluntary redundancy (unless you’ve a contractual policy that says you will), but doing so is likely to incentivise employees into volunteering whereas otherwise they might not have done.

Asking for volunteers

Our First Redundancy Consultation Letter asks for volunteers for redundancy but also makes clear that you reserve the absolute right not to accept all applications, particularly if either there are more applications than the proposed number of redundancies or you consider that it’s in the long-term interests of the business to retain certain employees - you don’t want to lose key staff. Our letter also gives a deadline for applications. Once that deadline has passed though, you might find that you’re in the unfortunate position where you didn’t receive many, or any, volunteers. One option would be to extend that deadline, and this may be worth doing where either you didn’t really give sufficient time in the first place or some of the affected employees have been absent from the workplace, e.g. on annual leave. This is the purpose of our Extension of Deadline to Apply for Voluntary Redundancy letter. It gives employees a longer period in which to apply and this may be enough to push someone into doing so where they may have previously been undecided, particularly as the implication in extending the deadline is that you don’t have enough volunteers to avoid a compulsory redundancy programme. Our letter also repeats the point that you still have the right to decide whether to accept an employee’s application.

Acceptance of volunteers

If you accept a volunteer for redundancy and then make them redundant, this is still a dismissal, not a resignation, so you still need to follow a fair dismissal procedure. Therefore, initially accept their application on a provisional basis only - see our Acceptance of Volunteer for Redundancy Letter - and then continue to include them in your redundancy consultation process.