Our CEO, Laura Evans, is quoted in this article for HR Magazine on managing redundancies.
Our full policy position is set out here:
“Redundancies should be a last resort and the recent spate of mass redundancies we have seen is a worrying trend. It is important for HR professionals to work closely as a strategic partner to Boards and Senior Leaders in shaping organisational strategy and business planning, to reduce the risk o f redundancies being a sign o f things to come. This means being alert to ongoing and emerging labour market trends, and the domestic and global economic factors that are driving up costs and affecting productivity. It also means having honest, realistic, and frank conversations about the likely impacts of those trends, based on evidence.
Far from bracing itself for more to come, HR professionals should be on the front-foot in driving forwards, clearly articulating and embedding the change and innovation – in how and where people work, technology, employee engagement, wellbeing, and the environment – that are so badly needed for businesses to survive.
It is counter-intuitive that there have been increasing numbers of redundancies when employers are struggling to fill over a million job vacancies. Whilst the pandemic itself was unforeseen, its long-term impacts were always likely – and should have been planned for. As the people profession, our expertise takes work-life issues into account alongside financial and productivity factors, working with CFOs, COOs, and their functions. We all know that a healthy workforce is more productive and therefore more profitable. Various studies have shown there are nearly 2.5 million people currently inactive in the labour market, either due to themselves living with long-term health effects of the pandemic, on backlogged waiting lists for other conditions, or joining an increasing number of working-age carers brought about by those factors. For HR in many sectors, these issues will have added to an already challenging post-Brexit resourcing gap.
We must therefore be realistic about the times we are living through and working in, and bring people with us who are resistant to this inevitable change.”
8th December, 2022