Q: I had to make some employees redundant in April of this year. Business has now improved and I am able to take on more staff again. Can I re-employ any of my redundant staff in a new position?
Jun 22 2009
Answered by: Peter Done Ask a question
You can employ anyone you want to. It doesn’t matter if they have been employees of yours previously or not. There are certainly advantages to taking on people who you previously employed. You know what they are like and the standard of their work. You also don’t have to teach them your systems, procedures and policies as they are already familiar with them so they will need very little time to get into the swing of how you do things.
Redundancy was not as a result of anything the employee did so there is no reason why the employment relationship cannot restart. However, you do need to make sure you take some precautions to try to avoid, or at least minimise, any potential difficulties.
If you are not offering to re-employ all the people you previously made redundant then you must think carefully about how you are selecting who you are offering a job to. Consider if any of your employees are contesting their selection for redundancy and whether you are confident that you can justify choosing to re-employ someone else. Also, be sure that you can explain why you were not aware of the potential for this level of work at the time you made your redundancies.
If it has been more than four weeks since the date that their employment ended then you will be re-employing this individual as a new employee. Make sure that you issue them with a new contract clearly spelling out that no previous service will count towards continuity of service.
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