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Patrick McCartan

APRIL 2007

There has been a noticeable drift back to the workplace following the pandemic, with the proportion of NI employees working remotely for some of the time falling from 41% in April 2020 to 17%.  Ironically, even Zoom has recently decided to bring its staff back to the office for at least part of the week.

With this in mind, CIPD NI and the Labour Relations Agency ran a webinar on 16 October 2023 to take stock of the HR profession’s  experience of hybrid working to date.  CIPD NI Branch Chair Nicola Barber hosted the event, and we were joined by an expert panel comprising:
 

•      Ulster University Economist Ana Desmond, co-author of ‘Is remote working, working?’ – research into remote working patterns in NI, published in August 2023;

•      Leading HR practitioner and thinker Gary Cookson, author of ‘HR for Hybrid Working’ published in June 2022; and,

•      Caroline Samia from the Labour Relations Agency.

The event was recorded, and is now available to view below. The slide deck used during the event is also available for download.

For redundancy to be fair there must be a genuine need for redundancy and the employer must follow a fair process in carrying it out.  Where there are many employees involved, trade unions and employees should be consulted properly.

Before beginning any redundancy (and during the consultation process), an employer should think about whether it can avoid making redundancies or reduce the number of redundancies.  Employers also need to carefully think about how the employees will be chosen for redundancy.  If they don’t, they may face claims of unfair dismissal.

The way that staff are chosen should be fair and follow an agreed selection process if the organisation has one.  If there isn’t an agreed process in place, the employer must make sure there is no discrimination, that staff are chosen fairly, and in a way that can be checked.

The Early Conciliation notification form can be either be downloaded from our website below, or can be collected from either our Belfast office or Regional Office. You can complete the form and post it to either our office in Belfast or our Regional office. The addresses are noted below.

February 2016

Employees have a range of legal rights derived from national or European legislation and these are summarised in this leaflet

Collective Conciliation is facilitated or assisted negotiation where an Agency conciliator helps employers and employees (normally via trade unions) to try to reach mutually acceptable settlements of their collective disputes.

Mediation works by using a neutral Labour Relations Agency mediator to assist parties involved in a workplace conflict or dispute to reach a satisfactory solution to workplace disputes that both sides are able to agree to.

Under provisions set out in the Employment Rights (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 and regulations made under it, all employees have a statutory right to ask their employer for a change to their contractual terms and conditions of employment to work flexibly.