Top Tips on Planning a Restructure

Tip 2. Look at the costs of the process.

If you are looking to make redundancies, there will be redundancy costs and payments. Especially with members of support staff who are aged 55+ and have been a member of the local government pension scheme for more than 2 years. If they are aged 55 on the date that they are made redundant, there will be an additional strain cost to be paid by the school.

The strain cost is a top up cost that the school will have to pay to allow the individual to draw their pension when they are made redundant. The strain cost is the difference between what they have accrued up until the day they were made redundant and what they would have accrued up until the age of which they could claim their state pension age. The local Government Pension Scheme can provide you with the strain costs and then you can work out if it is financially viable. If the individual has passed their state pension age, there will be no strain costs involved.

Tip 3. Make sure you spent time in preparing the business case.

Preparing the business case is often the hardest and most time-consuming part of the process. This document outlines:

• What you are doing
• Who it is going to impact; and
• Why you are looking to make these changes.

From a legal point of view there is no strict format in which the business cases must be presented. At Judicium we support and prepare these with our clients.

You should set out a clear timeline so that staff can expect things to happen. The document also needs to clearly outline how you are planning to make redundancies and appoint people into new roles. For example, will there be a skills audit? are you using selection criteria? if so, what are these criteria? or will there be interviews? Etc.

The more time you spend on preparing that document, the smoother and easier the consultation process and restructure will be. This is something Judicium have streamlined using tried and true methodologies, and our clients receive unlimited advice during the process.

Tip 4. Consider whether what you are seeking to achieve could be treated as a change to terms and conditions of individuals' contracts rather than a full restructure.

Essentially from a legal perspective, provided there is staff agreement, you can look to make any changes to contracts that you like (within the perimeters of the law). Historically, we have had clients who made changes to TLR’s and approached staff informally to explain that the current TLR structure was not affordable. In order to secure the staffs jobs, they asked their thoughts about proposed new structure and changes. The staff agreed in order to have overall job security and avoid the process of a restructure.

Tip 5. Make sure that governing body / trust board, whichever is the relevant body to your organisation, signs off on the initial proposal.

They need to agree and understand what you are doing and why. In the current circumstances this does not need to be a full governing body or trust board meeting, it can be done remotely. After the consultation period there might be some minor changes from the original to the final proposal, therefor they will also need to sign the final proposal before you proceed.

Tip 6. Bear in mind notice periods when you looking at your timeline and restructure redundancy processes.

If you are following the green book for members of support staff in your school, you obviously have a lot more flexibility in terms of when notices can be issued to staff. There are no set periods for a notice, however, longer serving members of support staff are entitled to maximum statutory notice. This is one week for each complete year of service, up to a maximum of twelve weeks.

If you are following the burgundy book for teaching staff, there are strict dates and notices by which you need to comply in order to complete the process and give notice to staff. If you plan to have your restructures in place by September and if your restructure involves teachers, you must have completed and gone through the process and issue notice by the 31st of May 2021. Any later than that, you effectively have missed the boat and you will end up paying a member of teaching staff an additional four months of pay, until the end of December 2021.

Although there is a lot of time between now and September, the reality is that we have to go through these processes between January and May.

Tip 7. Remembering or being aware of modification order.

The modification order is a piece of legislation that says ‘if a member of staff has worked continuously in different schools, and they are made redundant, that previous service will be taken into account when calculating that person’s redundancy payment.’ The only organisation that it does not apply to are independent schools.
On the flip side, if a member of staff finds a job at another school that starts within one months of their contract coming to an end, they are deemed not to be made redundant and they are not entitled to redundancy payment. If they get a job in another sector then this does not apply.

Tip 8. Be supportive.

Whatever process you are going through, whether it is changes in terms and conditions, restructure or redundancy processes, it is all very stressful for managers overseeing that process and the members of staff. We need to be as supportive as possible for those involved in the process and those overseeing the process.

Our advice to you is, do not underestimate the time this process can take. It will be sensible to begin the process as early as possible in the New Year to get this process underway. We are here to provide practical guidance and top tips to help with a smooth restructure.

If you require any support in any of these steps, or would like to talk to someone surrounding some support for your school please do not hesitate to call us on 0845 459 2130 or email tara.jones@judicium.com.