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Redundancy | Giving staff paid time off to job hunt
Written by Louise Harvey on 27 January 2023
When faced with redundancy, employees will likely be taking active steps to look for a new opportunity – visiting the job centre, seeing recruitment agencies, looking at study courses, rewriting their CV, filling out countless application forms and attending job interviews. All of these things take time and may need to be done during working hours.
You will no doubt want to support employees in taking these positive steps, but how flexible do you need to be? What does the law say about time off for job hunting, and are employees entitled to be paid?
What the law says
The law gives employees the right to take reasonable time off during working hours to look for a new job or arrange training to help them find another job.
This applies to employees who have been given notice of dismissal by reason of redundancy and who have at least two continuous years’ service by the date their notice expires.
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'Reasonableness'
While the law entitles employees to reasonable time off, it doesn’t actually provide a definition of what ‘reasonable’ means. What’s considered a reasonable amount of time off will depend on the individual circumstances of each case.
Requests
In an ideal world, employees will give you advance notice and provide details about how they intend to use the time off. Of course, this might not always be possible, for example if they are offered a last-minute interview.
Again, whether you grant time off at short notice will come down to the question of reasonableness. To avoid issues, it’s best to set out your stall ahead of time – letting staff know that you will try to be as accommodating as possible, and that the more notice they give you, the more likely you are to be able to grant their request.
Pay
No matter how much time off you are willing to give the employee, usually, the maximum an employer is required to pay an employee is 40% of one week’s pay.
For example, if an employee works five days a week, then they would be entitled to full pay for any amount of time off up to two days. For any further time off after that, there is no entitlement to pay and the employee will need to take unpaid leave or use holiday to cover it.
Of course, you may wish to be more generous, and there may already be a contractual agreement in place which specifies more generous payments, so be sure to seek advice before limiting this.
Refusal
As an employer, you cannot unreasonably refuse to give employees time off. If you do, or you refuse to pay the employee for this time, they can bring a claim against you in an Employment Tribunal. In this scenario, the Tribunal will consider the needs of the employer and the interest of the employee to find work. In deciding whether the employee was given ‘reasonable’ time off to job hunt, it will look at:
- The effect that the absence would have had on the business;
- The duration of the employee’s notice period;
- How much notice the employee gave of their intention to take time off; and
- How hard it will be/was for the employee to find another job.
Employers should therefore keep all of these factors in mind when deciding whether to grant time off or not.
If you have a well-founded suspicion that the employee is being dishonest about the true purposes of the time off, it may be reasonable to refuse the request. However, it’s always best to seek advice before doing this.
Other ways to help
Being flexible around time off to job hunt is just one way you might be able to support staff in taking their next step.
If redundancy is confirmed, do what you can to help employees find their next role, from talking through their options with them to putting them in touch with contacts who can aid their job search.
Highlight the employee’s key transferrable skills – you may be able to suggest possible new career paths that they haven’t previously considered. You could also consider offering outplacement support, including one-to-one assistance with CV writing and interview practice.
If this is something you would like to provide to your employees, our outplacement programme includes career coaching, job search strategy, interview preparation and mock interviews, or we can tailor a programme to your specific needs. For more information, contact WorkNest HR on 0345 226 8393.
All of this will help to ensure those who are being made redundant continue to be value-adding members of staff while they work their notice, and should help to leave a positive lasting impression of their employment with you.
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