• CIPD and HSE free stress management tool designed to help equip managers with the skills to manage positively and prevent stress in their staff.
  • Updated Acas redundancy handling booklet, providing more in depth advice on the role of the individual charged with informing and liaising with at risk employees.
  • EHRC and Acas guide to maternity/pregnancy and redundancy.While this guide provides some useful advice, the section on suitable alternative vacancies is over-simplified.  For example, it states that "an employee on maternity leave who has been selected for redundancy must be offered a suitable vacancy before any other employee".  This will not always be correct, not least as employees on additional paternity leave will have equivalent rights to priority over suitable vacancies.  It also overlooks the potential for challenging this aspect of the law: recent case law (De Belin v Eversheds Legal Services on adjusting redundancy selection criteria) could be used by a man claiming sex discrimination to argue that an employer can only give priority to a woman on maternity leave if this is a proportionate response to the legal requirement to correct any disadvantage suffered by the woman. It could be argued that an employer should be required to consider firstly whether there is any actual disadvantage in the redeployment process suffered because the woman is on leave and secondly whether it could be corrected in some other way which is less disadvantageous to the man.

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Key contacts

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Samantha Brown

Managing Partner, Employment, Pensions and Incentives, UK and EMEA, London

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Steve Bell

Managing Partner, Employment, Industrial Relations and Safety, Asia and Australia, Melbourne

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Emma Rohsler

Partner, Head of Employment, Pensions and Incentives, EMEA, Paris

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Fatim Jumabhoy

Partner, Head of Employment & Workplace Investigations, Asia, Singapore