Short time working is when you reduce the hours of some or all of your employees, or pay them less than half a week’s pay.
This could be during periods of lower demand or slowdown in the amount of work available. The employee should receive full pay unless their contract allows unpaid or reduced pay.
Employers should ensure they have considered all other options before turning to short time working. For example, you could offer periods of unpaid leave, ask employees to use some of their paid holiday entitlement, offer flexible hours and encourage home working if possible.
During the pandemic, employers have been able to access the CJRS as an alternative to short time working, where the demand for work in their business has been reduced due to COVID. The scheme has been further extended until the end of September 2021, but with a phased withdrawal of the financial support for employers in the run up to the scheme’s closure, those businesses claiming under the scheme will need to start to take action to unfurlough workers and consider the terms on which they will bring returning workers back to work.
Whatever the circumstances of considering short time working, there are several legal and practical factors employers will need to take into account.
How is short time working different to lay-offs?
A lay-off is when your employees are off work for at least one working day, whereas short time working generally applies to a reduction in hours, but the employee still goes into work for part of the time. Lay-offs more often result in the employee being asked to stay at home for a period of time, or take a period of unpaid leave.
Pay for short time working
Employees should be paid full pay during short-time working, unless it has been agreed otherwise or their contract allows unpaid or reduced pay.
Some employees are entitled to statutory ‘guarantee pay’ for the days they do not work, provided they:
- have been employed continuously for 1 month (includes part-time workers)
- are available for work
- do not refuse any reasonable alternative work (including work not in the contract)
- have not have been laid off because of industrial action
The statutory maximum amount of guarantee pay is £30 a day for 5 days in any 3-month period, ie up to £150. If the employee earns less than £30 each day, they should receive their usual daily rate of pay. Part time workers’ entitlement will be calculated on a pro rata basis.
Guarantee pay is not available on days where the employee works for part of a day.
If the employment contract includes provision of its own guarantee pay scheme, this cannot be any less than the statutory levels. Employees cannot claim both contractual and statutory guarantee pay.
If an employer fails to pay guarantee pay, they may face a claim for unlawful deduction of wages.
Can you impose short time working on your employees?
You only have the right to impose short time working on your employees if there is an existing term within their contract of employment that you permits you to do so in certain specified circumstances.
You also have to state how your employees’ pay will be calculated during any period of short time working. For example, you could pay them only for the hours they work, known as unpaid short time, or enhance their short time pay in some way.
If there is no short time working provision in the relevant employees’ contracts, you should check to see if there is a national agreement in your industry that includes short time working, or a collective agreement between your particular workplace and a trade union.
If none of these apply, your options would generally be to:
- Seek to make a temporary or permanent change to affected employees’ contracts. Meet with the relevant employees (and/or their representatives) and explain why short time working is necessary and why you want to change their contracts to include this provision. Explain the implications of not agreeing to the change in contract terms or to short time working, for example, if compulsory redundancies would result.
- Rely on ‘custom and practice’. If your organisation has implemented short time working in the past with the implicit or explicit consent of your employees, then you could seek to argue that, by custom and practice, it is an established part of the terms and conditions of employment at your firm. In reality, this can be a difficult justification to prove should the employee bring a legal complaint, meaning it is usually better to formalise the arrangement by obtaining your employees’ agreement and inserting the correct provisions into employment contracts if possible.
What does short time working mean for the employer and workers?
Depending on how short time working is implemented and managed, there could be a number of possible effects on your business.
Effects on the employer
- There will be an increase in administration in making the change to short-time working. If a change to employee contracts has to be negotiated in order for the employer to have the contractual right to impose short time working, this will impose considerable extra work on Human Resources and management.
- Morale in the organisation may be negatively affected if the process is not handled carefully.
- Businesses may gain some much-needed ‘breathing space’ during an economic downturn.
Effects on workers
- Pensions – in a contribution-based scheme, the amount of contribution the employee makes will reduce, so the overall pension pot will not grow as quickly as it would have done. In a final-salary scheme, the overall value of the pension benefit could go down, as the level of the salary earned by the employee during short time working will be less.
- Tax – as the employee will earn less during short time working, they may pay less tax and be entitled to claim a refund from HMRC.
- Holiday – workers continue to accrue holiday during short time working
- Pay – this is the most obvious negative effect for employees. As long as they meet the eligibility requirements, your employees will be entitled to statutory guarantee pay of £30 per day for up to five days in any three month period. Therefore, a maximum of £150. For part time employees, this will be pro rata.However, employees may only claim this for days on which they do no work at all for you and they must be earning less than half a normal week’s pay. In addition, they must make sure they are reasonably available for work, and have not refused an offer or reasonable alternative work from you.
- Statutory guarantee pay is the legal minimum that can be paid by employers. Of course, your organisation may choose to have its own guarantee pay scheme, in which case the employee is not entitled to the statutory payments on top.
- Benefits – employees may be able to claim Universal Credit or Working Tax Credit, or receive a higher level of this.
- Seeking other work – employees should check their contracts of employment to see if they are allowed to undertake work for other employers during a period of short time working. It is considered reasonable for employers to allow this. However, employees must make sure that they are able to return to work for the original employer when needed, otherwise they may reasonably be treated by the employer as having resigned from their job.
Legal risks for employers of adopting short time working
There are a number of risks for employers when implementing short-time working.
If you impose short time working without obtaining the consent of your employees, you could face claims in the employment tribunal for unlawful deduction of wages, breach of contract or constructive unfair dismissal.
Indeed, a notable risk of short time working or laying off employees is inadvertently giving employees the right to claim that they are redundant and owed redundancy pay by your organisation. There is no time limit on how long short time working or lay offs can last, subject to any relevant provision in the employee’s contract. However, the law states that if an employee has been laid off or on short time working and receiving less than half a week’s pay for either four or more weeks in a row, or six or more weeks in a thirteen week period, then they can claim redundancy.
There are, however, strict time limits governing the employee’s claim for redundancy under this procedure. First, they have to write to you to claim redundancy within four weeks of the last day of the short time working period. The employer then has seven days either to accept the claim or serve a counter-notice stating that work is shortly to become available. The work must be available to the employee within four weeks, and last at least thirteen weeks in order for the redundancy payment not to be due to the employee.
If the employer does not serve a counter-notice, the employee must resign in order to trigger their entitlement to redundancy pay. Their resignation must be sent in within a three week period starting from seven days after they gave notice to their employer, or the date the employer withdrew its counter notice, if that was served.
If you have to go through a process to select employees for short time working, you must take care not to do so for discriminatory or unfair reasons.
You should remember that even if if your selection itself was not done for discriminatory reasons, if the effect of your selection is discriminatory then those employees could still raise a grievance or potentially a tribunal claim. For example, if you select more part timers for short time working then this could be potentially discriminatory as part-time workers are more likely to be women.
Finally, employees who find other work to make up for the time they do not work for you, may resign. This may not be helpful for you if you wish to retain the experience of your workforce and avoid recruiting when work becomes available again.
Short time working FAQs
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Legal disclaimer
The matters contained in this article are intended to be for general information purposes only. This article does not constitute legal advice, nor is it a complete or authoritative statement of the law, and should not be treated as such. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that the information is correct, no warranty, express or implied, is given as to its accuracy and no liability is accepted for any error or omission. Before acting on any of the information contained herein, expert legal advice should be sought.
Author
Gill Laing is a qualified Legal Researcher & Analyst with niche specialisms in Law, Tax, Human Resources, Immigration & Employment Law.
Gill is a Multiple Business Owner and the Managing Director of Prof Services - a Marketing & Content Agency for the Professional Services Sector.
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