We’ve seen a wealth of April employment law changes again this year and many fall within the scope of ‘family friendly’ legislation. These will not only enhance existing protections for employees but should also serve to improve workplace diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Perhaps the most potentially impactful change made has been the extension of protection from redundancy for employees on maternity leave, adoption leave or shared parental leave. The Maternity Leave, Adoption Leave and Shared Parental Leave (Amendment) Regulations 2024 (MASPA regulations) has extended protections in redundancy situations and will apply to:
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employees who notified their employer of pregnancy on or after 6 April 2024;
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returned from maternity or adoption leave on or after 6 April 2024;
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for those on parental leave who have taken a period of six consecutive weeks shared parental leave on or after 6 April 2024.
Before 6 April 2024, employees had to be on maternity, adoption or shared parental leave to benefit from redundancy protection requiring employers to prioritise them for suitable alternative vacancies (if available) if their role was made redundant. The latest changes significantly extend the period of protection to now not only include the period of maternity, adoption or shared parental leave but to cover a period of 18 months after the child’s birth.
Action points for employers
Employers will need to keep clear records of when employees have taken the relevant leave to ascertain which employees need to be prioritised for suitable alternative vacancies. It will not be enough for employers to scan the list of absent employees when making redundancies to check for those on family leave. There will need to be robust systems in place to look back at leave that has already been taken to avoid falling foul of the MAPSA regulations.
The MAPSA regulations create a lawful positive discrimination scenario as far as the requirement to offer suitable alternative vacancies are concerned. Employers will need to ensure that they do not make the mistake of offering a suitable alternative vacancy before the relevant employee is selected for redundancy. The redundancy protection is only triggered when the employee has been selected for redundancy and to do so prior to a selection decision could create the unintended consequence in a maternity leave scenario of disadvantaging male employees in the selection pool.
The extended protection period is likely to create more uncertainty on what constitutes a suitable alternative vacancy and therefore employers will need to ensure they not only know what vacancies are available in the event of redundancies but that they are clear on the terms and conditions of vacant roles and compare those to the roles carried out by the potentially redundant employee. Where there are multiple redundancies and significant organisational changes this could prove extremely challenging and increase the risk of legal claims.
For more information about any of the issues covered in this update, or if you are an employer needing advice on redundancy protections for your workforce then please get in touch with one of our employment law experts today.
This article was first published on People Management’s website.
