How HR can support the TUPE process
With the economy growing again and organisations looking at how to expand their customer base and/or diversify into other markets, mergers and acquisitions are on the increase. Within that the subject of the employee who is doing that job, and what happens to them, sometimes get forgotten and can be critical to any deal or plan, particularly if TUPE applies.
TUPE is Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations and is pronounced 2p not toupee.
By way of broad guidance TUPE has been found to apply to mergers, sales of businesses by sale of assets, change of licensee or franchise, changing contractors, outsourcing a service or bringing it back in house. The normal example is where you have a cleaner and decide to outsource it, or bring it in-house or change the contractor, TUPE will probably apply to the cleaner, i.e. they move with the contract.
TUPE protects employees in their terms and conditions and a right not to be dismissed due to the TUPE (but if redundancy applies as an output of the TUPE this may be ok but there are hurdles to jump).
There are also, what can be, onerous duties to inform and consult – firstly with elected representatives regardless of whether you have them and regardless of how many involved unlike redundancy; also, unlike redundancy there are no minimum periods of consultation (so no 30 or 45 day period) but consultation must be in good time. Secondly the same duty with individuals.
If you are considering acquiring or divesting of business, outsourcing or insourcing or changing contractors for a service, please do get in touch to check if TUPE applies and what you need to do ….
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Lisa Trent is our HR guru
There really isn’t very much to do with people that she doesn’t know about! Whether it’s people management, HR Environmental sustainability, or TUPE, she’s on hand to listen and help.
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