How do I set the hours that my employees will work under the Flexible Furlough Scheme?
Employers and employees can decide the split of the hours of work and the hours of furlough. There is no maximum or minimum requirements. You can change the arrangement, by agreement, from time to time.
When claiming for employees who are flexibly furloughed, you should not claim until you are sure of the exact hours they will work during the claim period.
Related FAQs
- Working with PFI providers to get contingency plans up to date
- If a PFI provider is struggling to achieve service delivery requirements due to Covid-19, then local arrangements should be put in place to:
- maintain unitary charge payments
- revise contract requirements/standards
moderating payment and performance regimes where appropriate.
- In any event, you may wish to review and adjust your requirements to reflect the current situation. It is possible that some requirements can be relaxed, whereas others need to be tightened. For example, there may be an increased need for cleaning and maintenance in certain areas of your PFI premises or the layout of the premises and/or room uses may have temporarily changed. With staff illness and shortage likely to be an issue, you may also wish to consider if the resource can be moved from one area to another to help maintain essential services.
- When putting local bespoke arrangements into place it is vital that:
- Contract requirements or performance standards are not relaxed to the point where health and safety are put at risk.
- It is made clear that the arrangements are temporary and that matters will return to normal as soon as the Covid-19 emergency is over. Indeed the guidance note makes clear that if assets temporarily close they should be kept in such condition that they can be immediately up and running when this emergency is over. In such instances, likely a basic level of maintenance and security will therefore be required as a minimum.
There should be some data collected as to the type and number of interactions MHFA are having, to ensure no one individual or individuals are overloaded. MHFAs should be encouraged to maintain regular self-care practice, to lean in to all support provisions available in their organisation, to engage in peer support, and to take a break from their role as a MHFA to prioritise their own wellbeing as needed. It is also important that those who volunteer to be MHFAs have the support of their managers. So they have the time to do both their core role and their MHFA duties without feeling pressurised to cram work into spare time to make up for time spent on MHFA duties.
All organisations have underperformers. Capability is a potentially fair reason to dismiss and is separate to any redundancy procedures.
Generally, capability falls into either absences through illness or underperformance in the role. Those who are absent through sickness can be furloughed, but when furlough comes to an end they will need to go back onto sickness. If you are looking to tackle absence then you need to tackle long term and short term absence in a different way.
Long term absence: You need to establish whether the employee is able to return to work (with or without reasonable adjustments) in the medium term. This requires medical opinion and be careful of disability issues. Reasonable adjustments are likely to be important.
Short term absence: You will need to demonstrate that you have fair absence triggers in place and there is normally be a 3 stage procedure: warning and final warning followed by dismissal on notice. Each stage needs a fair procedure, with written information, a fair hearing and the opportunity to appeal. Be careful of disability issues.
As for underperformance: To tackle this, you will need to have clear SMART objectives in place and evidence of the employee failing to meet these. There would then normally be a 3 stage procedure: warning and final warning followed by dismissal on notice. Each stage needs a fair procedure, with written information, a fair hearing and the opportunity to appeal.
The guidance has confirmed that all remaining employment rights and terms continue while an employee is furloughed. Holiday will continue to accrue during furlough however you may reach agreement with employees on reducing entitlement provided that it does not fall below the statutory minimum of 5.6 weeks per year.
No. The Home Office has confirmed that sponsors do not need to report sponsored workers as working from home, where this is directly related to the coronavirus outbreak.
However any UK employers who sponsor overseas workers, should also ensure that they remain compliant with their other sponsor licence duties, which includes reporting any change to an employee’s salary and duties.