Post-pandemic | Supporting staff post-furlough job change or redundancy

By Tracey Ward, Head of Business Development & Marketing at Generali UK Employee Benefits

Although change in business became the norm pre-pandemic, it arguably didn’t become any less unsettling. Of course, all of this was taken to a whole new level over the past 18 months.

And now, as furlough ends and the prospect of redundancy, reduced hours and / or pay for many looms, we ask what could and should HR be doing to best support their people, specifically those earmarked for redundancy? What do you need to watch out for from an employment law perspective, particularly when people are off sick? And, how might benefits such as the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) – whether embedded in group risk or healthcare products, or standalone – be put to best use?

A look at EAP usage during the last lockdown, at the start of this year, reveals just how important such services became to many during times of change.
“Between January and April 2021, LifeWorks saw a 33% increase in calls related to workplace change. By the end of April, this represented over 9% of all our incoming calls,” says Luke Prankard, Director of Alliances - EMEA, LifeWorks, Generali UK’s EAP partner.