80% salary - how do employers decide who gets it in businesses that are slow, not closed

[Bearbehind]

I understand how this would work for businesses that have had to close, so no one can work, but I can’t get my head around how it works for businesses that are still open, just very quiet.

If for example you have 10 employees and only work for say 6 at the moment, my understanding is that they can apply for a grant to cover 80% of those 4 people’s salary and allow them to ‘furlough’ for up to 3 months

I’m wondering how that’s going to work in practice, ie, how they decide who gets this as it would appear 4 people are getting 80% of their salary for doing nothing and the other 6 people, although they get 100% of their salary, they still have to work full time

Well in redundancy situations you'd usually have some sort of scoring mechanism to decide who to retain/lose when only some jobs are going, so I'd imagine something similar.

Where I work you get rated on, eg performance/skills /attendance etc

It does give the managers a certain amount of discretion over who to keep, so they can just rate their favourites a bit more so long as they have some evidence to back it up, but its legally sound.

But they I see it, the ‘good’ people ie, the ones you want to keep on working, get the worst deal as they still have to work full time

The ones who are furloughed get 80% of their salary for doing nothing

When you factor in travel costs for those still working, the furloughed people are likely better off

There is a risk in people becoming dispensable but it seems to me there could be a lot of ill feeling in work places over this

They should furlough anyone more vulnerable ie older, pregnant, asthmatic etc

It’s unlikely to be that simple though is it?

I suspect very few employers are going to have exactly the required number of vulnerable employees to make the choice that simple

The way I understand it, the furlough thing is not supposed to be a way to pay for those who are self isolating (whether sick themselves or not) or cannot work due to childcare issues. It's to prevent mass redundancies, which is about the business need not the individual's circumstnaces.

whether it'll be used that way in practice remains to be seen. I can see sympathetic bosses agreeing to furlough people whose only alternative is to take unpaid leave or SSP, if they can get around the rules.

Were I work we were all giving the option of volunteering for reduced hours or a period of unpaid leave. I suspect the volunteers for unpaid will now increase!
We are medium sized company and the management team know (and treat) each of us as individuals. I suspect what will happen for us is that those who has already very kindly volunteered, are in the vulnerable groups and those who have children will be given first choice of this. Whilst it's not exactly fair to those of us who don't have young children or don't fall into the vulnerable group, it's just the situation we find ourselves in. We are already moving people into different areas to help where the needs are greatest.
What's not clear about this though is will this grant apply to those already put on reduced hours? If, for example, some has dropped their hours by half, would the grant cover the other 50%?

I think we’re going to ask our staff what they would prefer to do and then try to balance what the business needs with individual circumstances, one of our staff likes to work as he tends to sink into depression with nothing to do, others are single parents or have partners who need to work, either from home or physically going in so they’d prefer to be kept on retainer with 80% pay.

Can someone tell me what happens in this situation, for the staff that stay working, if we only need them to work 16 hours a week to fulfil our orders do they still get paid their usual 40 hour week in full? There is no need for them to be on site for more than those 16 hours.

It’s certainly going to make for some interesting conversations next week

It’s irrelevant now as we will have to close the business for the time being so the remaining staff will all be on 80%.

I hope some guidance comes out soon so we can answer their questions, what about staff who already had annual leave booked? Can we refuse it as they’ll be not working anyway and we can’t pay their full wage? Do they lose the leave or can take it when we re-open?
I’m thinking we’ll have to honour it as it’s unfair if they lose it but others who hadn’t booked yet get to keep their full allowance when they’ve both had the same amount of time off on retainer?

lovesummer if they are still on your books they can't lose the leave, but you can choose whether to pay it whilst their off or add it to their allowance when you return. I'm just guessing actually as nobody knows but that's what I'd suggest.