A possibly stupid question about furlough.

[Nateismine]

Why were those furloughed not allowed to work? I'm sorry if I am missing the obvious.
I run a business that has needed to keep going over the lockdown but due to a massive reduction in demand/takings I had to furlough about half the team ( 8 in total). So they have been at home on 80% pay. Why couldn't I have asked them to do some work at home to earn their 80%? They could have helped take the pressure off the staff that kept working for 100% pay.

Are you really asking because you don't know? Hmm. Maybe you are not cut out to be a business owner.

So you get 80% of their work for 0 cost? Err no. You need them, pay for them.

Because you are not paying the 80%??? the gov is....to protect the public and the NHS. So yes that was a very stupid question!

So instead of the government paying their wage and them not working, the government would have paid it and they could still have worked?

Because while you had work for them to do it wasn't generating enough income to cover their wages?

Is that right?

I was furloughed at 6 hours notice. We have contractual obligations that only I am familiar with so I spent the next two working days, contacting the staff who were on half hours and explaining what each of them needed to do to maintain our contracts.

Then I had a note from my MD saying that while he appreciated what I was doing, I had to stop work or I would be in breach of the govt rules on furlough and would lose access to the scheme.

You need to read the rules.

Furloughed staff are not allowed to work for the company they are contracted to work for usually. No work at all. I'm currently furloughed and am not even allowed to look at my emails. The govt are paying for your staff to stay at home. If there was/is work for them to do then you shouldn't have furloughed them.

Because the government was paying for it. If people had been allowed to work for their company, all companies would have furloughed staff in order to get the government to pay their wages, while making profits without paying salaries.

Ok, see I thought it may have been stupid....
it's just tricky in my small business where 8 of us have been working really hard and dealing with the usual shitty behaviour from a minority of the public, and then the other half of the team have not been having any of the stress and still have 80% of wages. I guess there is nothing fair about this pandemic.

The part time option starting on the 1st July I suppise in hindsight should have been from the beginning but I guess it wasn't that essy to impliment in a hurry back in March, would have made more sence for those with some work available.

You are only supposed to furlough people if they have no work to do.

If there is work for them, then you pay them to do it, rather than the taxpayer.

What an odd post ??

There shouldn't have been any pressure on the non furloughed employees - if there was then you furloughed too many people and defrauded they government/tax payer

But if there's a little bit of work you can't, so you either do it yourself pile more pressure on those still working or just not do the work, as it stands your not going to pay someone full time to just do a bit of work, when the easy option is furlough.

If you need some extra help, you unfurlough one or more of your furloughed employees and you pay their wages not the taxpayer.

If you can explain why you furloughed them it might help us understand.

@Nateismine

Ok, see I thought it may have been stupid.... it's just tricky in my small business where 8 of us have been working really hard and dealing with the usual shitty behaviour from a minority of the public, and then the other half of the team have not been having any of the stress and still have 80% of wages. I guess there is nothing fair about this pandemic.

It's not clear whether you only have work for half of the team but assuming you do why haven't you been rotating the furloughed employees so they all get the same money and the same amount of work?

For example, if you owned a restaurant- am I right in thinking you would have furloughed all the staff? There would still be stuff that people could be doing from home- future marketing campaigns, get H ans S policies up to date etc, preparing new menus. But instead they cannot do anything productive that would have helped that business when it reopened. A succesful business post lockdown will save jobs and increase taxes...

It's not clear whether you only have work for half of the team but assuming you do why haven't you been rotating the furloughed employees so they all get the same money and the same amount of work?
I only had work for half the team. I gave everyone the chance to let me know how they felt about being furloughed. It worked out that half the team really didn't want to be furloughed as they needed 100% wages or needed work for their mental health.

@Nateismine

Because if companies want work doing then they need to pay their staff to do it, not make the rest of us pick up the bill (which we will do after this is over through taxes etc).

I say this as someone who is furloughed and desperate to get back to work.

If your demands dropped by half, and you furloughed half your staff then no one was under any extra pressure. If they were, you furloughed too many people.

The government helped your business by offering protection that when you are able, you can resume as before, with your existing workforce. The taxpayer will be paying for that, and that includes all those who were furloughed and may still lose their jobs.

@Nateismine

It's not clear whether you only have work for half of the team but assuming you do why haven't you been rotating the furloughed employees so they all get the same money and the same amount of work? I only had work for half the team. I gave everyone the chance to let me know how they felt about being furloughed. It worked out that half the team really didn't want to be furloughed as they needed 100% wages or needed work for their mental health.

Ok, then to answer you original question the original rules didn't allow any work under furlough, that's going to change in the future.

Setting up furlough was a massive one size fits all undertaking, it wasn't perfect but personally I think those involved did a really good job. The next time we have a global pandemic I'm sure they will tweak the rules based on what they've learned this time.

Is it your business or do you just manage it?

What does the business do?

The idea was that the government paid you (the company) to retain the jobs that would have been lost by the workload dropping and you having to make redundancies (or go under). You were supposed to keep (and pay) enough staff that would keep the business running and then reinstate the workers as the work picks up again.

A lot of companies have been misunderstanding/taking advantage but it was brought in very quickly.

If there is work to do then unfurlough the staff. The reason people are furloughed is if there is no work for them to do. If you want them to work you need to pay them as the business owner.

Because you are saving money as you aren't paying the anything. It is the Government paying their 80%.

They are the ones losing money because you aren't topping up the 20%, so I imagine that they would also prefer to be at work earning 100% of their wage.