I will try and cut this long story short, but it is quite complicated.
I am a director of a company, along with one other person, who is based in a different office about 200 miles away. We are a very small company of 9 employees, created out of a former group of companies - which are now all separate companies running separately and nothing to do with each other, apart from sharing office premises (the office 200 miles away)
I was informed today, by one of the shareholders, that a letter would be going out to all staff tomorrow informing us all (2 directors included) that we are at risk of redundancy. She would say no more than that, she said her hands were tied, and I imagine she shouldn't have even told me that much, but as we have known each other for a while, she felt personally obliged to give me and the other director the heads-up.
Neither myself nor the other director had any idea this was coming - although the business is not making loads of money, we are "washing our faces" which is what we were tasked with when our company was split off from the others. We have no cashflow issues (although things are tight) and have had no need to go to the shareholders for cash injections for about 18 months. We have all worked hard to make the business work and all of our plans and projections suggest that we can do just that.
As with all small businesses, we accept that things are not set in stone, and that things can change rapidly, however, we (2 directors) have been feeling fairly optimistic over the recent months.
Apart from reporting back to them informally on an irregular basis, the shareholders (who are not direct shareholders in our company, it is owned by an offshore company which is then owned by them) have had nothing to do with the running of the company, so for them to swoop in and do this out of the blue has absolutely knocked me sideways.
They want me to let staff know tomorrow and then the letters will be emailed and posted tomorrow. However, my fellow director is away on holiday until Monday evening and we both feel strongly that a) the message should be delivered in person, rather than me phoning people up to tell them (which is the only alternative while she's away) and b) as we are the only 2 directors of the company, we are the people who should be making decisions about this, not 3 remote people who obviously have other agendas.
Trying to asses the legalities of this (with no expertise whatsoever) and having looked at redundancy processes online, I would like to know who is our employer? You would expect letters like this to be written by directors - but we haven't written them. If it is "the employer's" decision to put people at risk of redundancy and we as directors aren't acting as "the employer" who else has the right to make this decision? Can the shareholders legally do this completely independently of the directors?
I've been told the plan is to have consultation meetings for my office next Wednesday, and they do have a legal person involved, but I would like to be as well equipped as possible before my conversation with the shareholder tomorrow. At the very least, we want to get the letters stopped until the other director is back from her holiday and can see people face to face.
I'm sorry this is so long, I would be very grateful for any thoughts people may have.