Furloughing Employees – Consent Letter

To “furlough” means laying off a member of staff for a period, without having to make them redundant. Employees are only eligible for furlough if there is no work for them to do, either through enforced closure complete loss of business, and so would otherwise be made redundant, or at least would have been laid off for several weeks.

Employees will remain employed, but will not be able to carry out any work for their organisation during the furlough period. They are obliged to stay at home until the business situation improves sufficiently to allow them to return.

An overlooked step in furloughing staff is gaining employee consent to the change of terms and conditions of their employment (unless you already have a contractual right to lay off staff which is a rare clause in contracts of employment nowadays). Then the employee needs to agree that they will not undertake work while they are furloughed.

Letter Template
Here’s where we can give you prompt support. We have developed a letter template to support employers, ensuring you have the correct content to effectively follow correct procedures and avoid being non-compliant.

We can provide this to you on the same day as requested, as long as it’s before 4pm. We also offer a phone call with a HR expert to tailor the letter to your specific needs.

Please click here to request a letter template and a member of the team will contact you shortly.