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Creative approaches help to ‘limit damage’ according to CIPD

The KPMG/CIPD Labour Market Outlook survey shows that the increasing use of flexible approaches to avoiding redundancy are taking hold (see white paper ‘Surviving the Downturn’ November 2008).

According to the figures, measures adopted by employers are as follows:

• 19% increased flexible working
• 17% cutting bonus payments
• 15% short-time working
• 7% wage cuts

With 40% of businesses terminating temporary and agency workers before tackling their core workforce and more than half of UK businesses reporting a recruitment freeze, there is good evidence that the flexibilities adopted in the employment relationships in more enlightened firms are helping to stave off damaging cuts – at least for the time being. This might help to explain an unrelated TUC survey which showed UK unemployment at 6.3% as the lowest in Europe where an average unemployment rate of 7.7% is the norm.

This contrasts with the more damaging ‘rolling redundancy’ approaches still being deployed in some more traditional industries. Caterpillar’s 15,000 job cuts before Christmas have been followed by 5,000 more in January with the fear, especially for the workforce, that more are still to come.