Q: Please can you assist with some advice on a matter we have coming up. We have a warehouse unit that employs 3 people who are all under notice of redundancy as we are closing the store effective 4 April. We have offered one of the employees’ a fixed term contract as cover for a period of parental leave. Our HR team want to not pay out the redundancy until after the period of fixed term and then when that finishes pay it out based on the calculations at the original date i.e. 4 April. Is that ok?

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A: If you make a Redundancy payment at the end of the fixed term, then it could be seen that there was no redundancy on 4 April.

Redundancy is the last thing that should be considered. The better way to pay the redundancy at the end would be:

• Redeploy them to the other role, no termination (just a variation to agreement) and then do a redundancy at the end of that position.