Firms could retain staff through secondments

One of the chief worries business leaders face when their firm is forced to seek out insolvency advice is whether they will be able to retain their top talent while the company is sorting out its financial difficulties.

Any business with fiscal woes will know that it is hard to overcome them without becoming more streamlined and cutting back on some expenditure.

Unfortunately, this could mean losing some skilled workers in the process, but does it necessarily mean losing them permanently?

Enterprises using the services of an insolvency practitioner might be able to get around the problem by seconding some of their workforce out to other firms.

This will mean that the workers still have jobs, the company can cut back temporarily on wages and they can be recalled to action once the dust has settled on any insolvency and restructuring moves.

Work Wise UK suggested that this could be the ideal solution for some firms, with chief executive Phil Flaxton a big advocate of the move.

The founding director of StaffShare noted that it can be tough during these hard times of austerity to minimise redundancies and job losses.

“One way that employers should look at the whole jobs market at the moment is by secondment,” he said.

“I am involved in an organisation called StaffShare. It is all about helping businesses and staff members to stay in their jobs if they are under the threat of redundancy, or their jobs are generally under threat.”

Mr Flaxton added that these moves can be a way of only losing skilled workers temporarily.

“Of course one way is to second them out [and] effectively loan them to another company for anything up to a year until the upturn hopefully starts to take hold. That way the employer is not losing the skill that they have valued in the past and the person can stay employed,” the expert concluded.