Particularly now with the status of the economy a lot of companies are going through reorganizations or restructurings and typically the goal of these reorganizations is to save money. Personnel payrolls tend to be one of the biggest expenses, the administrative overhead type expenses for companies and organizations and so often times when you are faced with difficult economical decisions as to what you need to do to curb costs you will look at payroll and personnel and you look at determining who can be cut from the payroll or personnel and yet still allow the company to function. Sometimes companies approach these in mass reductions, you might have a reduction in force that takes form in laying off one third of your work force. For example, tt may be more pin pointed, you may be looking at certain departments that you can do away with or maybe you are looking at doing away with, you know one employee but yet bringing in two part timers to do the position. Prior to taking these kind of re-organizational steps or restructuring steps you should typically take a look at what legal rules will require you to do certain things in terms of notice, in terms of for example if you have any contracts or employee hand book or manuals that require you to give severance pay to certain employees because you want to make sure that you cross your t’s and cross your I’s prior to taking the steps of a reduction in force so that when you are going through the reduction in force things go smoothly and you can get the job done in a way that’s not going to subject you to further claims down the road from employees who have been terminated seeking, for example some notice that they never received or type of severance pay that they were entitled to that they didn’t get or maybe a pay out on vacation time or part of sick time that they feel they were entitled to.
This informational blog post was provided by Kim Berg, an experienced White Plains, New York Employment Attorney.
