making someone full time

[LordyGeordie]

My mate runs his own company and in a bit of a bind. In one of the departments (i think it's procurement or something, but it's not really relevant). there's a supervisor who works part time with a full-time assistant.

the company's expanding and he really needs the supervisor to become a full time job. the trouble is she doesn't want to go full time. she's reasonably young and doesn't have any kids (i think her husband's minted so she doesn't really need to work). she's doing a good job and he would offer her the full-time position tomorrow. because of the senior nature of the post it's not really practical for a job share.

as i say the workload is such that it really needs to be full time. he doesn't want to make her redundant and doesn't know where he stands legally were he to do so, but feels he may have to to fill the full-time post.

any thoughts?

[theo_wyvern]

if she cannot/will not go full time then there is an argument that she cannot perfrom the job and he would be entitled to let her go under any circumstances he chooses but he should give her every opportunity to fulfill the permanent position.

could he not give the assistant more responsibility ?

[LordyGeordie]

i said that he could let her go because she wasn't performing her job properly. but he argued that because he initially hired her as a part-time worker he couldn't fire her for not fulfilling a full-time job. which was a good point.

he would love to give her every chance to go full-time but she's dead against it.

as for the assistant - she's a nice girl but not too bright. very efficient at filing, photocopying etc. but anything more taxing than that and she starts to break down!

[theo_wyvern]

in that case then she has to be made redundant as her position no longer exists in its present form

[khana]

Why does your friend not take on another part time supervisor to make up the hours ?

[WoWo]

As theo_wyvern says he can make the position redundant, as long as he allows here the opportunity to take the full time position then he won't have any problems.

This may push her into a decision, one way or the other, if it's made clear that her position will no longer be available.

With redundancy you can't make people redundant, you have to make the role redundant. This stops companies just getting rid of people, if your offering an alternative job (especially with better pay and conditions) there really isn't a problem.

[xrayspecs]

Advise your mate to contact a HR specialist. There are HR consultants out there, Yell.com is a good place to start. He'll get the right sort of advice for his circumstances and may avoid costly tribunal proceedings.

[Sasha13]

There should be another way, depending on what it says on her contract... most contracts specify that changes can be made to the details on it, with enough notice to the employee. If that's the case he can give this part time employee notice that the position is going to be made full time. She can either accept it, resign, or not turn up for the hours that she will be contracted for (i.e. full time) and can be managed out of the business.