Dismissal due to reduction in headcount or staff in 2021

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By law, on the day of termination of the employment relationship with an employee, the employer is obliged to give him a completed work book. This document must be drawn up correctly, taking into account a number of rules. The slightest mistake can cause serious problems. Typically, the responsibility for filling out such a document falls on the HR department specialist. It is important to know how to record a dismissal due to staff reduction in your employment record.

Features of the dismissal procedure

If an enterprise dismisses staff due to a change in staffing, according to the law, this is dismissal on the part of the employer. And it must, of course, be properly formatted.

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Russian labor legislation protects the interests of hired personnel and obliges the employer to minimize possible damage to subordinates. Therefore, an entry in the labor record when an employee is laid off is made only if it was not possible to save the job. The management of the enterprise is obliged to use the following options for this:

Option	Explanation
Provide equivalent work	Moreover, the employee gets the opportunity to continue working in the same region
Suggest an alternative activity	Here the employee’s health capabilities are taken into account
Offer a job placement in another region	If the parties have agreed upon this option

If none of these options are suitable, the employee will be dismissed due to staff reduction. A record of this is made in the labor report after the dismissal order is published.

Staff must be notified of future layoffs in advance. This is done only in writing against signature. After which the employer publishes an order confirming the actual termination of the employment relationship.

Also see “Procedure for reducing the number of employees under the Labor Code of the Russian Federation 2018”.

Change in number or staff according to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation

If you carefully review labor legislation, you will see that these two concepts are quite often mentioned in conjunction with each other. Moreover, both of them involve a change in the quantitative composition of personnel working for a particular employer. However, there is a fundamental difference here.

In the general understanding, a change in number means a decrease (or addition) in the number of personnel occupying a specific place . In this case, the staff unit itself is not affected. If we are talking about staff reduction, then in this case it is the position that is excluded. Moreover, if it was occupied by several employees, then theoretically all of them should be fired.

How to fill out a work book correctly

If a reduction is carried out at an enterprise, an entry in the work book is made according to the rules of the above Instructions, as well as according to the standards of Art. 84.1 Labor Code of the Russian Federation. It states that all entries in employee work books must comply with established legal standards. It is necessary to enter the number of the Code article, paragraph and subparagraph.

According to current standards, an entry in the labor record when staffing is reduced is made in the form of one of the following formulations:

“Dismissed due to a reduction in the number of employees of the organization, paragraph 2 of part one of Article 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation”;
“The employment contract was terminated due to a reduction in the number of employees of the organization, paragraph 2 of part one of Article 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation.”

The personnel officer has the right to use any of the above formulations of his own choice, since both of them are considered correct.

Important condition: the entry in the labor record for redundancy is made in full without any abbreviations. For example, it is unacceptable to simply enter “Russia” instead of “Russian Federation”. Any deviation from this requirement is considered a violation, which entails unpleasant consequences.

The following is a sample entry in a labor reduction notice:

Entry no.	date			Information about hiring, transfer to another permanent job, qualifications, dismissal (indicating reasons and reference to the article, clause of the law)			Name, date and number of the document on the basis of which the entry was made
	number	month	year
1	2			3			4
10	26	09	2018	The employment contract was terminated due to a reduction in the number of employees of the organization, paragraph 2 of part one of Article 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation			Order No. 7-U dated September 26, 2018
				CEO	Krasnov	V.V. Krasnov
				SEAL
						Shirokova

Also see “Rules for filling out work books in 2021.”

Consequences of an incorrectly completed employment record of dismissal due to staff reduction

According to clause 1.2 of the Instructions, in the section of the work book “Information about work”, where records of dismissal are entered (including for organizational staff events), it is prohibited to correct inaccuracies by crossing out or using a clerical proofreader. Corrections are made exclusively by declaring the incorrect entry invalid, for which purpose o is entered in column 3. Failure to comply with this requirement entails the invalidity of the work book and the obligation of the employee responsible for filling it out to issue a duplicate.

Moreover, by virtue of paragraph. 3 clause 1.2 of the Instructions, the employee who owns the work book has the right to demand the issuance of a duplicate of it, even if incorrect entries are correctly corrected. To do this, he just needs to submit a corresponding application addressed to the employer.

Despite the fact that the legislation does not provide for liability specifically for incorrectly filling out work books, violation of the rules for maintaining them can lead to very unpleasant consequences - in particular, the impossibility of correctly calculating the length of service. In such a situation, the employee has the right to impose all financial costs that will have to be incurred in connection with the restoration of the work record book on the employer in court.

Even more materials on the topic in the section: “Dismissal.”

What to do if a mistake is made

Sometimes personnel officers, due to inexperience or carelessness, make mistakes when making an entry in the work book when reducing staff. An erroneous line cannot be crossed out, covered up with a proofreader, or attempted to make any corrections.

The only acceptable way to correct it is to first record the invalidity, and then re-record the necessary information in the correct way. The personnel officer has to constantly be extremely careful when working with documentation.

Also see “The entry in the work record is invalid: how to correct it (sample).”

When is the document issued?

The issue is regulated by the rules contained in Art. 84.1 Labor Code of the Russian Federation. As a general rule, a work book in case of dismissal due to layoff or any other reason should be issued on the day of termination of the employment contract. But there may be situations where this is not possible. For example:

The employee did not show up to collect the document. In order not to be held liable, the employer must immediately write a letter to the former employee in which he should offer two options for solving the problem.
Second: invite the laid-off employee to agree to have the work book sent by mail to the address specified by the employee.
The employer, for one reason or another, does not issue the document in question.
Secondly, in this case, the laid-off employee must send an application to the former employer with a request to issue a work permit. The deadline for complying with this legal requirement is 3 days.

Let us note that the employee himself has the right to choose to receive all documents issued upon redundancy, including the work book.

Reduction order

The title of the position is indicated.

In the general order on the upcoming reduction, the executive body - the head of the enterprise, determines organizational measures for staff reduction and appoints responsible persons.

There is no legally approved form of the order, so the order is drawn up in free form, applicable to an individual enterprise and reflecting the essence of staff reduction. It is recommended to reduce the content of the order to the following provisions:

Enterprise form;
Date, number;
Title: order to carry out staff reduction measures;
Reason or purpose: for example, outsourcing to an external company and cost optimization, etc.;
Indicate the unit to be reduced in the staffing table and the date of reduction;
An order to the head of the personnel service to inform the relevant employees about the reduction, explain the rights and guarantees in accordance with the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, as well as inform the trade union and the employment service about the planned reduction in the organization's staff;
Assigning control over execution to the manager;
Signature of the manager, transcript, position and seal;
Familiarization of the head of the personnel service with the order: signature, transcript, position.

Notification

The employee signs the notice.

Further, in accordance with the above order, the HR department provides a written notice to each employee being laid off. The contents of the notice are as follows:

date, number;
Full name of the employee and position;
notification of the upcoming staff reduction in accordance with the order of the manager (details) and the Labor Code of the Russian Federation;
indication of the date of reduction (two months after delivery of the notice);
clarification of the employee’s right to receive severance pay, work for two months or refuse work with proportional payment for the time of refusal;
offering a vacant position from the existing staffing table, if any;
signature, transcript of signature, position of manager, seal;
familiarization of the employee: position, full name, signature, date.

If an employee refuses to sign, the HR department draws up an appropriate act recording the refusal in front of witnesses with their signatures.

Employees on sick leave due to illness or injury are given notice upon their return to work. The notice period is also two months. It should be noted that if an employee took sick leave to care for a child, the notice is given during sick leave along with everyone else.

What do you need to know to avoid making mistakes?

If we refer to legal norms, then maintaining and storing work books is a unified procedure and, to a certain extent, formalized.

Therefore, below we will sequentially consider the information necessary to successfully fill out the columns of the document analyzed in the article.

So, how is an entry made in the labor record when an employee is laid off:

In the work book, information is recorded using a pen (regardless of the form of ink supply) with black, purple or blue ink without using commonly used abbreviations.
Only 4 columns are filled in (record number, date of entry (day, month, year), directly reflected personnel fact, basis for its recording).
In the record of dismissal due to reduction (employer's initiative) there must be a place for reference to Article 81, or more precisely to one of its points (in our case, the second).
The seal is corporate-wide (or belongs to the individual entrepreneur), although, in essence, in the document you can also see an imprint of the seal of the structural unit whose functionality includes personnel management (if the institution has one).
The date of dismissal is, in most cases, the employee’s last working day.
IMPORTANT . This does not apply to moments when the employee’s job was retained, and at that time he did not directly carry out his labor functions.
The data in the work book is not endorsed, but is certified by the signatures of, respectively, the employee (if possible) and the manager (or the person to whom the authority to maintain them is delegated).

Dismissal procedure

It is necessary to make an entry in the labor record.

When reducing staff, the employer removes a position - a staff unit, for example: due to outsourcing to an external marketing company, the position of a marketer in the enterprise is reduced. Accordingly, all marketers will be subject to layoffs.

To do this, the employer must strictly comply with the requirements established by law in Art. 81 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation to prevent possible disagreements with laid-off employees. The requirements are:

issuing a local order for the enterprise about the upcoming reduction;
informing the trade union, if any;
informing the local employment service;
individual written notification to employees against signature;
offering vacant positions to employees available on the date of notification in order of priority of grounds (qualifications, marital status, presence of dependents, etc.);
issuing individual orders to terminate labor relations due to staff reduction;
issuing orders and additional agreements in employment contracts for employees who have agreed to vacant positions;
approval of a new staffing table;
making an entry in the work book;
making all payments due;
issuance of a work book on the last day of work.

The employer must always remember that pregnant women and employees on maternity leave are privileged employees and cannot be laid off.

Read more about the above requirements below.

Documentation

Reduction involves the preparation of a number of local documents, which employees familiarize themselves with under signature. Without this, the procedure may be declared invalid, and dismissed employees may be reinstated.

The first of these should be an order to approve the new staffing table and begin the reduction procedure. Familiarization with it may coincide in terms of the notice of upcoming dismissal, or may be completed earlier.

A written notice of layoff is the second document that must contain the employee’s signature. For this purpose, the document is drawn up in two copies. One is issued in person, and the second is kept in your personal file.

At the same time, such a notification may contain information about the absence of available suitable vacancies in the company.

If the employee is offered other vacant positions, this must also be done in writing. On the proposal, the employee writes in his own hand whether he agrees to the transfer or refuses it. If there are no vacancies, an offer will not be sent.

The employee's signature on the dismissal order is required. If there is a refusal to supply it, personnel department employees will draw up a report about this. The last document signed by an employee upon dismissal will be his work book. The last entry is certified by a signature.