Selling a Business — Consulting with Staff

If you are selling your business you must inform your employees, via either the trade union or an employee representative. The information given must include not only the fact of the sale, but also the date of the transfer of the business, the reasons for the sale, and the implications for employees' future within the business. You must give this information before the transfer to enable consultation to take place.

Failure to comply with these requirements could result in having to pay a considerable amount of salary to each affected employee for the failure to consult alone, and vastly more if the employees claim they were unfairly dismissed or constructively unfairly dismissed.

The regulations are, of course, more involved than this brief outline can cover and there are other complications when selling or buying a business. You should contact Nigel Emery if you would like detailed advice.

Article first published October 2002
Last reviewed August 2006