Nationwide businesses struggling in the recession are being told redundancy is not the only answer to cut costs - and Shropshire is no different.

Joanne White, an employment specialist at Linder Myers solicitors in Shrewsbury, is urging bosses to look at other ways of reducing budgets.

As the economy struggles many companies across the board are being forced to make tough decisions. 

Joanne said: "We have seen recently that top names such as TJ Hughes and Thorntons are having to consider the closure of stores and also some high street Banks have announced quite significant job losses.

"At the point a business feels they need to make redundancies, they need to undertake  a strategic employment review with a specialist solicitor to discuss alternatives first.  

"My view is that redundancy should be the last option, not the first option. There are alternatives that should be considered first, such as varying the terms and conditions of existing employees in relation to expensive benefits that may not be utilised, making changes to contractual sick pay/bonus structures and undertaking a full job analysis within departments, to improve efficiency.

"Such options may not be popular with employees, but may be accepted if it avoids the alternative of redundancy."

 Joanne, who has extensive experience advising companies on employment law issues, can help businesses save money in this tough current climate, either by providing advice throughout a cost-saving exercise or by training managers to be able to manage the exercise themselves. 

"There will be cases where redundancy is the only option, but in my experience most businesses can save money in other ways," said Joanne.

Linder Myers also runs an academy which provides training to companies across a wide range of topics including how to correctly follow a fair redundancy process, which also  provides a full suite of documents to allow companies to manage the process themselves.  

"For many companies already benefiting from Joanne's training, this has proved to be a viable and cheaper alternative  to taking legal advice throughout the process, especially at a time when businesses are worried about the cost of taking legal advice during redundancy situations."