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Hello and welcome to the programme.

Employees fire their employer all the time by resigning their jobs and working out their notice.

No one has a problem with that.

It's a far more fraught affair when companies fire their staff for whatever reason.

That becomes a case of the relatively

powerless individual versus the mighty organisation. And the law is there to regulate how

it happens and on what terms. So today we want to examine companies laying staff off.

Now we'll run through half a dozen different reasons for companies doing that, and we'll look at the different issues that arise in each.

And I have very senior experts in the field with me, all I should say well honed to advise employers on how to hire and fire more than employees.

But fear not, we're not going to turn this into a plot against workers or a campaign against the evils of employment protection.

We want to understand how the system works and indeed whether it works.

So let us meet the guests.

And first up, Angela O'Connor, the founder and chief executive of the consultancy, the HR Lounge.

So what sort of clients would you serve, Angela?

As a whole range, both national, international, public and private sector clients. And we provide them

with services that relate to people in the organisation. So it might be some of the things that

people would see is very positive. So coaching, supporting people through development,

building confidence in staff, whole range of things. And then there's the other side,

which is when things go wrong. So we have an investigation arm. We support organisations

investigating independently and objectively, grievances, disciplinaries, we deal with

mediation. So the whole range of things that an organisation might need to deal with in terms of

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