G Adventures has placed seven members of its UK team on furlough until the end of June after previously making them redundant.
The operator made the redundancies in mid-March before the announcement of the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme. They included UK & Ireland sales director Tom Bell, who had joined in October.
In a statement on Tuesday, G Adventures said that it had responded to calls from those made redundant to instead be placed on furlough until the current end of the scheme in June, and said it “held itself accountable to its core values and remained committed to doing the right thing”.
The statement said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has created a significant impact on many businesses across the tourism industry. In response to the escalating crisis, in mid-March we made the difficult decision to exit a number of individuals from our business globally. This included seven individuals from the UK workforce, whose roles would not be required in the immediate future, in an effort to right-size the company.
“These decisions were made prior to the introduction of the job retention scheme by the UK government, which we have since been able to leverage and have placed 40% of our UK staff on furlough through.
“Since these decisions were made, there have been calls from those made redundant in the UK for us to leverage the furlough scheme, as done by other companies. As a ‘Job Retention Scheme’, there was limited guidance at the time on if the furlough scheme could be utilised by individuals whose role would continue to be redundant following the crisis.
“Today, we have spoken with all seven individuals in the UK and have advised that we are able to offer them access to the furlough scheme up to the end of June, as stated by the government.
“We hope that the scheme will offer some security and stability to them over the coming months. We hold ourselves accountable to our core values and remain committed to doing the right thing.”
