Quite possibly not. But you do have a judgement call to make about the two main options, which are:
Let sleeping dogs lie?
You may already have a forum or works council for informing and consulting your employees that you set up voluntarily. If it works for you and you have good reason to believe your employees consider it to be effective, you may feel content to let sleeping dogs lie and do nothing. However, we recommend, as a minimum, you check whether your existing voluntary arrangements qualify for special status as a ‘pre-existing’ agreement under the legislation (see below for the advantages of this status).
Similarly, if you do not have an existing arrangement, you may choose to do nothing.
Be aware, though, that this option would leave you vulnerable to employees taking the initiative at any time and making a formal request that you enter into negotiations under the ICE Regulations for a statutory ‘negotiated’ agreement.
Take the initiative?
If you do not have an information and consultation (I and C) arrangement already, you may consider the time is ripe for you to take the initiative and voluntarily set one up.
Alternatively, your existing voluntary arrangement may not be effective; again, you might want to take the initiative to start talking with your employees (which can be done at anytime) about making voluntary changes to it.