Ok, imagine the scenario. You’re told on Friday morning at 9.35 a.m to go to the 7th floor and meet Siobhan, your HR generalist. Only HR live on the 7th floor, not real people. You go into a meeting room with her and there is Charles, your line manager or maybe Fiona, who is really quite senior in HR but not usually seen during the hours of daylight. You’re handed a lengthy letter and told that your role is at risk of redundancy. What do you do?
Answer: try and get as much information out of Siobhan and Charles/Fiona as you can. What to ask?
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10 questions to ask if you’re made redundant
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What obligations are there on an employer to consult with its workforce and when should they do so? Many people will be aware of the provisions of s.188 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 which imposes a requirement on all employers making 20 or more staff redundant in a 90 day period to collectively consult with any recognised Trade Union or employee representatives on the need for and ways of avoiding redundancies. I’ve covered this issue before and it is particularly relevant in the current climate of large numbers of redundancies.
Not an enviable choice to be faced with, but one that an increasing number of people seem to be having to make, or have foisted upon them, in industry. It is a practice that doesn’t seem to have caught on here in the City where swingeing headcount cuts still rule supreme when an employer wants to cut costs. I’ve written many times in this blog before about the redundancy process and selection criteria and the claims that can arise when employers get it wrong. However, what must an employer do if they decide that a pay reduction is preferable to a cull?
I’ve been writing quite a lot recently on employees’ rights when selected for redundancy and have covered most of the main issues on rights, selection criteria and compensation. I thought it might be helpful to set out, on a no names basis of course, the general trends I am seeing from the clients from financial services companies coming in to the office.
1. Consultation – often ignored. If more than 20 people are placed at risk in one “establishment”, basically one office (although the law is not entirely clear on this point), within a 90 day period (or 100 people in a 90 day period) then the employer must consult with the affected staff for at least one (three) months. Some employers are not doing this or are paying one month’s salary as compensation for the failure to consult.
This is becoming a hot topic again in view of the number of large scale redundancies we are now seeing – 3,000 at RBS and 10,000 at BT announced just this week. I’m seeing more and more people with compromise agreements seeking advice on their situations, as you might expect. However, in some cases, the employers are not consulting with their employees at all, but are simply telling them that they will be made redundant and then showing them the door. This should not happen and can lead to employers unfairly dismissing the employees treated in this way. If this happens to you you may be able to argue that you have been unfairly dismissed.
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