Redundancy….

[DaveB]

Went through this myself a couple of years back. There are two approaches the company can take. They either do it by the book, with full consultancy with staff and unions etc or they get you to sign a Compromise Agreement whereby you waive your rights under redundancy law in return for a bigger payout. There is legislation covering all of this. Business Link is a good place to start.

The redundancy consultation process | Business Link

Compromise agreements can get you more money upfront but you waive any right to claims of unfair dismissal, they are also only binding if you take legal advice on the content and get a solicitors signature to confirm this. Most companies will pay for this advise for you and you can choose the solicitor you use. Any solicitor who covers redundancy and employment law will know what it's about.

Otherwise definitely consult your union, especially if there has been no official consultation over redundancies. If it is going to affect more than 20 people they are legally obliged to do this and there are fines for not doing so.

As it happened it worked out well for me. I walked away from a permie job I was starting to hate, with a bonus, a redundancy payout that was considerably larger than first offered, thanks to getting a good solicitor, and walked into a new contract the following week.

Be positive about it, it's necessarily the end of the world.

[mudskipper]

<how to do redundancy>

WeUKS, but in this case it doesn't sound as if the company hasn't bothered to go through the motions of feigning a fair selection process, so Wilmslow is being 'unfairly dismissed' and any payout should reflect this. Or he takes it, then takes them to tribunal - lots of people do this and do win and get compensated for loss of earnings.

Don't make it easy for them!

[Paddy]

Current client co has been making on an average two redundancies per week while moving the tasks to India. Permie moral is very low. Client co's Intranet Home Page then has a feature of achievers ie. Bob in Bangalore doing the job that used to be done in the UK. Bob writes how wonderful life is with his new position. Needless to say it was rather tackles and insensitive of client co.

[doodab]

Current client co has been making on an average two redundancies per week while moving the tasks to India. Permie moral is very low. Client co's Intranet Home Page then has a feature of achievers ie. Bob in Bangalore doing the job that used to be done in the UK. Bob writes how wonderful life is with his new position. Needless to say it was rather tackles and insensitive of client co.

Or a calculated move to encourage people to move of their own accord.

[norrahe]

WeUKS, but in this case it doesn't sound as if the company hasn't bothered to go through the motions of feigning a fair selection process, so Wilmslow is being 'unfairly dismissed' and any payout should reflect this. Or he takes it, then takes them to tribunal - lots of people do this and do win and get compensated for loss of earnings.

Don't make it easy for them!

Make sure you get legal advice, if they are going doing the redundancy route then you should be entitled to some form of legal representation as part of the package, if you feel this is unfair dismissal then do make sure you get good advice.

[escapeUK]

if they are going doing the redundancy route then you should be entitled to some form of legal representation as part of the package.

No, why would the employer give you free legal representation to help you sue them? If the employer follows the steps I have mentioned there can be no recourse, obviously there are a lot ones who do it wrong and waste money paying out tribunals.

[Robinho]

No, why would the employer give you free legal representation to help you sue them? If the employer follows the steps I have mentioned there can be no recourse, obviously there are a lot ones who do it wrong and waste money paying out tribunals.

So the employer can assure that the employee is happy with the redundancy and won't try and sue them down the road probably.

[Hot Mess]

Went through this myself a couple of years back. There are two approaches the company can take. They either do it by the book, with full consultancy with staff and unions etc or they get you to sign a Compromise Agreement whereby you waive your rights under redundancy law in return for a bigger payout. There is legislation covering all of this. Business Link is a good place to start.

The redundancy consultation process | Business Link

Compromise agreements can get you more money upfront but you waive any right to claims of unfair dismissal, they are also only binding if you take legal advice on the content and get a solicitors signature to confirm this. Most companies will pay for this advise for you and you can choose the solicitor you use. Any solicitor who covers redundancy and employment law will know what it's about.

As it happened it worked out well for me. I walked away from a permie job I was starting to hate, with a bonus, a redundancy payout that was considerably larger than first offered, thanks to getting a good solicitor, and walked into a new contract the following week.

Be positive about it, it's necessarily the end of the world.

+ 1

Take the cash and move on. Don't bother with any tribunals, you're wasting your time.

Your employer is not stupid and will have covered their arse.

Remind yourself it was a crap job, then forget all about it and get on with your life

[Sysman]

As far as I know there is no criteria for selecting people for redundancy. One thing that sticks in my memory is when I was contracting for a multinational company in Holland. A memo came from the US saying that they want 10% redundancies ASAP. The Dutch HR sent a memo back saying they cannot do that under Dutch law because the company is still in profit. The reply back was; OK. Make the number up by making more redundancies in the UK office.

There was a similar problem with the French company I worked for when international HQ told the MD to start winding the company down (I don't know the exact details). They were asking him to do something illegal under French law, and he could have been facing hefty fines if not prison. He ended up resigning.

US companies look at head count. They don't seem to care which heads roll as long as that head count goes down.

Even in the UK, back in the eighties a company had to give something like 90 (maybe more) days' notice to the DSS when planning redundancies.

[Sysman]

You then bring your victims in, tell them they can bring a colleague in as a witness if they would like (most dont as most colleagues dont want to bring their head into the redundancy sites) , but make sure there are two managers in there and minute everything. Explain the scoring matrix you used, ideally get them to agree that it sounds fair in principle which it is. You might want to get them to sign something to this effect. You then go through their scores line by line, the scores they get sound reasonable so usually they will agree with them. Obviously you cant give someone with perfect attendance a 1/5, instead you score them lower on things like "adaptation to new technology" or "computer skills" or "flexibility".

Explain to them the procedure, make it all seem totally fair, you might even get them to sign a letter just saying that this is the procedure and we followed it kind of declaration.

Yep. When I stuck my hand up for voluntary redundancy the discussion came up in the pub, and one chap there had been in charge of a redundancy programme. He told me not to sign anything like that. There might have been an official DSS / Department of Employment form to sign, but that was it. I followed his instructions and was OK.

He then went on to tell me about the tricks they got up to to avoid a payout. One tale was a girl who they suspected of being pregnant. If they waited until she wanted pregnancy leave they could have somehow paid out less, but she covered it up well and got her full payout.

And brought her new baby into work several months later to show off to her former colleagues.