Redundancy Consultations – Getting it right
Businesses can be faced with making difficult decisions if the business takes a downward turn. They will often have battled for weeks or months before making the decision to make redundancies.
So where do they start?
Depending on the numbers involved, if a business is going to make more than 20 employees redundant in the next 90 days, the business must consult with staff on both an individual and ‘collective’ basis, which means that they will need to elect employee representatives and liaise with them and any union representatives to discuss the reason for the redundancies and how they can avoid them.
Part of the redundancy process will involve how and who will be selected for redundancy. The most common way of doing this is through a scoring matrix which will put all the employees who are at risk into a ‘pool’ and they will usually be scored against objective criteria such as disciplinary record, lateness and absence and qualifications. I would advise against using sickness as a marker as this could be considered discriminatory depending on the reason for the sickness.
It is important that this is done fairly as there is a risk that the whole process could be seen to have been pre-determined, that the business knew who they wanted to make redundant and that the process was not therefore a genuine redundancy consultation process.
A case that highlights this is Sylvia Williams -v- Lyons Holiday Parks. The Tribunal sitting at Cardiff found that the company looked to dismiss Ms Williams due to her capability and the fact that there was ‘ill will’ against her. The tribunal found that the company had “engineered a so-called redundancy situation”, and that during the redundancy process the company’s “notification of redundancy, consultation and consideration of alternatives were all defective”, and there was “no real effort to find an alternative to dismissal”.
During the evidence, the Tribunal found that it was apparent that the company had already decided that Williams would be made redundant and she was unsuccessful in roles which became available and applied for and that the company was just going through the motions.
Finally she was not given the right to appeal the decision to terminate her employment. Everyone whose employment is terminated must be given the right to appeal the decision to terminate.
If you need any help with redundancy consultations, please feel free to get in touch for a free confidential chat.
