To complain to HR… about HR?

This sounds like the workplace is being run by small children. Wtaf? Gossiping openly about someone who’s jacket is on a shoogly peg, and then the boss telling you all to go to the pub and do your gossip there

To be fair I doubt global HR would lose any sleep over this - the management / pub / speculation bit, yes, but not your part in it.

I just don't think you have any particular grounds for complaint since everything you've raised was also addressed on the spot - quite properly. But I'm sure they're capable of saying so and moving on, or rustling up an apology to your group. I'd be advising your manager to apologize anyway if I were them.

What in earth do you do that this minor incident constitutes “so many fuck ups you don’t know where to begin”?!

this is barely an issue, it’s not ideal but it’s certainly not worth a complaint.

If you disagree -which in sure you will - I suggest contacting the global HR head and see what he thinks. You’ll be following swiftly in Angela’s footsteps I’d imagine.

Case proven M'lord.

HR also have a hand in who gets sacked…so I don’t think firebombing them is a good move.

Also, how identifiable is this thread? If it gets picked up by the DM, you’re absolutely fucked.

You were sent to the pub, on the company purse, on company time, by your boss.
I don't think you had much choice did you?
They didn't offer the choice to head home early?.

Well OP, if Angela ever gets wind of what happened she will get a lot more than what was agreed in the settlement conversation to get het.

This has professional defamation written all over it, or some such claim, IMO.

Employment legal specialists have worked with far less than this.

Ì already have a feeling that you are not a particularly nice person.

Out of interest - in what way was she a bad manager?

Was it a quiet drink in the pub to smooth over tensions, or were you (collectively) actually celebrating?

This. You should not have gone to the pub, do you not know how to be professional? If my boss told me to do something inappropriate I’d refuse. How you can’t see this is your error makes me think you’d be next on redundancy list of i was in management. but complain away and show yourself up!

From the information @ApricotFlan has given this sounds like many of the manager exits I’ve been aware of/have assisted with. It’s a settlement agreement/without prejudice conversations situation. Commonly used for more senior staff, who are not performing well or have lost the dressing room (as it sounds like has happened based on OP’s info).

Angela may well have started the ball rolling on this process herself and the company has bitten her hand off. The fact it sounds like Angela was in for the beginning of a day, was in her manager’s office, then went to lunch but didn’t come back suggests to me this might be the case. Every company I’ve worked for that had decided to start without prejudice conversations arranged for a meeting with the member of staff off-site: a key reason being to avoid the type of awkwardness that has been present in Angela’s situation.

It sounds like the management and HR weren’t on the same page about the info shared with the OP and colleagues about Angela’s sudden departure. Head of HR was seemingly at pains to tell them all, “no, no it’s not a redundancy, she’s in a process.” This could all be another Head of HR and management cock-up but you’d have normally decided on what to brief staff about why a manager is not at work before having the conversation with the manager being exited.
Makes me think that again Angela brought up a settlement agreement conversation and management were caught unprepared but thought, “yes, let’s go ahead.”

Angela is likely going to come out of this with a reasonable sum and won’t have faced the ignominy of being performance managed. She’ll be ok.

Agree.

you need to find your inner Elsa.

Bloody nora

Ive retired 3 years ago and was feeling a little nostalgic for my old haunts but nah, thank fuck I'm out after 50 years of corporate shite.

Op, it's not huge. Everyone behaved unprofessionally, I mean sending you to the pub to gossip off site. Angela is either made redundant or in a process and anyone with a titter of wit knows its not professional to gossip about it.

If she's in a process HR are shitting themselves as some contact in the organisation could phone her and say oh did you know your team were in the pub paid for by the company. That opens the organisation up to all sorts of allegations.

Your manager was a dick for suggesting it, HR should have pulled him up on it and possibly did, but having a meeting to hammer home to you all to keep your cheapers shut and stop gossipping was possibly a knee jerk reaction. And they should have waited till you were all there, yes.

But what do you want now? While I think you're being quite snippy with folk giving their opinion, my advice would be to speak to your manager, say that the team got a bollocking when you were following his/her orders, and that you want to ensure its not in your personnel file. And let him follow up on that.

The person who is really in the wrong here is the senior manager who not only told the team that Angela had been made redundant, when she is in a process, but told the team to go to the pub to gossip about her there.

no wonder HR are shitting themselves, as this is exactly the sort of thing that Angela could use against them if she caught wind of it.

I agree it’s wrong for the HR team to decide to tell off the team without clarifying what had happened with the senior manager involved. That makes them look foolish at best.

At the same time, I don’t think it’s worth raising a formal complaint about. What exactly do you hope to achieve from it? What you could do is raise it in a 121 with the senior manager involved and say you’re unhappy with the way it was handled when you were only following what you’d been asked to do. You might get an apology from him. Beyond that, I’d let it go.

Maybe, but the more people gossip and speculate while a process like this is running, the higher her chances of either remaining or getting a large payout. Something for your HR and managers to be very aware of.

It's quite possible a severance agreement has been worked out but not signed, since she'll have a statutory period to take legal advice. If she has a new grievance - and I would say your manager has definitely given her grounds for it - that can scupper the agreement and she may choose to stay and pursue it, pursue a claim for unfair dismissal, or take yesterday's happenings as grounds for constructive dismissal.

If you and your colleagues don't want to give her more and more power in this process, you need to understand why HR are so agitated and stop speculating at work or work events. You were certainly misled by your manager. I agree with you that HR should have acknowledged they'd been told that. But they have done that since, and they covered what they did when they forgot you came in later. I don't see that anything has happened that isn't covered by the clarification during your conversation with HR.

But if you want something in particular from a complaint about HR, think about what that might be - an email clarifying the chain of events and assurance that they won't forget starting times in future is probably the most you should expect.

I wouldn't bother trying to make life more difficult for your managers or HR - this sequence of events will already have caused them enough trouble, through the managers' fault!

Have you decided whether you’ll take it further and, if so, if it’s your boss or the boss boss?

But she pulled you all 'forgotten-ers' when you all arrived, so what's the big deal?

you seem to make this whole thing about you. Some poor woman has been made redundant and you're all acting like monkeys in a circus.