To think it is wrong to tell people of redundancies by email, and on a Friday before a bank holiday

[ForalltheSaints]

As has happened to those who work for the Evening Standard today. Managed by Gideon Osbourne, former chancellor.

I didn't read it when I read the paper on my way home today, surprise, surprise.

Totally unrelated but my DP was made redundant the Tuesday after Easter. Le sigh

There haven't been any redundancies, it's going into a consultation period.

Week before Christmas, and we were told company was completely bust so no-one would get paid either!!! Had to go through a government scheme to get money owed to us.

Luckily I got a temping job 2 days later which became permenant and I much prefer it so every cloud.

Happened to me - day before Good Friday

I don't think there is any good way. We were told when we all got called into the meeting room and announcement was made, we were then expected to go and get on with our jobs as if nothing had happened and were told we weren't allowed to discuss it.

A friend of ours works for a large company. A number of years ago they needed to make a large number of people redundant. They canvassed the staff how they would like to be told if they were the ones being made redundant (I assume during the consultation period) and the staff opted for email.

I remember at a firm I worked for they regularly made people redundant but usually in small numbers so consultation periods weren’t required. One time it got out 3 people were going but the names weren’t known. 1 was in the office on the day so was told immediately but there were a number of people out due to sickness, holiday etc. Then someone came back in after sickness and told us they had been made redundant. We then waited to find out who was the third person. Eventually everyone was back in, apart from one person, and the jobs of these people were safe. The person who was still away was on honeymoon, and we all felt terrible that we knew she was going to be made redundant before she did . However, it worked out in the end because whilst on honeymoon she had decided she wanted to change jobs, so she was pleased to come back to find out she was going to get some redundancy money.

We got told on the day that ours was shutting down and not to come into work tomorrow.
It was a nursery and we was still open so we had to tell the parents when they collected.
Some were ok, some cried in worry others got angry and not even our managers stepped into help.

By email is horrendous and I feel for them.

For mass redundancies, YouB?

Yes. This is how it happened to us. A meeting with a “top level” dial in announcement relating to the wider business and then another face to face one related to our business area.

If you’re planning to make people redundant at least have the bloody decency to tell them rather than sending an email and sitting behind the parapet.

I guess it’s better than literally nothing. As in what happened to me, have job BOOM redundancy

I don't see the problem of redundancy consultation period being communicated by email, means everyone gets it at the same time, which is how it should be

It doesn’t. It means they receive the email at the same time. Not that they receive the communication at the same time. In my job we were on the phones. You could be on a long call and not able to read emails and meantime your colleagues all around you are chitter chattering about it. Pretty horrible.

I’ve advised employers on HR for over 12 years and I’d never advise them just to send out emails. Cowardly and shitty as well as not ensuring effective communication

Better than when me and my colleagues found out we were going to be made redundant from watching the news. They decided to announce that our company was folding to the press first.

Its for a consultation. My team had a very similar email on Friday - not an issue it’s a Friday, just a day I guess.

Your OP is very misleading. It’s like a tabloid headline, where the story doesn’t actually mirror the truth.

However, not wanting to pettifog around the detail, your sentiment is bang on.

Anyone who works for that publication (or any print newspaper) cannot be surprised that there will be redundancies. There will have been rumours for ages. I have been through 2 rounds at a previous work place and everyone knew it was inevitable. DH1 went through 3 rounds at a previous workplace and again people knew about to before the consultation was announced. It’s a shame people will lose their jobs but in the current economic climate it shouldn’t be a shock to anyone.

I was once made redundant, by recorded delivery letter on 27th December during office shutdown. About 30 of us got letters saying not to bother going back to the office and any personal items left would be returned in due course. The company had only been going 9 months and we had actually joked about them doing a moonlight flit over the holidays but didn’t really think they’d do that. They’d known for a while too. They kept on about five people who lasted another month or two.

It seems a normal way to do it to me, but that’s based on experience in the civil service. When we were told that everyone in the Dept would need to be assessed and reapply for their job/a job the email went out after hours, and with a link to the intranet that wasn’t accessible via mobile.

And when my last directorate had a restructure with posts going and us having to apply for what was left it was done in person for those in London but all the regional based staff had to ring in and listen via speaker phone.

The picture you've painted isn't correct, OP. The email wasn't telling individual staff members they were at risk of redundancy - it was a round robin to all staff saying a period of consultation was beginning to streamline the business and redundancies would be on a voluntary basis. Granted it must've been a jolt to receive it just before the Bank Holiday weekend, but for those keen to accept the redundancy payoff and get the hell outta there, it may well have been welcome news.

Ime the only people who feel the need to call George Osbourne "Gideon" are those who have a problem w Jews. Would you say that'strue in your case OP?

Announcing a redundancy consultation is in no way equivalent to making someone redundant and email is perfectly appropriate imo.

BarbarianMum I refer to Mr Osbourne by the first name his parents gave him as it is a name associated with posh people, to counteract all the photo opportunities as a 'man of the people' he used to do in factories etc, whilst he supported and indeed help enable the policies that increased poverty in this country.

How strange. You don't think that adults should choose the name they go by then? Gideon isn't a particularly posh name actually but it is a typically Jewish one. Just saying.

If some of you are going to nit pick and be arseholes over whether he is George or Gideon, perhaps some of you could learn to correctly spell his surname which is Osborne - without the u (Osbourne)

Thanks.

I agree with @BarbarianMum

George Osborne is also descended from Hungarian Jews

In May 2018, The Telegraph reported that Osborne and his siblings had discovered "with delight" that their maternal grandmother Clarisse Loxton-Peacock (a glamorous Hungarian émigrée) was Jewish, and therefore that in Jewish law they are Jewish too.

If it’s anything like the newspaper I used to work at, there were so many new redundancy consultation periods announced every couple of weeks, the managers probably give up trying to organise staff meetings as it would get way too ridiculous.

Anything that cock womble Osborne does wouldn't surprise me. Wish he would go off and do one with his Bullingdon Club comtemporaries.