Companies redundancy procedure

[Essex16]

Second AIBU of the week (and my life) 😩

Husband’s employer held company wide meeting in September to effect of company is restructuring and jobs are at risk. Staff were told continue as normal more to follow.

Today another meeting was held to explain which jobs were at risk, which had been matched and which were safe. Hubby’s is at risk. Act as normal more info to follow.

Hubby was told that there would be a further meeting sometime in Nov to let him know if there is another position for him or not otherwise redundancy by Christmas.

Apart from being another pile of shit to add to the list of 2020 and right before Christmas, AIBU in thinking that this is an unnecessary prolonged process? Why can’t all of this been done in one (Max 2) meetings instead of prolonging the worry and stress for all the staff

I don't know but my DF is going through the same thing and he's been told that there will be meetings in mid December.

They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. It takes a lot of time to figure this out because they need to know what's happening with clients and customers and suppliers and tax etc etc so they can't make the process any shorter. They have two choices: keep everyone updated at every stage of the process or wait until the end and announce it.
This way is so much better. If they waited until the end then you'd have no notice at all, less time to look elsewhere, save for a gap in employment etc. Also, all the people who are safe wouldn't know that for ages and would be worrying unnecessarily. The company have definitely done the right thing - and it sounds like they're trying to keep on as many people as they can.

I think that's normal for a redundancy consultation process. We were warned of it in my job in December with redundancies happening 1st April. I was on mat leave so kind of switched off to it as felt it was inevitable (and was)

There are rules about consultation and timescales, and the rules vary depending on the number of redundancies being made.

If the number of redundancies is 20 or more, there has to be a consultation of at least a month before the date that staff are made redundant. I can't recall the number of redundancies where the longer period kicks in, but the consultation period goes up to 45 days.

I might be made redundant at the end of March, as a project that funded 5 of my 17 hours pw closed in July. They found the money to make up my pay to the full amount till the end of the financial year, but for some reason my employer doesn't like contracts of less than 17 hours, so they won't just reduce my hours to 12next year.

I had my redundancy consultation meeting in August - 7 months before any redundancy will happen. (To be fair, they know I'm retiring no later than the end of July 2021, and my redundancy pay would be more than I would earn from April-July, so it's no big deal to me.)

Right sounds like they are doing the correct thing then. Never been through this before! Thanks for the input

No advice, but do a redundancy calculator on gov.uk to work out what your husband is entitled to, as a minimum, so he will be prepared as to what they are offering.

I imagine the employer is fighting and trying to save as many jobs as they can as I'm sure they would prefer to not make anyone redundant. I know it must be awful waiting.

check how much redundancy money he is due to give yourselves an idea on finance & try to persuade him to update his cv to get himself ahead should it happen - perhaps start looking up agencies who do permanent & temporary work & checking which have got best feedback for employees & maybe putting feelers out to them about his skills & experiences.

Back in the '90's this happened several times over a period of a few years - temporary jobs lasting longer than permanent ones . Even than Christmas seemed to be the time of redundancy.

Taking a bit longer over it also gives time for anyone who might be interested in voluntary redundancy to do any necessary financial calculations and volunteer.