Redundancy

[SaturdayNext]

Question on behalf of my brother. He and his colleagues were told back in June that there would have to be redundancies and that basically all staff were in the frame. There haven't been any 1:1 consultations but there's been a general 45 day consultation. Recently they were told that they would be given an opportunity to add further information if they thought it might make a difference to the decisions made, and it sounded as if it would be optional. They have now been told that they must all basically reapply for their jobs with detailed statements and have been given a very tight deadline for it.

I know nothing about these processes, but it all sounds a bit odd to me. What is the point in consulting if ultimately everything is thrown out of the window and people are being treated as new applicants? Does this effectively amount to telling each employee that they are redundant and must reapply for their jobs? Is it fair to make it such a rushed application process when this has been on the cards for over five months?

If lots of people are in a pool for redundancy it normally follows something like this

1
People can volunteer for voluntary redundancy
These should be accepted or rejected

2
Employers should follow a "matrix system" to select people for redundancy where they look at criteria like; length of service, sickness, skills & qualifications, previous appraisals, soft skills, time keeping etc

Ultimately, the employer selects who stays & who goes

If you are in UK there is info about minimum payments etc on www.gov.uk

Making those in the pool interview is a fairly common method of selection, particularly in the public sector. The unions seem to like it (although personally I never recommend clients use it since the aim in selection is to remove subjectivity as much as possible). Time frame is fine I’m afraid. You can run a fair redundancy process from start to finish in two weeks (although in this case there has been longer consultation due to the number of employees involved)

As I understand it, these employers did say they would follow the system described by @Crunch13Crunch. They then came out with the stuff about people being given an opportunity to add more information if they felt like it, only for that to be followed with a demand that everyone essentially put in a detailed application for their own job.

They also said that they would only interview if there were really close-running "candidates". Latest news is that they are interviewing everyone.

It may be lawful, but it does sound as if they're constantly kicking the can down the road and prolonging the agony for everyone. If the entire employment situation were not so bloody difficult for everyone, I suspect most of the staff would have walked by now anyway.