What is the outcome of a grievance/tribunal?

[selte]

My HR department have advised me that they have had to downsize the team I work in due to business requirements, so no longer need the same level of engineer resource. As such, they have identified an alternative vacancy that they require me to fill instead.

I am really unhappy about the situation and am considering putting a grievance in, and was looking for some advice. My reasons for considering a grievance are:

First of all, my HR department have said this is not a redundancy situation and so I did not need to be consulted. I disagree - I believe that since my job no longer exists, I should have been consulted about a potential redundancy situation at the time that this occurred.

Secondly, I think that I was unfairly selected for redundancy - there have been no details of why I was chosen, also I know there's at least one contractor working on my team doing my role at the moment, though he is likely to be let go soon. But certainly my job still exists at this moment in time as he was brought in to that team after I left.

Thirdly, the job that has been identified as a "suitable alternative" is of a lower grade, with markedly less responsibility and different working (my old job was a technical role - the new role is not), as well as less chance of career progression.

The main problem I have with raising a grievance is that I can't afford not to have a job. I am really worried that the outcome of this will be me not having a job at all with the company. Can that happen?

There's a lot of questions here, I'd strongly suggest calling either your union or a solicitor for advice as to where you stand.

I think this boils down to whether you are prepared to suck this up because you want/need the job you've been offered, or whether you're looking to explore an exit strategy.

If the former, the purpose of raising a grievance would be to put on record how unhappy you are about the process and the fact that you were not consulted with. A good outcome might be that they acknowledge your feelings and perhaps undertake to review their procedures for next time. A bad outcome might be that they dismiss your grievance and mark you down as a troublemaker.

If the latter, you are probably looking at an appeal rather than a grievance and you should think about taking proper face to face advice. Just going on what you say in your OP, it does sound like a redundancy situation (although it could be a restructuring depending on the facts), you should probably have been consulted with (although the outcome may well have been the same). If the guy doing a similar role is a contractor and not employed by the company, then that position (which you say is finishing anyway) is not a suitable alternative role. If he's an employee then, from what you have said, the two of you should have been in the pool for redundancy. But aren't both jobs going ultimately?

The lower grade role doesn't sound too attractive. I'm not sure what stage you are at in relation to it. You are entitled to a trial period of four calendar weeks to determine its suitability in terms of location, pay, status as compared to your old job. If it's objectively unsuitable you can refuse it (assuming you can prove that it is a redundancy situation - again, take advice) and claim redundancy pay instead. Direct.gov website has a calculator you can use to see what your entitlement would be.
Unfortunately I don't imagine you have much clout in this situation, unless there is in fact no redundancy situation and this has all been trumped up to get you out, or you can show that there was some discriminatory element to the process (although you don't mention anything like that).