Does anyone know what happened to the mn user who ran redundancyforum.co.uk

[Bigfatpicnic]

As I could do with her no nonsense input and advice!

Don't know who you mean but there are plenty of people here who are capable of advising you.

Like flowery :)

Perhaps I'm not good enough Seeking

I know who you mean. I think she posts on www.moneysavingexpert.com as Another Not New User . She was trolled under her old name by people being told what they didn't want to hear i.e. the truth!

She certainly was! She was fab and i am glad she is back there. Will go now and say Hi.

I had wondered what happened to her when the redundancy forum disappeared.

Delicious - I'm just going on the quality of information and posting style - I might be wrong. I don't know for sure it's SarEl

I was going to read the posts first before contacting - top find though.

My friend could with redundancy advice, if any of you are able to help.

She was put at risk last week, and has a consultation mtg on Friday. She is trying to think of some good questions to put to the managers at the mtg.
They want to shut her role and another role and the managers have created a new role that joins the 2 together. So, a 70 hour a weeks job for 2 people is now a 35 hour job for 1 person, although 7/8 hours worth of tasks have been stripped out of the new role. How could this be worded to the managers?, do they have to explain how the role can be done in that time.

What other questions/suggestions can be put to the managers to save redundancy.

Yes, it was sarel I was thinking of.

I immediately thought SarEl too. She's great, no nonsense.

But I am sure there will be good advice on here.

Your friend should ask how the selection process will be conducted. Is it just the two of them being considered for this role, is it a case of applying for the job or will criteria be used to determine which should be made redundant. If criteria, what will they be and how will they be scored.

The employer doesn't have to explain exactly how they think the role can be done in that time as such - they are allowed to decide to reduce headcount even if staff think it's not doable- but if she feels it's not realistic she should raise that with them.

In terms of avoiding redundancy, whether that's realistic might depend on the reasons for the proposed redundancy. If they need to cut costs for example, your friend could think of other possible cost saving options. If it's just that they feel there literally isn't enough work for two people, avoiding redundancy will involve demonstrating otherwise or exploring other vacancies.

Thankyou Flowery.

As far as she is aware it is only the 2 employees applying for the role. No criteria is being used. For various reasons she would be better off if criteria were applied, but I don't think that is something that the employee can request? Is that correct?

In your experience, are redundancies already decided prior to the consultation period? Are companies just following procedure to get the outcome they require, or do they genuinely investigate options suggested by the employee and subsequently drop the redundancies?

She can request selection criteria be used instead of (presumably) an application/interview process, certainly, but they don't have to comply. If she wants to suggest that she should put together information about why selection criteria would be best.

In answer to your second question, yes frequently the outcome is realistically already decided. If an employer is reducing headcount from two to one, it's likely they'll already know which of the two they want to keep.
In terms of dropping redundancies altogether, that's rare, as there is usually good reason for going through the process in the first place. However depending on what the employer is hoping to achieve, it's certainly possible that an employee could come up with an alternative suggestion to meet that need which avoids redundancies. I've seen that a couple of times in cost-cutting exercises.

Thankyou very much for your advice Flowery.