Rights when being terminated

[44PumpLane]

Apologies- this is redundancy related but the redundancy board doesn’t appear to be very busy.

My small team is going through redundancies at the minute, they need to get rid of 2 people at my level and 2 of us have been offered voluntary redundancy (including me)- I’m understandably upset.

However, the contractor on our team was due to leave 3 days before we were informed of the redundancy, but her contract was extended by one month recently. This means she will have been with us over a year and is therefore afforded employee rights and is able to apply for the remaining roles in the team.

I believe this is a calculated decision by the management to time things in such a way that the contractor would be able to apply for the positions in the new team structure as there was no necessity for her contract to be extended.

Do I have any legal recourse if/when I am made redundant, as I will not be taking the voluntary that I have been offered.

Many thanks.

Is contractor doing same role as you? With the voluntary redundancy offer?

Contractor is doing a slightly different role, but she is cover for someone who is acting in a “step up” to cover one of the roles that is the same level as me.

So, to try and be as clear as possible I’m going to use an example of a different profession.

Contractor is a teacher, roles at risk are Heads of Year. However one head of year went on maternity leave so the prior teacher, who is a permanent employee, was asked to cover the Head of Year. They were not promoted, they are “acting up” into the Head of Year position.

An individual on a fixed term contract was employed by the school (ie not through an agency) to work in the Teachers role.

Fast forward 1 year. All permanent members of staff have returned to work. The individual on the fixed term contract remains in place. The teacher “acting up” as head of Year is still in situ.

Team has gone under consultation.
The teacher role and all head of Year roles are to be considered in consultation.

The teacher role seems to map beautifully into one of the new roles, role X.

The Head of Year roles will remain, there will just be less of them.

All heads of year are able to apply for the roles as is the teacher. So the individual who is on a fixed term contract is being considered in the same pool as the permanent employees.

HR have now told me this is because they are employed directly by our company and as a portion of their work is continuing they could argue unfair treatment due to being a temporary worker and therefore they are allowed to form part of the process.

Great write up, out of my area, but didn't want you to think your effort was wasted

"This means she will have been with us over a year and is therefore afforded employee rights and is able to apply for the remaining roles in the team."

No idea what this is about - either she's an employee on a fixed term contract or she's not. She doesn't suddenly get employee rights after a year.

However fixed term employees have the right not to be treated less favourably than permanent staff, which includes access to vacancies.

flowery appreciate the reply.

The “one year” info was evidently a misspeak by my direct manager and this was clarified by HR as being incorrect.

I agree a fixed term employee should not be treated less favourably than a permanent contract employee when applying for a vacancy- however I assumed that this would be skewed in the case of a redundancy situation where permanent employees are being made redundant but the fixed term employee is effectively coming to the end of their fixed term contract.

The roles are not open for general application, they are specifically ringfenced for those of us within the consultation process. I’m genuinely surprised that a fixed term employee, whose contract (even with extension) will cease before the end of the consultation period so is technically not being made redundant, is able to be included as part of the consultation pool.

Just over a year ago I was in same position. Worked in a school and all support staff had to apply for their jobs and state what level they wanted.

All fixed term staff were told their contracts were NOT being renewed.

The permanent staff had to apply for for level 2 or 3. If you were a 2 you could not apply for a 3 position but if you were a 3 you could apply for a 2.

Your situation sounds like they want the person on the fixed term contract.

PotteryLady appreciate the reply.

Yes I believe they do with to keep the Fixed Term Employee- I think they have formed the role specifically with her in mind.

I intend to apply for both the “teacher” and “head of Year” roles (keeping in line with the example I tried to use earlier).

I officially declined the redundancy offer today, I will be preparing for the assessment/interview process over the weekend (any advice welcome) with a view to taking things further if I am officially made redundant.

I believe I have a competitive skill set when measured against my peers and believe the team manager already has a vision of the team, which excludes me. I will be appealing the decision if I am indeed made redundant and taking things further.

Yes I believe they do with to keep the Fixed Term Employee- I think they have formed the role specifically with her in mind.

From what you have said, I agree. Unless their lawyers have advised that they could be in trouble if they do not include the Fixed Term person, then it looks like a moved designed to allow this person to secure one of the roles.

I would find out what type of assessment they are running and what type of interview it will be.

For the interview I'd advise you use the STAR (situation, task, action, result) or SOAR (Situation, Obstacles, Actions, Results) to structure your answers. Ensure that you Google interview questions and you have plenty of answers based on the above with strong examples that are directly linked to what they are looking for in the new role. If they are trying to pick the other person, your answers need to demonstrate that you can fulfil every part of the role. If you use a good example that is not linked closely enough to the new role then they can mark you down for it.

OliviaStabler appreciate the reply.

I would be surprised if they had consulted the legal team.

We’ll be finding out the assessment process soon but I will spend the weekend going through my cv and doing interview prep- I’ll write down some examples using the STAR/SOAR technique- thank you.

Good luck

I'm amazed - when I've done big org change projects we have ringfenced roles for perm members of staff and didn't allow fixed term to apply. But Flowery is always right so may have to rethink my next project. Good luck.