Realised I don’t understand redundancy at all..

[ArgumentativeAardvaark]

Boss has just notified us that a colleague has been made redundant and I have realised that I don’t actually understand how it works.

The context is an organisation where everyone has more or less the same job description, in that we work for clients and we all offer the same skills. Think eg graphic designers. People have job titles like Senior Designer, Designer, Junior Designer and a client will be charged the same for any senior designer. However within the “senior designer” grade, some may be paid more than others due to length of service, or having been recruited laterally.

If there is no longer enough work to support say, 4 senior designers in the team, would you have to apply some sort of objective assessment to decide which one would be made redundant, or could you just get rid of the most expensive one?

Alternatively, if you felt that one of the Senior Designers was actually a bit less talented than the others, could you make her redundant on performance grounds without including the others ina consultation?

This is not me “asking for a friend” but in the current climate I was a bit shocked by the announcement and wanted to prepare myself a bit better. I am not the same grade as the colleague who was let go.

I’ve been in my role 35 years, I am at the top of my pay scale, if redundancy gets announced I will put my hand up and very likely be quietly paid off on a generous settlement.

Maybe that happened.

Interesting, my workplace often has "restructures" youll go in one morning and there'll be announcement about how people will be leaving the business that day. No notice, consultation etc. I know they're well paid. I now assume you can decline this if you've been employed for over 2 years? I'd like to be prepared when the day comes. They'd probably get rid of you another way though

As pp have said, the role gets made redundant, not the person. I suspect they have come to a settlement agreement and saying redundancy shuts people up.

Normally if you have more people than roles, you make all of them redundant then you either put them all through a selection process for the remaining roles or offer voluntary redundancy to see if one leaves voluntarily.

No company makes everyone redundant and then rehires them. They restructure and ask employees to apply for the new roles. Those that don’t get the new roles are redundant because their old jobs have gone.

In this case, there isn’t wide scale restructuring. It appears to be three jobs instead of four. The employee might have volunteered to go. Whatever the case, employers should have a redundancy policy. This should explain how such a procedure will be conducted etc. It should follow acas guidelines. The link given above will give you all the info you need so you are better informed about redundancy.