I’ve been around for a long time but bane changed for this.
My DH has worked for a small private firm for 12 years, his employer can be difficult at times and tends to be quite inconsistent in how he treats staff, eg over lockdown he’s furloughed some folk, insisted others work from the office and agreed home working for others, has asked some staff to take unpaid leave for caring responsibilities, has some folk on furlough still doing bits of work.
Part of my DH’s role is credit control however his boss furloughed the receptionist for the company and has had my DH cover phones while she is off. The phones have been very busy due to the nature of their work and obviously DHs productivity in his own work has suffered - my DH has spoken to his boss about this regularly.
Yesterday his boss said in passing that my DH wasn’t bringing enough money in and that he would need to reduce my DHs hours and bring someone back from furlough to do credit control. Surely if there’s an issue with DHs work, he can’t just decide to reduce his hours with no process, and no opportunity for representation? In my mind he should be following a fair performance management process. In 12 years there has never been an issue with DHs performance - between covering someone else’s job and the financial position many companies are in at the moment, getting money in his very hard going. In addition he asked my DH to focus on a particular task for the last fortnight which wasn’t related to credit control - which he completed - and now is being told he’s not bringing in enough money.
It feels very unfair and, I suspect, his boss is trying to reduce his wage costs by bringing a lower paid staff member back and reducing my DHs salary to accommodate this.
TLDR: can my DHs boss reduce his hours citing performance issues without due process.