NHS admin staff, are you worried about possibly redundancies?

[mayjane]

This really..
The NHS Trust where I've worked for about 5 years today sent an email to non-clinical colleagues, asking for "voluntary resignations". It's part of a cost-saving drive, this particular Trust needs to save several million over the next year.
I work in a full time admin (Band 3) role in a very busy department. If anything, we need more admin staff in our team, rather than any losses.
How secure do NHS admin staff feel at the moment? Perhaps I'm worrying unduly, I don't know but I'm worried that if non-clinical staff don't "volunteer" to leave under the terms offers, steps might be taken to make staff redundant.
If it comes to making redundancies, how do they "choose" who goes and who stays? Is it length of service, age, sickness records, disciplinary records etc?
I'm mid 30s, rarely off sick and never had a disciplinary.

I’m not in my specific team as we’re under pre pandemic numbers in the team (which is what the line currently is), but even so, our workload has increased and we have to suck it up AB’s find savings. 2 vacant posts have been vacant since March with no sign of recruitment. So I don’t think we’ll have redundancies but it’ll be shite for longer.i think we managed a whole 8 months with a full team. Sigh.

ICBs are more likely to see redundancies than providers.

If they do compulsory redundancies then they send a letter putting everyone at risk who could potentially go, look at possible redeployment, then redundancies are last resort (they are expensive, especially when people have many years under their belt). 2 years ago I had to reapply for my job as my organisation merged. It was awful and I wished redundancy would be an option but it wasn’t. I think I’m glad I stuck it out - mostly.

I've been in admin in the NHS for more than 20 years and only ever seen redundancies once.
I've managed a large team for the past 5 years and it's never been fully staffed either.

They use a skills matrix to decide usually and your manager scores you. Or they did in my organisation. Absence was one factor

No I'm not. I would get the max and tbh sometimes it would be a relief to get out.i do a frontline operational role though, I suspect I’m too useful. If you work in support services I would be slightly more anxious but the overwhelming likelihood is they get where they need to be through voluntary schemes and they’ve been a regular feature of the last few years.

Yes I’m worried. We keep getting emails “keeping us updated with the financial situation” but all these emails keep saying is basically they don’t know how to make the cuts needed for the financial target! Apparently our HR department is highlighted at having to cut 10 roles out, but after an initial panic by the staff, this all seems to have quietened down. No one seems to have any idea what’s going on.

OP - with the voluntary redundancies, was there a package offered?

We have to lose 200 staff trust wide and 2.9 in our team. I am concerned. I am in an admin role but I am out on a secondment which will be advertised as permenant in the next week. I will apply and I’m expecting lots of applications due to the redundancies. This will mean more competition for this job that I’ve fallen in love with and if I don’t get it it means back to admin where I’m vulnerable for being got rid of. It’s a concern until I secure this job which isn’t ever a given