Ex Gratia Negotiations

[Dobbysocks]

I’ll keep it short. Partner had a without prejudice convo saying the company foresees role will be redundant. He’s been offered one month gross pay ex gratia and notice period on gardening leave.

He's been there 2 years and is in a senior role earning 80k.

Theres also a pressure of 3 days to decide on if he wants to go down this route.

Is the offer fair? It seems low to us to sign away all your statutory rights. How to go about negotiating. And what to think
of the time pressure.

For what it’s worth, he is the only person in his company who holds his job role.

Does his company offer an enhanced redundancy scheme or is it only statutory he will be entitled to?

How long is his notice period?

Statutory Redundancy is max 1.5 weeks pay for each year worked, depending on age, provided you have worked more than 2 years. The weekly pay is also capped at £719 per week. So your DH, under statutory minimum would be entitled to around £2k plus contractual notice under the statutory rules. If he's on 80k, then one month's pay gross would be around 6.6k presumably.

So they are offering more than the minimum. If they don't have an established redundancy scheme, then they're not obliged to even offer that.

It may be worth trying to negotiate, but your DH will not be coming from a particularly strong position if they don't have an established contractual redundancy policy paying over and above statutory minimum.

Company usually only offer statutory. They’re saying this would be an enhanced package via settlement agreement. Notice period is two months.

But we’re right before Xmas and many companies go into recruitment shutdown now so there is an added stress there.

And he was due to be on annual leave which they’ve said he can still take but annual leave will now be filled with the stress of job hunting. They’re not mentioning anything about holiday payment in their suggested offer.

Yes there’s no contractual redundancy. I think it’s clear they want him gone soon to save full redundancy process and cost. Especially as he is sole person in role so as not to leave themselves open to accusation.

Just wondering what a reasonable negotiation on ex gratia could be.

The company is offering a good deal, as eith less than 2 yrs service they could just pay his notice period. However it would be worth him asking about payment of any accrued holiday pay on top.of what has already been offered. He also should negotiate an excellent reference.

It sounds like they are offering a good deal, with 2 years service it really isn't worth much I'm afraid. Alternatively he could say no thank you and they'll run a standard redundancy consultation process (possibly just 2 weeks long) then make the role redundant and pay statutory. I guess they are trying to be fair by offering some small enhancement and reduce the distress/limbo of a consultation which is quite common for senior people.