Confidentiality Clause and redundancy

[greentea72]

I have been told at a meeting last week that as part of the scoring process I have the lowest score in my pool and therefore have been selected for redundancy. It is my belief ( and that of my collegue who attended the meeting with me) that the scores have been deliberatly skewed to get rid of me in favour of male collegues who work full time ( I work a contracted 27 hours a week - although in practice this is much more). Some of the (harsh) comments refer to not providing client satisfaction. My enraged collegue has rung the client in question provided him with basic facts, the client is shocked and wants to provide me with a reference to the contrary. I had a thought today that this could conflict with the confidentiality clause in my (and my collegues T&Cs)- can anyone shed any light on this? - I don't want to jepodise any grievence procedues/appeals or get my collegue in trouble.

greentea without knowing what restrictions your confidentiality clause places on you it's difficult to say. Why is your colleague involved, and how does he/she know your score? Were you told not to discuss your score with anyone?

You can appeal your selection for redundancy if you feel the scoring has not been done fairly, and obviously if client satisfaction has been called into question you can ask for evidence to prove it and could also submit your own evidence.

Thanks for this.

As part of our consulation process we are allowed to have a workplace colleague attend. I have not been told not to discuss my score with anyone. Condfidentiality clause is very vague we are not allowed to discuss any information with a third party relating to the business, finances, projects, arangements, working methods, pricing structures or customers.

Oh I see, he/she was there with you.

If you've been told not to discuss your score that obviously includes clients, but if you want to appeal your score, there's nothing stopping you just asking clients for feedback on your client service and then using it as part of your evidence to appeal your selection.

Clearly your colleague should not have told your client all the detail but if you can rein that in a bit and just get a reference in the form of some personal feedback without it making any reference to the redundancy procedure, that should be fine.

Brilliant, thanks for this. Do companies usually instruct people not to discuss their score? My company hasn't

I misread your post as saying you had been told not to discuss your score, sorry.

Being told not to discuss it is not uncommon, mostly in a vain attempt to prevent gossip, but discussing it with an external client would almost certainly be a no-no regardless. But as I say, you can certainly ask for client feedback without having discussed your score, so as long as the feedback reads that way you should be ok.

lets be honest, it is a joke all this scoring crap.

when I worked we went through that, and there was 2 people everyone knew the manager did not like, and surprise surprise they were the 2 selected for redundancy.

in fact even worst than that the manager actively told those of us who were safe.

using the words "off the record" etc etc.

I am afraid it sounds to me like they want you out, fight it and you may get a stay of execution, but you card is marked expect them to make your life crap.

it goes on, the comapany I use to work for often just got rid of people, took them to one side offered them 6 months pay to go now, sign this etc etc, and poof they were gone.

a lot of buisness claim to be snow white, but if you are not liked etc they will do things to get rid I am afraid

Yep pretty much come to that conclusion, only being offered lousy statutory redundancy, as i understand it i have to go through the appeal process in order to raise a legal case. Don't think I want to stay but want decent payout for treating me like crap.

Check your household insurance - if you have legal cover, it is worth a 'phone call to see if they will take on a case for unfair selection for redundancy (they took mine). They are bloody hard to prove but if you have a strong case your employer may well settle out of court (thereby giving you your decent payout).

Definitely ask the client to provide a general reference as to the service provided, etc, without specific reference to redundancy, since although I understand confidentiality clauses are fairly uninforceable, they may/will try to use any breach of it against you.

Thanks for this never crossed my mind, will check. Am trying to see a soliciter before the appeal to double check the confidentiality issue.

Did you get a satisfactory outcome on your case?

Not really. I got a settlement, and it was more than they were offering, so I guess that is a good result, but it was nowhere near what they should have paid me. However, the company decided to hide behind various countries' employment laws and since they had shut down operations in the UK entirely the consensus was that getting a ruling against them would be an empty victory as they would never pay up.

Sorry - that was much more information than you needed. Suffice to say I got very good value out of something which came 'for free' with our insurance - the work they did would have cost me thousands otherwise (and I couldn't have done it).