Collective consultation/selection process during mat leave

[EvilHRLady]

I am doing a bit of research on behalf of a friend, would appreciate others' views on this situation:

"Jo" works in a large HR dept which is going through a significant restructure, reducing c. 70 roles to c. 30 roles.
She has been on mat leave since August 09.

She's been told she has to take part in the selection process to secure a role for her to return to this August.

I think they have got the wrong end of the stick: she needs to take part in consultation (which is ironic, because she has not been consulted with in line with everyone else!) BUT she should be given a role to come back to, without having to take part in any kind of assessment process...since she has the protection of being on maternity leave whilst they are going through this exercise

Short question: am I right?!

Their (unspoken) approach seems to be 'it's fair because we're putting everyone through the same process'. Jo also suspects there is an element of trying to manage out some people - they have a lot of mat leavers who, were they all automatically allocated jobs, would take up 50% of the new roles, and presumably, they would like some of them to leave.

Thinking about this also leads me onto a few new questions, which I am interested in from a professional point of view, not necessarily something Jo should be worrying about...

• they are moving to a shared service model for the 30 new roles, although there will be different managerial levels within the 'pool'...so if there really are 15 people on mat leave, who should all be allocated a job, but not all of the roles are at people's current levels, how would they decide who should be given a more senior role?
• is any kind of selection exercise warranted given the numbers involved?

Ribena/Flowery - hoping you are around and have your redundancy heads on today!

Oh goodness, you have hit on the edges of ongoing mumsnet redundancy Reg 10 debate.

I assume that what we're talking about is a situation where there is definitely a potential redundancy in her area(i.e. no argument that her exact role is unique or not affected).

If we're talking selection pools, one analysis says that going through selection to be placed at risk is fine, but you have priority for any alternative roles. The other says that you shouldn't have to go through the selection process at all. We go round and round in circles on that one.

In your particular situation, I would argue that probably she should be automatically offered a role as it sounds like what they are doing is not a selection pool process. They are saying all jobs are going, and then we're slotting everyone into new jobs. In that situation, I would say Reg 10 is activated and she gets priority.

In terms of organising the maternity people as against each other, I don't think that the legislation is particularly clear, but I always say that it's legitimate for them to compete against one another.

Sounds as though she should be offered a job, although I don't think it's necessarily unreasonable to put her through some type of process in order to establish which if any jobs are suitable for her, if there is any doubt about that. But that doesn't mean she shouldn't be given preference over a more suitable candidate.

I agree with Ribena, perfectly legitimate for women on mat leave to have to compete against each other if that's the situation - they can't all be given preference if there are not enough jobs to go round, so a reasonable selection process then applies.

The other thing I would say is that the more senior roles you are referring to wouldn't necessarily be 'suitable' under the Reg 10 protection anyway, meaning again that a selection process of some kind is reasonable.

Thanks ladies, that's what I thought.
As usual, HR are the 'cobblers children' in this situation, and they seem to be managing it in quite a cack-handed way.

One of Jo's colleagues has been through a full, really formal, consultation process.
Jo has had a text message & a bit of a half hearted 'oh yes, you were misinformed, you do have to go through selection after all'

From what I know, it's not about the selection for being at risk - they are deliberately stating that ALL people in HR are ALL at risk and they ALL have to apply for/get selected for one of the new roles. Which is fine, then everyone is treated the same, there's no arguement that selection is based on being on mat leave.

They then appear to mess it up by overlooking the allocation of roles to mat leavers before other candidates.

Sometimes I do despair of the HR profession!
(apart from those Big Purple types - that was an excellent analogy, Flowery!)

If they were worried about the numbers on maternity leave, they'd have been better off doing selection pools. At least there's some argument that it's legitimate to put ML women through selection.