Selection for redundancy

xmasfun24

Hi all,

I would like your opinion on a situation faced by my brother:

He is working for a company in Dublin that decided to reorganise their workforce. There are 5 people in his team and they only want to keep 3 of them. The remaining 2 will be made redundant. To decide who will stay, the company decided to do interviews.

Does it seem to be a fair selection process?

It feels like he will interview for.a position he already has which seems strange to me.

Thanks

ledwithhedwith

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058382429/selection-for-redundancy

I mean it seems relatively fair to me. I guess they could do first in first out but that doesn’t seem overly fair either. As oldest in could be a shite worker.

xmasfun24

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122893521#Comment_122893521

I agree, the oldest may not be the best approach. Their process feels like they could use this to remove the ones considered “troublesome”.

Princess Calla

Well it could be argued that the role he's in is no longer there, so he's interviewing for a new position.

The team is 5 reducing to 3 to whoever gets the position will also be absorbing a percentage of the exiting 2's work. Potentially expanding the role.

Realistically management have most likely decided on the 2 going and this is just a box ticking exercise to appear transparent.

Without knowing (I don't want to know) the field and redundancy deal, you need to weigh up your options. Sometimes it's best to take the money and run especially if you can find a new job fairly quickly, rather than staying put absorbing lots of extra work with little or no renumeration.

Also if your brother does remain I'd be reading the new contract around starting dates and length of employment fairly carefully.

the_amazing_raisin

Yeah this is fairly common, I've heard of it happening before

Fairness doesn't enter into the equation, if it was then the so called leaders of the company would be losing their jobs, not the workers who are doing their jobs

Basically the onus is on the company to explain the reasons for redundancy, the process and to give the employees a fair hearing to justify keeping their role or explore a different option to avoid redundancy

Because it's a small number of affected employees there'll be no requirement for a group consultation or anything

What I've seen happen before was one team member was thinking of leaving anyway so then deliberately "failed" the interview

Unless there's 2 people on your brother's team willing to do that then he's probably best off getting his CV together and starting the job hunt now, might lead to something better anyway

Also, bit of advice from someone who has recently gone through this process, tell your brother to mind his sanity. It's a pretty horrible experience all his company is unlikely to show even a basic level of humanity.

It's all "this is a terrible situation" and "we're really sorry it came to this" from management but it boils down to the equivalent of too bad, so sad

On top of that he might get a dose of impostor syndrome if he's told he didn't make the cut and gets turned down from a few interviews. It's pretty tough getting told you aren't good enough from several angles

I hope things work out well for him

Mrs OBumble

I've been one of 100 people who had to interview for very-similar-to-current jobs, because the board finally decided to get rid of a politically savvy bitch-from-hell senior manager: a complete re-org was the only way they could do it. Very frustrating.

A classic union approach is last-in-first-off. This is cheaper for the company (redundancy cost), and protects the jobs of the longest-serving staff / union-members.

Legally, the only requirement is a fair process. Interviews can easily be made to look fair - but of course it depends on how the answers are rated. And as above, if some people want a payout, it can be a contest for who can interview the worst!

IMHO interviews are better than a lottery, or applying the Bradford factor (a HR metric, based on amount and timing of unplanned leave).