Replace employee with volunteer?

bryanb

Can a charity make an employee redundant and cover his duties using a volunteer, or perhaps 2-3 volunteers, each on different days?
The post has not changed, in that the work still has to be done.

dmg24

I would think this would come under 'bumping', and that it would be a fair dismissal under the 'some other substantial reason' catchall.

Mrs_Money

Mmmm - difficult one - isn't it supposed to be the job that's made redundant, not the person? Sounds like the job still exists to me.
I would say this is definitely worth finding out about. Perhaps the CAB or ACAS website?

dmg24

Mrs_Money wrote: »

Mmmm - difficult one - isn't it supposed to be the job that's made redundant, not the person? Sounds like the job still exists to me.
I would say this is definitely worth finding out about. Perhaps the CAB or ACAS website?

That would be why it would be a dismissal for SOSR rather than a redundancy (although it would be good practice to offer the employee a payment to leave).

anamenottaken

Mrs_Money wrote: »

Mmmm - difficult one - isn't it supposed to be the job that's made redundant, not the person? Sounds like the job still exists to me.
I would say this is definitely worth finding out about. Perhaps the CAB or ACAS website?

People like to say that it is the job which is redundant - partly because it doesn't sound very kind to say a person is redundant.

In fact redundancy occurs when less work is required to be done. It's not necessarily about a particular job (as defined in someone's job description).

This is why you can have "bumping" as mentioned by dmg24 in post #2. People are bumped round in the organisation so that one person doing a job (set of tasks/responsibilities) is dismissed on the grounds of redundancy but another (already employed by the organisation) does the job. That is not SOSR, it is redundancy.

However, it seems to me the charity could claim it could not afford to pay the employee (it may have lost a grant or other source of funding unexpectedly). It that case it would be SOSR (some other substantial reason).

PasturesNew

... charity ... ! ... not very charitable!

exil

They rarely are.... to their own employees....

getmore4less

There are people that specialise in charities as a career(without being particularly intereested in any cause.

It also attracts people that will work for nothing/very little and are dedicated to the cause so easy to manipulate.

Some charities generate more money than they can spend so can offer great salaries to those in the correct positions.

It is relatively easy to create a structure that eats money in salaries.

fengirl_2

You could replace employees with volunteers if you could show that you didnt have the money to make it a paid postition any more. I am currently advising a community centre which is having to make all its staff redundant apart from the cleaner in order to keep the doors open to user groups.

bryanb

fengirl wrote: »

You could replace employees with volunteers if you could show that you didnt have the money to make it a paid postition any more. I am currently advising a community centre which is having to make all its staff redundant apart from the cleaner in order to keep the doors open to user groups.

Thanks, but I doubt that the major international charity concerned could could show that in this instance.