Redundancy Selection Criteria

LauraAK20

I have a few questions regarding how my employer has handled the redundancy selection process but I’ll stick with one for now.

My employer put 100 or so employees on furlough around March time. In my department almost all were put on furlough and some, mainly the newer starters, were seconded into other roles as other departments became much busier than usual.

After announcing redundancies, they’ve now said when scoring people they will only look at performance pre March which means for the new starters they only have 2-4 months of work to be judged by even though they’ve been working for the last 6+ which also means that pretty much all the new starters are being made redundant as their scores for performance are lower because they haven’t had as much time to ‘prove themselves’ in the 2 months they’re being assessed on.

My question is, are they allowed to completely disregard the last few months of hard work people have done and pick and choose what time period to assess people on? 

It seems they’ve set up this whole process in a way that is biased and disadvantageous to the people who’ve been at the company the least amount of time. 

As a side note is also so happens that in my department at least all the people being made redundant are also the youngest and all female. I know I don’t have many rights for tribunal claims if I don’t have 2 years service but I’m looking into the plausibility of discrimination claim.

Masomnia

LauraAK20 said:

I have a few questions regarding how my employer has handled the redundancy selection process but I’ll stick with one for now.

My employer put 100 or so employees on furlough around March time. In my department almost all were put on furlough and some, mainly the newer starters, were seconded into other roles as other departments became much busier than usual.

After announcing redundancies, they’ve now said when scoring people they will only look at performance pre March which means for the new starters they only have 2-4 months of work to be judged by even though they’ve been working for the last 6+ which also means that pretty much all the new starters are being made redundant as their scores for performance are lower because they haven’t had as much time to ‘prove themselves’ in the 2 months they’re being assessed on.

My question is, are they allowed to completely disregard the last few months of hard work people have done and pick and choose what time period to assess people on? 

It seems they’ve set up this whole process in a way that is biased and disadvantageous to the people who’ve been at the company the least amount of time. 

As a side note is also so happens that in my department at least all the people being made redundant are also the youngest and all female. I know I don’t have many rights for tribunal claims if I don’t have 2 years service but I’m looking into the plausibility of discrimination claim.

That is indeed the risk that the company is taking by using criteria that disadvantage the new starters, although it's not quite as clear cut as a blanket last in first out. I don't think a claim is impossible here but I'd suggest getting proper advice.