Keeping up to date
We take seriously our responsibility to keep you up to date so that you can use changes in employment law to commercial advantage. By understanding and interpreting the latest case law and legislation we can deliver updates to you that are concise and usable. With imagination, we are able to ensure that developing law can be used to allow you to achieve commercial solutions, cost effectively and expediently.
Redundancy – when do you need to pool?
When you have more employees than roles available, you may need to ‘pool’ ‘at-risk’ employees to fairly decide who remains at risk of redundancy.
Be clear on the roles at risk – identifying which roles need to be pooled isn’t always as easy as it sounds. Do you have different job titles or job descriptions for the same roles, have job titles and job descriptions not kept up with the roles individuals are actually doing? This all needs to be considered.
Identify individuals carrying out the pooled roles – do a number of individuals interchange between different roles? In which case would it be reasonable to include those individuals within the pool?
Consider individuals at other sites – where individuals move around sites and all do the role that is at risk, consider whether each of those individuals needs to be pooled.
Bumping – bumping occurs when an ‘at-risk’ employee is retained in favour of an employee who isn’t at risk (usually as they have better skills for the retained role). While there is no obligation to bump, you need to consider whether it’s appropriate to do so and make a note of your thought process.
Consult – once you’ve decided on your pool, you’ll need to ensure that you discuss the pool with ‘at-risk’ individuals before going ahead and applying selection criteria. A fair redundancy process includes giving individuals the right to challenge the pool before scoring ‘at-risk’ individuals.