Heard a piece on radio yesterday about Edinburgh council choosing people for redundancy by putting names in a hat and drawing them out, there was a number of callers who got a bit hot under the collar about this and one employment lawyer who was ranting on about its unfairness. Maybe I am wrong, but if there are 10 jobs to go from a pool of 50, then surely this method is the fairest of all, if its left for managers to decide who goes then this would introduce bias (subconsciously maybe) against some in the mix.

Does anyone else think its a fair way of deciding when all other things are equal.

Doing it that way can only be fair if they were all the same level of skill, expertise and effort.
Within the grade-bands, they should be taking into account the employees' appraisal results, contributions to the overall department etc etc.

All other things are very rarely equal in my experience.
The selection criteria should be published before selection takes place, usually in conjunction with a union if it is council staff.

It depends, if the 50 people were doing the same job, with the same skills and on the same pay scale then maybe it could have worked but if they were all doing different level jobs and had different skills then imo not fair at all because its the job thats been made redundant not the person.

I'd say drawing them out of a hat is a great way to do it. That way, the 40 not drawn get to keep their jobs, and the 10 drawn out max out on an automatic unfair dismissal payout on top of their redundancy.

Result!

I think you might be wrong on the job being made redundant, my company went through this a while back and selection was made on a scoring system, not jobs. They wanted 3 to go and it was clear that the individual was assessed not the post. A builder I am dealing with has also done this, they made several managers and supervisors redundant while sites were live and just moved others into their place, it was done on 'competency' and the lower your score the more at risk.

Three people from my team of ten were made redundant last year and as we are all doing the same job on the same salary scales, I would have not objected to been put in a hat and taking that risk, it just seems a fairer way of doing it. Selection itself becomes a problem as there are certain people at my company that would not have been in the mix if they had took a year off, come back and shot the CEO and it has nothing to do with ability and more to do with percentages.

'look, sorry to tell you this but 10 post have to go, no if or buts, ten of you are going. All of you are equally qualified, equally able and get equal salaries, so it really difficult to select ten of you, so we thought we would put you in a hat and the first ten drawn out will be going'

Sounds fair to me, no ambiguity about it.

Last 10 in, first 10 out may have been a fairer system?

Maybe I am wrong, but I've been made redundant a few times and have always been told its not me or my work but the company has to save money and its that particular job that has to go. I thought they couldn't get someone else in to do that job either for so many months after the person is made redundant?

Used to be that way, but one of my builder clients has changed senior management and they have made several managers redundant (some with very long service) and brought direct replacements in from their previous company to take over the same sites. I am guessing the law has changed on this.

Except I'm not certain that this would quite count as using objective selection criteria.

Sounds like a cop-out. Would be funny listening to them trying to persuade a tribunal that the procedure was fair and reasonable! Still, if it is really true that the pool all 100% agree this, then get on with it, as (obviously) there is zero risk of a tribunal claim being brought by an unlucky worker.

Yeah, right! I'd deffo take that risk if I was the employer!!



However, if it is true that the pool all agree on it, there IS a way to do it, outside the workplace, by the pool of workers themselves.

The employer selects nobody. They ask for 10 VOLUNTEERS for redundancy. The pool then go away somewhere quiet and draw lots, as a purely personal thing, and the "winners" go and volunteer for redundancy. Job done. The employer neither knows, nor cares, why they got the 10 volunteers they wanted, and everyone is seemingly happy.

I don't doubt that 'legally' there is an issue, I just think from a practical point its fair. Anyway, I believe Edinburgh council have had a 're-think'

I think its more likely that the radio station who reported the mis-information have had a call to their own legal representatives from Edinburgh Council who would be keen to kick their backsides through the courts if they persisted in touting the opinion that Edinburgh Council picks its redundancies via bits of paper and an old hat.

I tried to make a person redundant 3 to 4 years ago, that was my first mistake as the legal representative for the Fed of Small Businesses pointed out to me when I rang the legal helpline - you make the position redundant not the employee and there is a well defined procedure for interviewing and assessing all employees not least of which includes full disclosure and discussion with your employees, for as was well demonstrated at the start of the first recession of recent times, the workforce will often suggest an alternative to cutting payroll costs that management haven't yet dreamed of in order to keep everyone in employment.

Personally if i ran a company i'd think i'd hire an outside independent company to re-interview my whole staff, no preconceptions or favoritism. Best candidates stay.

Not sure if that's legal, but i'd like to think that would be the fairest way and all the best people stay, and to be fair if you're struggling and have to lose people it's surely better to keep the best to try to help pull you out of the sh*t.

This is how it was done during our last few redundancies,people not jobs and then people put into other peoples places when they where gone...
Mind you, this is not an issue with this last lot we're going through...

Yup, what do you think they are? A two bit operation that can't build a tram system without spending close on a billion quid, oh hang on...

Bits of paper and an old hat sounds organised for Edinbuggers TBH.

Was this not the same Council who went to referendum on the introduction of a congestion charge?

I've had numerous dealings on the subject of improving local air quality & traffic management with them in the past, it soon became apparent that their ar[is[/ie and elbow were in different galaxies

Have they moved off Princes Street yet ?

Nope.

Bloody hell.

So there is no chance of them having reached Leith by the time I make it there in August ?

It isn't going to Leith any more.

I believe 'last in, first out' isn't legally seen as a fair system as it may lead to age discrimination - in many cases those in last are possibly likely to be younger.

I'm no expert but I took plenty of advice last year (including from Shmoo, who works in this field) when my Mrs was made redundant.

I believe the only 'fair' system is by scoring according to criteria such as disciplinary record, time-keeping, productivity, overall performance, etc. And if more than one person has the same job role as that being made redundant, they should all be entered into the pool of candidates for redundancy.

Oh, and if anyone's interested, we wiped the floor with the fookers last year and came away with a hefty payment. It won't last forever but will help for a few years, and was roughly double the amount our solicitor estimated as fair settlement.

That is not legal. A while back I was going to made redundant and it was the position noe me I wasn't because I was given another post in the company with a different title (and more money!) but to this day I am not allowed to work on the stuff I used to because if I did it would prove the position was not actually redundant so they should not have said it was.

Prior to that the company clearly wanted to reduce the head count so what they did was categorise us as either product development, professional services and something else (can't remember). I was in "product development" and when the process began it was stated that no positions in that group were being made redundant but one of the support positions was. That narrowed it down to three people and the one with the least experience went. As soon as we found out what was going on everyone (including the person who go the chop) knew instantly who was going to be leaving.

That is still not what you said though because the three people involved all had to go through the consultancy process and all three of their jobs were at risk.



That is not redundancy. You can't make people redundant and employ people to do the same job the day after. You can sack people for being incompetent provided you can prove it but that is not redundancy.



Companies or organisations drawing lots are insane. There is supposed to be a due process and consultation. Anyone made redundant that way has a very strong case for unfair dismissal.

Dave

When I was a Union Secretary, I made it plain to the employers that they should not confuse competency matters with redundancy. If an employee was "incompetent", they should choose that path and if ... etc. Some of the posting here seem to cofuse the two.

No, but if there are 10 identical positions to be made redundant and you have 30 people doing that same, identical job, competency could taken into account alongside other scoring criteria - but a lack of competency must be proved. The employer must use a fair selection process and demonstrate why those 10 people in particular have been selected over the remaining 20. The whole selection process and criteria must be shown in detail.

It's not illegal to use 'last in, first out', but I believe it's frowned upon by tribunals. The fairest process is by scoring on criteria such as timekeeping, disciplinary record, productivity, etc, perhaps also scoring based on certain job skills. Someone who is incompetent would most likely be shown up by this process.