Once you have established a pool of employees at risk of redundancy and have decided your selection criteria, you will need to start scoring against the criteria.
- Redundancy – where to start
- Who to consult with
- Who to select for redundancy
- Alternatives to redundancy
- Consultation meetings
- Redundancy – scoring employees
- Concluding redundancy consultation
How should employees be scored?
You can decide the weighting that each element of the selection criteria should hold. This may depend on the relative importance of each factor in accordance with the job role and the needs of your business.
It is important that the scoring process is accurately recorded and will withstand scrutiny as any potential unfairness within the scoring may result in an unfair dismissal claim being brought by the affected employee. If you have evidence to substantiate your scores, all the better. It may be beneficial for two individuals to carry out separate scoring so that there is increased accountability and impartiality.
Notifying the employees of their scores
Once each employee within the selection pool has been scored, they should be sent a copy of their score sheet and informed of the break point. The break point is the score above which people’s jobs are safe. It is advisable to give some guidance on how a particular score was derived.
It is also important to ensure that you also notify those employees who are no longer at risk of redundancy. You should not disclose the identity of the other people in the pool.
The Second Consultation Meeting
Those employees who fall below the break point should be invited to a second consultation meeting. In this meeting you should go through the scores with the employee and give them an opportunity to explain why and if they think that you have underscored them. You should ensure that you listen to the employee’s explanations and alter the scoring if you agree.
If you do not accept the employee’s explanations of their performance, you should ensure that you keep a record of what they have said and the reasons you have for not accepting this.
Discuss alternative employment
During the second consultation you should have open discussions about any alternative employment opportunities within the company or any associated companies. This may also include more junior roles. The duty to consider alternative employment for the affected employees continues until the employee has left the business. Failure to identify alternative roles can make a dismissal unfair.
You should ensure that you follow up this meeting in writing.