Employment tribunals – legal tests for unfair dismissal claims – redundancy
Your employer may have made you redundant when actually you’ve been unfairly dismissed. Or maybe there was a redundancy situation in your workplace but your employer didn’t follow the selection process correctly.
If you think you shouldn’t have been made redundant or you think that your employer didn’t follow the process correctly, you may be able to make a claim to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. Depending on the reasons why you’ve been dismissed you may also be able to make a claim for discrimination.
This page looks at the legal tests the employment tribunal will apply to decide whether you’ve been unfairly dismissed.
Your employer doesn’t have to follow the Acas code when they make you redundant but they do have to make sure that the selection process for choosing you was fair.
The tribunal will look at whether:
-there was a genuine need to make redundancies in your workplace
-your employer followed a fair procedure for consulting the workforce and selecting people for redundancy
– the decision to select you was fair
– your employer made reasonable efforts to find you alternative employment elsewhere in the company.
More about redundancy
Was redundancy the real reason for the dismissal?
A tribunal will look at the reason the employer gave for making you redundant. A redundancy will be genuine if:
– your workplace closes
-your employer decides it needs fewer workers, either for financial reasons or because there’s not enough business
-,your employer re-organises the business and your post is no longer needed.
If you can prove that none of these reasons applied in your case, redundancy was not the reason why you were dismissed and your dismissal will probably be unfair.
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Did your employer follow a fair redundancy process?
The tribunal will look at the following things to decide whether your employer followed a fair procedure:
– when did your employer tell you about possible redundancies? Could you have been told earlier?
– did your employer consult all the employees who were affected about ways of avoiding redundancies before making a selection
– was a selection process carried out and was it fair?
– were you given an opportunity to appeal the decision?
If your employer used a selection process
If your employer used a selection process to select people for redundancy the tribunal will want to know whether you were:
– told how the selections would be made
– allowed to comment on the selection methods before they took place
– if a scoring process was used, whether you were told what your score was and what score you would have needed to be safe from redundancy.
How many people were at risk of redundancy?
The tribunal will look at whether your employer identified all the people who were at risk of redundancy.
If your post was the only one that was no longer needed and you were the only person doing that job, the selection for redundancy was likely to be fair.
However, there may have been several of you doing the same type of work. In this situation, it is good practice for an employer to select a pool of people whose jobs may be at risk and use a fair selection process. This is known as the redundancy pool.
If your employer didn’t do this and you were the only person selected for redundancy, even though other colleagues did similar or overlapping work to you, this might be unfair dismissal. It might also be discrimination.
Selecting staff from the redundancy pool
If your employer selected from a pool of people at risk of redundancy the tribunal will look at how they were selected. They will want to know:
– what scoring process your employer used. For example: ‘first in, last out’, or a scoring matrix
– who did the scoring
– did they use any evidence to support the scores
– did the scoring process discriminate against you?
Selection scoring
An employer will make a decision based on what they know about you, your skills and your work record. They should take into account your appraisal and work flow records and use this in the scoring process.
You have a right to see your own score and be told why you were chosen. However, you don’t have a right to see the scores of your colleagues.
It can be very difficult to challenge the scoring process. To challenge it successfully, you would have to prove that there was some obvious flaw in the process. It can help to have some evidence, such as appraisals which directly contradicts your employer’s explanation for giving you a low score.
Even if you manage to change your score, you may still have been selected for redundancy if you would still have been the lowest-scoring employee. The tribunal will only look at whether the selection process was fair and whether a proper process could have made a difference to you.
Did your employer make reasonable efforts to offer you other work?
Your employer should try to find you other suitable work in the company before they make you redundant. The tribunal will look at whether:
– you were offered other work and what you were told about the job
– you were asked to apply for another job
– you didn’t apply for or take another job that was offered to you and why you didn’t do this
– you think there were other jobs available but you weren’t offered them.
Your employer only has to make reasonable efforts to find you other work in the company. It may be enough just to direct you to vacancies listed on the company’s website or through the HR department.
If you were offered another job
You should not have had to go through a selection process if a job was offered to you on a similar grade and salary.
However, if you turned down a job offer or didn’t apply for other jobs that were available, the tribunal may decide to reduce your compensation because you could have avoided being made redundant.
If redundancy was not the real reason for your dismissal
If the tribunal decide that redundancy was not the real reason for your dismissal, you may be able to make a claim for unfair dismissal or discrimination, or both.
