I work for a relatively small multinational marine energy consultancy and am in the process of being made redundant. I’m only getting statutory redundancy, but was wondering if that was ‘normal’ or if most companies give a bit more at redundancy time?

My last company had a round of redundancies and people who got the chop received three months salary and a lump sum even though statutory was what was in the contract. I’m a bit peeved about it as I think it’s pretty tight for a company that eg flies some staff business class to Dubai for xmas parties. I am going to have to steal a lot of biros.

Depends on several factors inc how long you have been there and what role you have carried out, but I’d definitely be pushing for more than the statutory minimum. You should be asking them to help you make the most of your UK tax-free redundancy entitlement. Also make sure holidays owed etc are paid. Good luck

been there just under 4 years so I’m going to get a whopping 3 weeks pay it seems, barely into 4 figures and absolutely nowhere near the 30k tax cut off. Need to do all the calculations myself to check against HR’s.

I’ve been offered 1 week for every year, plus the same again for my notice period as it were, so end up with 16 weeks pay for 6 years service. That’s 6 weeks for 6 years service, normal notice period 4 weeks and then another 6 weeks on top of the notice period, as they have to give me a week per year.

Mine is voluntary redundancy as the company are taking my job away, I have been offered a job if I step down currently a manager then get a payment to cover 2 years salary difference.

In 2 minds what to do, its crap no such thing as a job for life anymore.

Lots of places now go with the minimum they can.

I got made redundant last May after 20 years and got the minimum
They also put me on gardening leave for my 12 week’s notice rather than paying me off.

Good luck, hopefully something will turn up quickly for you.

Suppose it depends why a business is laying people off – if they’re in financial dire straights then giving people lavish pay-offs would be stupid – if they’re using it just to trim the workforce then they can afford to be a bit more generous – but ultimatlely someone somewhere decided they’d rather not pay for your services anymore so got rid of you, it’s pretty rare for that kind of thinking to go hand-in-hand with softening the blow.

In 2009 I got 3.5 weeks pay for every year of service plus some smaller amounts for other things, plus it was mostly tax free so walked (moonwalked actually) out the door with nearly 12 months take home pay. I got that simply because it was in my contract and had been negotiated during the boom years – any new starters since get statutory and that’s it.

Nothing is ‘normal’ as far as redundancy is concerned – but the minimum is ‘statutory.

And, if it was your money – would you pay more?

Ok, so if I were you I’d have a ‘firm’ discussion with them.

My advice – keep it friendly and positive, but explain that you will need money to live on, finding a job will take time etc and that you think getting the bare minimum is unreasonable and for them adding a few months pay on is a drop in the ocean etc

Statutory Calculation

Depends what you’re contract says. I wouldnt be holding out for any extra. They are getting rid of you, so there is no incentive to play nicely.

Yeah, statutory redundancy pay is very low.

To be honest, there’s nothing you can do about it if that is all that is in your contract.

Not really like you can threaten to quit.

It’s a shitty situation, but you need to look ahead to the future. Stop worrying about your current job and start looking to get another one as soon as you can.

Just do as little as possible and spend your time focusing on a new job. In the same way you can’t threaten to quit, they can’t really threaten you with losing your job any more

Mine is voluntary redundancy as the company are taking my job away, I have been offered a job if I step down currently a manager then get a payment to cover 2 years salary difference.

In 2 minds what to do, its crap no such thing as a job for life anymore.

I’d take the role, unless you hate been there.

whatever your contract says is the norm and it cannot be less that the statutory minimum.

I would also take the job and
1. look for work

2. exploit the sickness policy

Bound to get more than currently offered in terms of pay

Its not so much hate being there, its the fact i’ve trained the other manager around me, still getting requests from the newer one “how do you do this that the other” as a normal bod how long before it becomes a mess at work.

On the other note, there is nothing stopping me taking the lump sum then leaving 3 months later as that’s all im required to work as part of the payoff. Its worth more than redundancy.

Yeah the company is like many others being greatly affected by the oil price and decline in activity in the North Sea. I was expecting redundancies and I’m not too worried about finding something else, just a bit annoyed/surprised at the bare minimum payment when they splash the cash elsewhere so much.

LMT

On the other note, there is nothing stopping me taking the lump sum then leaving 3 months later as that’s all im required to work as part of the payoff. Its worth more than redundancy.

this is exactly what I was going to suggest, plus take as much sick as your contract allows. It sounds from the brief info you’ve given that they are messing you around – well, that can work both ways. Plenty of jobs out there at the moment in most sectors. Go for it and realise your full potential

The HR lizards really don’t live in the same world as most of us.

The day after I got told I was getting the bare minimum they could pay me, I got an email with details of a flight to the US from work.
They’d booked me on Sunday flight so I replied that it need changing to Monday PM as I wasn’t working Sunday. My manager called me and said I was being petty 😯

If they’re going to carry on trading then at some point they’ll be hiring people again. It might be worth pointing out that they’ll find it harder to do that if it’s known that they only pay statutory minimum redundancy.

I believe the most important bit of advice is to find out what people have been paid in the past

Custom and practice frequently overrules both contract and ‘enthusiastic and go-getting HR professionals trying to build a career for themselves’

The company I work for dropped the bomb four weeks ago and announced that they are closing our plant. One of our American bosses flew over to break the news. We were told that the company had started a period of consultation (45 days) to see if there was any way of keeping the factory open. It’s all boll*cks of course, they would have welded the gates shut that morning if they could have. They plan to stop production before the end of June.
The timing of this is bitter sweet for me as I was only a couple of weeks away from retiring on health grounds. Now I will get full ill health retirement pension and the redundancy. It’s likely that I’ll leave with two weeks pay for every years service plus the twelve weeks statutory. After twenty four years service I’ll do very well.
The down side of all of this is that one hundred and fifty of my colleagues will be out of work before the summer.

I was offered what worked out at 1/2 week per year, I negotiated hard and upped it to a week – also arranged to keep my laptop and phone.

I was recently offered 1 wk for every years service + 3 months + 3 months notice. Would have been about a years salary with 30K tax free. Got turned down though 🙁

I got just statutory (from the public sector too – so much for gold plated blah blah blah). Luckily I had a few years service and found another job straight away.

Good luck to the OP – redundancy is never pleasant until you look back!

It looks like I may be in that position too – our team is getting thinned from 3 to 2 shortly.

Statutory is 1 week for every full year of service, 1.5 weeks per year that you’ve been 41 or over. So for me that works out at 18.5 weeks. Whether they pay my full weekly rate or the statutory cap of 464/week remains to be seen. Then there’s two months notice, plus unused holiday entitlement, plus if the end date is a month end then there’s also a full months salary due.
Finding the next job is the tricky bit…

Sorry to hear that mate- I had good redundancy terms from the bank, tbh I never thought of it as a benefit when I signed the contract but it worked out well in the end. Hope it works out for you!

I’ve also been here before. But I had less than 2 years service at that point so was basically due SFA.
I got 4 weeks in lieu of notice plus a regular months’ salary, which did not last long at all. I was lucky in that I found another job to start virtually straight away. Finished old job 21st August 2000, started new job 1st September 2000. might not be so easy this time 🙁

OP sorry to hear this. As the years have gone by redundancy terms have got worse and worse. My old company cut their scheme by 50%. A generous scheme these days would be 1 month per year worked but increasingly its less and legally they have to pay statutory. Most employment contracts only refer to the “redundancy programme as in force at the time” allowing the company to change it at will

john_drummer – Member

I’ve also been here before. But I had less than 2 years service at that point so was basically due SFA.
I got 4 weeks in lieu of notice plus a regular months’ salary, which did not last long at all. I was lucky in that I found another job to start virtually straight away. Finished old job 21st August 2000, started new job 1st September 2000. might not be so easy this time

The situation is even worse now – employers can dismiss someone without reason for the first 2 years of their service – it used to be 90 days, a sort of legal probationary period which I can understand – sometimes it just doesn’t work out – but 2 years it pure cost-saving.