This is genuinely not for me, but a friend of mine has been warned of potential forthcoming redundancies- she along with her rank colleagues (ie, of the same hierarchical level, rather than being soap-dodging by nature) have been asked to attend an informal meeting. They are not allowed to go together, and they’ve been told that the meeting will not be minuted, as it is informal – is any of that allowed? I’ve told her to contact a union if she’s in one, but it seems an odd mix of sufficiently individual to not allow them in as a group, but sufficiently vague to specify no minutes will be taken…

Micro cassette recorder?

(Or whatever the modern replacement is)

I would attend the meeting (just to not appear difficult) to be honest but the minute redundancy was mentioned or the security of my employment I would end the meeting until someone from HR / union was present.

There is a process to follow.

She has two choices – either pull them up everytime they do not follow the process or to wait until she is made redundant thru a flawed process then object – the latter often gets you large financial settlements as redundancy thru a flawed process is unfair dismissal. My experience is that its very rare for a company to do a redundancy process properly. Personally I got a £7000 payoff for an effed up redundancy. I was entitled to £400.

In her position I would go in to that meeting with a pen and paper and make obvious notes – and then at the end of the meeting summarise her understanding of what is said and ask if they agree that that is accurate. That gives you a minute of the meeting that they cannot object to

Its almost certainly tho just an investigatory step to see who wants to take redundancy

https://www.tuc.org.uk/workplace-guidance/redundancy

https://www.acas.org.uk/your-rights-during-redundancy

The firm will already have decided who’s going and will likely have attempted to follow some of the redundancy process by scoring employees against whatever metric they have determined to get the result they want.

As per @tjagain – there is no such thing as informal meetings etc when it comes to redundancy; it is either done right or done wrong and I agree that your friend is best just going with the flow, documenting the process best they can and then, if they are one of the chosen ones – taking appropriate action at the right time.

Note your can minute the meeting informally, they cannot really stop them or they can just make notes afterward. When I have been in delicate situations and informal meetings like this I have usually followed things up in a friendly email to the most senior employee present. I generally start them along the lines of ‘Thank you for taking the time to see me just now. It is a lot for me to remember and take in so just I am clear – you said XZY etc. Please feel free to drop me an email back if I have misunderstood anything’.

This way they are not picking fault with the process as such – simply documenting and recording that the meeting took place. They are best printing and keeping a copy of any such emails of course!

First question really is if your friend wants redundancy ? (Sop much influences that, years of service, likelyhood of a decent payout, chance of employment )

If the answer is yes then under what terms?

Then exactly what TJ said…. on the chance they “do it correctly” they may receive a 1/2 decent tax free sum and some certainty. If they record everything and maintain access (i.e. not on work email/computer) then the company screwing it up is quite often a positive and so many will.

If I was to hazard a risk based guess I’d say their job isn’t secure anyway even if they skip this round and escaping this might just lead to more/longer uncertainty.

Being a survivor post redundancies isn’t a great thing for many people.

Having just gone through this, first meeting was a fact find as part of the consultation process to find out what skills i had and if I wanted redeployment or redundancy. It was very informal but the first of 3 meetings increasingly formal until given notice! Seems odd not to have a letter at the end stating what was said. As I remember as it was informal a union or workers rep was not an option.

The email as per dannybgoode is also a good way of gaining a record for the meeting

Dont think having some one from HR attending means anything – they are not on your side at all…

I walked into a ‘little chat about your role’ discussion – thinking it was a career discussion – as soon as I saw a name I didn’t recognise being added to the meeting – as they had just joined HR and wanted to meet me I should have had the warning bells going.

No mention of the word redundancy, my role is being ‘deleted’ and being offered a lower paid one. Genuinely nasty experience as it was clear proper legal channels were being circumvented. Offer of pay protection if I took lower paid roles, which wouldn[t be the case if I went down a ‘formal’ route by refusing role.

Given covid, brexit and everything I decided staying employed was a better idea than pushing for redundancy (which it clearly was despite HR and manager continually saying it isn’t and we arent at that stage…)

Anyway good luck to your friend – decide what you want to do and act appropriately.

Btw, I would not expect any notes you personally took to be admissable or acknowledged in any way by your company as it is informal, they will just refuse. Mine did.

In this virtual world there is software you can use to record meetings. I’d do this, it might not be admissable without their permission but it may well stop them being quite so cute should there be an issue later on where they ‘forget / deny’ what was said

You are allowed to take notes and as mentioned above, it’s worth following it up with an email and bcc-ing the email to your own personal email account. That way when you leave and the company takes back your laptop and wipes you from their internal database, you still have a record of that email being sent. Any replies you get to it, forward them straight to your personal account as well.

It can be scary and confusing. HR will know the process inside out (as well as most of the “shortcuts” they can take) unlike the employee so take notes and do not get into conversations with other employees about “how it went” because that will just add to confusion, rumours and so on.

DT78
Free Member

Dont think having some one from HR attending means anything – they are not on your side at all…

Absolutely, nobody ever asks if the Mining Resource Department are there to protect the coal.

As mentioned above, the question first and foremost has to be is she interested in it. I’ve been through 3 redundancy cycles and in 2 of them I wanted out, it’s a totally different thing.

Their approach to secrecy/minute taking/representation would be ringing some alarm bells for me. If it were me I’d be making sure I have all that in writing to start with, and seeing what their response is to pushing back, especially with a union rep. It’s not neceesarily the case that you need someone there but it can be very revealing to find out what they say when you ask for it. There are perfectly reasonable reasons to want to do these things individually of course.

Please feel free to drop me an email back if I have misunderstood anything’.

I think it’s worth drawing attention to this particular piece of advice lest it gets lost in the chat, because it’s brilliant. The implication is that what you’ve stated is true unless they say otherwise, rather than “please confirm this is correct” which can just be ignored.

It’s a tactic I used to deploy constantly at work. Asking “can I do this?” garnered no replies so nothing got done. Rephrasing it as “I’m doing this at 5pm tomorrow unless anyone objects” got a near-100% success rate.

HR will know the process inside out

HR should know the process inside out… (-:

I’d say the odds of the company screwing it up are quite high, but depending what “warned of potential forthcoming redundancies” means then not necessarily:

The firm will already have decided who’s going and will likely have attempted to follow some of the redundancy process…

I’d say the key difference is if there has been some formal notice of risk of redundancy or if its on the rumour mill/informal discussions. If its formal – everything the others have written is probably right. IF its genuinely just talk – they its just possible that they are trying to do things in as painless a way as possible. e.g. if some people show interest in redundancy package then there is potentially an appetite for voluntary; if people suggest cutting hours perhaps they don’t need (as many) redundancies; etc. Bluechip firm my brother worked shed a load of staff entirely with voluntary redundancy or terms which I’d jump at today if someone offered them to me – and because they avoided all the formal processes the moral of those who stayed was better than it usually is. About 10 years ago the place next door to me had an informal discussion with their staff (of about 25 people) who were a close-nit bunch. I knew the CEO fairly well and he was expecting to make >20% of his workforce redundant; he wanted to warn them before the formal process started rather than go to meetings pretending things were OK for a few weeks whilst trying to get the HR and Legal people to get their ducks in order. They never made it as far as making anyone redundant, because the staff came back the following day and offered to take a 20% pay cut if he would keep everyone for the next 6 months (I think officially they cut their hours – but it wasn’t the sort of place people were working M-F 9-5). The company is doing well (now floated on the stock market) and many of that loyal group are still there. Obviously not the normal situation but I wouldn’t necessarily see informal discussions as being bad. It also means if your payout will be poor or zero you get a headstart on job hunting from those who are fighting to stay…

Also, There’s no such thing as an informal meeting, if it’s not something you can openly chat about around the water cooler, it’s a formal meeting.

I’d say the odds of the company screwing it up are quite high, but depending what “warned of potential forthcoming redundancies” means then not necessarily

If they are going to screw it up then it’s usually/often in your interest to let them.

They never made it as far as making anyone redundant, because the staff came back the following day and offered to take a 20% pay cut if he would keep everyone for the next 6 month

I find it amazing this isn’t more common but …. sadly not.

It’s also worth mentioning there is a psychological difference to choosing VR and being made redundant. However much you know it’s not your fault being MADE redundant still sucks… and as I mentioned above surviving it can be even more unpleasant longer term.

Thank you all, you lovely, lovely people – I shall pass it all on, and the union (she IS in one – hurrah!) have been great. She doesn’t really want to leave, although the place annoys her – kind of sounds like her and her rank colleagues have been promoted to stop them leaving, so they’re on decent cash for what they do, but there’s zero training or support for what they’re SUPPOSED to do, so going elsewhere will mean a paycut. We shall see – I may (will! :)) have more questions, but thanks again. 🙂

I think it’s worth drawing attention to this particular piece of advice lest it gets lost in the chat, because it’s brilliant. The implication is that what you’ve stated is true unless they say otherwise, rather than “please confirm this is correct” which can just be ignored.

Which is exactly why I use it. It is also non-threatening and you can phrase the email so that it is ‘your fault not theirs’ – ‘just so I don’t forget anything’, ‘sorry to trouble you I just wanted to make sure I had understood everything’ – that kind of language. As you say as well it requires zero input from the recipient to be correct and a response only if you are wrong in which case you’ll have more evidence in your lap.

In all the times I have used this I have never had a response from the recipient but have occasionally had an apologetic meeting with someone even more senior 🙂

Btw, I would not expect any notes you personally took to be admissable or acknowledged in any way by your company as it is informal, they will just refuse. Mine did.

Not so. If you eirther do it by email as dannybgoode suggested or you take a note at the time and read it back to them and ask “is this correct?” It becomes the only record of the meeting and as thus its good data / evidence for any future action.

Your company might try to ignore it but in a tribunal or court it becomes high quality evidence

I went through a fairly crappy redundancy process four years ago and, despite the company making some fairly poor mistakes in the process, was advised that it was unlikely that any action against them would be successful.

The selection criteria were written to target me (no value given to professional qualifications or experience and one colleague given a 20% uplift to his scores for the dubious reason that he was newish to the role and could not be expected to operate at the same level as the rest of the team).

I was the highest earner and that was the real reason for being targeted. The manager who ran the process even got me confused with another colleague when giving me a list of reasons why I had been scored as I was. In the end it was clear that they were hell bent on targeting me – one guy even asked whether they would offer him voluntary redundancy as was told no.

In the end I got a new job within two weeks of leaving and the minimum statutory redundancy. The new role pays a bit less but is more fulfilling and the three colleagues who remained were so annoyed by the process that they all left for new companies within six months. Between us we took probably 35% of the companies clients to our new roles.

I thought I had a pretty good case for a tribunal but the employment lawyer I spoke to did not agree so, having a new role and being busy, I did not take it any further. Not sure whether this was because they were a “no win no fee” outfit who would only take cut and dried cases. I could have paid a lawyer to take the case but was not willing to risk the considerable fee.

It might be worth the person at risk checking whether they have access to free legal advice through home insurance or similar or talking to ACAS.

tj – what if there response is, it was a informal confidential discussion and refuse to afirm one way or another. This happened and I sort advice as they were not answering my questions – they wouldn’t even confirm if it was voluntary or compulsary redundancy or what the numbers would be (we aren’t at that stage, this is an informal chat….etc…)

If it was a formal redundancy meeting that is a different matter as they have proper legal obligations and have to respond to you.

I sort professional advice, from both union and an independent who is normally the HR guy brought in to do this sort of thing. Advice was they weren’t doing anything illegal, but were certainly not being upfront and helpful in providing all the information they would be obliged to do so at a ‘formal’ stage (because it was not formal notice of redundancy)

I could well have argued the toss, that once I’m told my role is being ‘deleted’ that this is clearly a redundancy situation – however if I pushed that, they threatened to remove pay protection or guarantee of a (lower paid) redeployment role. If this had been before covid i would have pushed for redundancy and without doubt I would have got it. However the economy is so uncertain and many people are just glad to have a job.
Basically decide if you want to stay or not, and then act accordingly

independent who is normally the HR guy brought in to do this sort of thing.

If he’s the guy bought in as their HR expert, he’s not independent.

Cletus – the reason your case was not worth chasing is its an unfair dismissal but you only get your loses. Ats you got another job so quickly your losses were small hence not worth chasing

tj – what if there response is, it was a informal confidential discussion and refuse to afirm one way or another.

Does not matter. They do not have to confirm it. The fact they have not corrected or denied it when given the opportunity then its the only record of the conversation and thus is good evidence.

YOu go to a trubunal where its under oath IIRC. You can state that is a true recollection of the meeting and here is my dated note. They have no evidence to back up anything to the contrary. Your note becomes the record of that meeting. Hard evidence.

In the case you outline there has been no losses so nothing to fight / claim. Bunch of ratfinks tho.

the latter often gets you large financial settlements as redundancy thru a flawed process is unfair dismissal

Not really, it’s capped at a years salary, you’re unlikely to get the full year awarded except in exceptional cases. Factor in around 10k legal costs and it leaves you not very much. This I learned when I was properly unfairly dismissed and took proper legal advice. Proper employment law legal outfit, not no win no fee and I had legal cover through my house insurance so paying wasn’t an issue. Lawyer got me 6 months salary tax free plus notice in the end, worth every penny of the £600 he cost but he was very realistic about likely outcomes if i took it to tribunal. It was also paid out there and then, even if you win at tribunal it could months or years before you see any cash if at all.

There’s also something called a without prejudice conversation which means neither you (nor employer) can use anything said later in a tribunal. You have 2 choices in that situation, stay and suck it up with no protection or walk out and potentially miss out on a generous ex gratia payment. In my case the conversation was an extension of the bullying i was already receiving so i walked out after 10 mins. Again i had it confirmed that legally this exists because i was incredulous it could happen with no minutes or witnesses but it can.

stumpyjohn.

Depends what you call a large financial settlement. to me 6 months salary is

This is not a redundancy payment we are talking about. Its a claim for unfair dismissal. Most companies when they are faced with an open and shut unfair dismissal case ( as this would be – redundancy without following the correct process is automatically unfair dismissal) will offer a payment to shut up and go away. Used to be called a compromise agreement

I have been in exactly this position. I was entitled to £400 redundancy but it was so badly handled I got £7000 in a compromise agreement. NO need for lawyers or anything. I am an ex shop steward and my other half is a benefits, welfare and employment law expert. We took them to pieces.

If your lawyer told you £10 000 for a tribunal he is a shark. Tribunals are not intended to use lawyers which is why costs are not awarded in them. CABS, law centres . unions will all provide support for tribunals for free

the sort of case we are talking about – unfair dismissal because of faulty redundancy the company has no defense. the only thing the tribunal has to decide is the amount of money you will get.

My other half has done dozens of tribunals.

Without prejudice was the phrase used, when I entered the meeting, I didn’t know that’s what it was when I turned up.

And yes I was advised legally nothing was admissible in a tribunal.

The expert was not the hr guy, he was independent.

As I decided it was better to retain an income and keep a roof over my families head i took the offer that would have been pulled if I’d refused the offer and went down a formal route.

Really not a nice thing to go through and really hit home that however friendly/family orientated etc,,, a company appears it is just a sham and they don’t really give a shit.

Tbh, if they’d been honest with me, gave me a list of all my options, however unpalatable I would have been upset but understanding, these things happen. It was the fact they with held information, because legally the didn’t have to provide it, and generally felt like the bullied me into taking a lower grade role. I was also given 2 weeks to decide, with bugger all supporting info. Anyway that’s my recent not nice experience

Utter ratfinks DT78. Because you kept in a job then there is little you could do but if you had ended up out of a job as a union man I would have loved to take that on. Bunch of laws broken by them. american based company by any chance?

And yes I was advised legally nothing was admissible in a tribunal.

UNless one of us has got the wrong understanding of what happened that is just wrong.

TJ you really are a condescending person some times. You are not in a position to judge my lawyer, his motives or what he added to the process. Due to the bullying I received I was not in a position to take my soon to be ex employer to pieces, my lawyer did that for me and as a result I walked away with a lot more than £7k so from my point of view worth every penny not to mention the psychological support I gained from feeling like I had someone on my side. He would have happily gone to tribunal on my behalf if I’d wanted but he did his job and made sure I was making an informed decision.

Unfortunately not everyone operates in the same employment environment you do, from your posts last year it sounds like you did ok out of a shit situation caused but your employers incompetance, many of us also have to deal with deliberately nasty employers, DT78’s situation sounds very similar to mine. These are not employers who play by the rules. It also sounds like you did have some professional support from your wife, maybe not legal representation but someone to help you through the process.

People getting into employment issues like this need to have their eyes open from the start and not assume employment law will protect them. Otherwise its like being slowly boiled alive, by the time you realise you’re playing by different rules to your employer it’s too late.

UNless one of us has got the wrong understanding of what happened that is just wrong.

In this case you TJ, I was so gob smacked when I was told about a without prejudice conversation I did my own research and spoke to my lawyer who both confirmed it was true. Also known as protected conversations, go Google it.

The firm will already have decided who’s going and will likely have attempted to follow some of the redundancy process by scoring employees against whatever metric they have determined to get the result they want.

I’ve been involved in 7 redundancies, 5 with my old employer, and 2 with my current. On no occasion have the company ever managed to get rid of the numpties/troublemakers/workshy.

Every time, good hard working ambitious folk have put their hands up, the union’s rightly press for as little compulsory as possible, and the deadwood continues to lie on their arses.

stumpyjon – sorry dude — not intended to be condescending and your lawyer did the right thing bt you for sure and with an offer that big its daft to go to tribunal

My point was you do not need a lawyer with a £10 000 bill to go to tribunal or actually as usually happens you just have to threaten tribunal. Tribunals are not intended to be lawyered up which is why no costs can be awarded to stop people using expensive lawyers

MY employer in the case I talk about was trying to bully me out. Private sector. a good f ew years ago

I didn’t know about “protected conversations” – never heard of it before. I did a quick google and its very limited circumstances and this cropped up “If they act improperly, for example, by threatening you with dismissal if you do not accept what is being offered, then the conversation is no longer protected.”

Every day is a school day

I’ve been involved in 7 redundancies, 5 with my old employer, and 2 with my current. On no occasion have the company ever managed to get rid of the numpties/troublemakers/workshy.

Every time, good hard working ambitious folk have put their hands up, the union’s rightly press for as little compulsory as possible, and the deadwood continues to lie on their arses.

This, but sometime its the accountants who just see numbers rather than productivity. We did the same a few years ago, a relatively decent redundancy package and all the competent ones took it in an instant and got jobs pretty soon afterwards (I walked into new job the week after my notice period ended).

But I’m not tarring anyone who stays with a firm as incompetent by the way!

Acountants saw their ‘x’% drop in salary, whic is all they wanted. Ironically the old company have just paid millions to a firm of consultants to find out why their productivity fell off a cliff – the conclusion wasn’t massively surprising.

I had a meeting with an HR person-just invited for ‘a chat’-a couple of years before I left one of my jobs. The very first thing she said to me was that the conversation was ‘without prejudice’. I had no idea what this implied.After the ‘chat’ I left and looked it up and was rather surprised she hadn’t explained the implications, but then as has been mentioned before, HR are not there to look out for the employees in these situations.

TJ, it was a very unpleasant and sobering experience. It was also my first introduction to protected conversations, the theory is fine, allows for employee and employer to have an off the record conversation to reach an amicable agreement to part ways. In reality I think it’s normally abused. In my case i was actually told they weren’t prepared to discuss a settlement agreement there and then, i was just bluntly told there was no way back and i had no choice but accept whatever offer they fave me, all inadmissible because it was a protected conversation. I was told I couldn’t record the conversation or make notes. That was the point I got up and walked out.

This was after I actually left work in an ambulance because I’d blacked out and collapsed due to the stress. The protected conversation was arranged in an offsite venue once my sick note for stress expired. I only went back once, a month later to collect my belongings. My lawyer had the maturity, skill and knowledge to face them down, and like most bullies they caved in the face of someone stronger.

I had counted myself as quite a tough, worldly wise and senior manager but even I ended up initially being crapped on. Karma gets there in the end though, the individual who caused my problems got sacked himself just before lockdown and I doubt he’ll work again. In the meantime I’m niw working for a business where I have genuinely supportive managers, ironically a company most of the public would expect to be a money grabbing, amoral and uncaring beast, the reality us the complete opposite. Im slowing rebuilding confidence in myself.

Sounds like they may well have abused the “protected conversation” status from the quick read I had

Its horrid thing to go thru. I have been there a couple of times myself.

sounds like tho you got the right result in the end and did get good legal advice

And you even get to school me 😉 which surely makes it a win / win

my experience was similar (but not as nasty) as stumpyjons.

I’m not sure how I would handle a surprise ‘without predjudice’ conversation again. It catches you completely unawares and the power is all with them and the HR guy who has been brought into the business especially to shaft employees – and once done they go so the permies can pretend it was nothing to do with them.

And nope, not a US company, an ex ukgov one who you would expect much better from

Could be a settlement agreement they are wanting to discuss, which is a way around the redundancy process really.

Just go in listen to what they have to say, don’t need to say anything, and there’s nothing legally binding about it.

Just know what you are due from redundancy under your contract and statutorily(ie notice period, redundancy amounts and unused holiday pay and tote that up.). they’ll probably offer a few extra shekels on top to sign something to absolve them of any liability and to stop you telling stories.

Sounds like her time is up anyhow. So she’s really just looking to maximise the payoff.

That’s what I was just about to say.

A “without prejudice” conversation usually means they want you to go and are prepared to make a settlement over and above what you’d get if made redundant. The issue being, that you’re probably not at risk of redundancy without a whole load of hassle on their part in putting whole teams on consultation and going through a “process”.

above could be true, or it could be my situation – they want you to move to a lower paid role remove the remains of your staff responsibilities and offer to protect pay as a ‘deal’. If you don’t take it go through the formal process with no guarantee of a role (but you would get redundancy, but they won’t talk about that, because you are not at formal risk…because this is a without prejudice meeting)

Whole thing was horrible, a dumped a massive bunch of stress on me, I actually thought completely naively it was a career conversation as we had a senior person leave the team. Shocked and feeling stupid are understatements !

tbh I’m a bit stumped as to why they wanted to keep me at all I am not in a critical keeping lights on type role, after pulling that, all I can think is a redundancy at a time gov is telling employers to retain people if at all possible wouldnt look good

Redundancy costs them a lot of money. Obvs without knowing the full details, I’d say you’re in a good position to negotiate a bit, if you’re prepared to take the role they’re offering.