Employee unfairly dismissed due to incorrect redundancy procedures

The Employment Tribunal has ruled that an employee was unfairly dismissed in what amounted to a fait accompli during an inadequate redundancy consultation.

Joanne Stronach Director and Head of Employment & HR reports on this recent case.

The case involved Mrs R Khamar, who was made redundant by PIE Pharma after 22 years of service.

PIE Pharma said it had to make redundancies in the packaging department because it was adversely impacted by Brexit.

It sent out a grounds of resistance letter to staff, saying they would be assessed on “attendance and uninformed absences, performance including understanding, aptitude and efficiency, and experience-ability on the job”. 

Khamar was made redundant after she got low scores across the different criteria.  

She was told she was being made redundant due to “level of performance, attendance and/or experience”.

She brought a claim of unfair dismissal.

Khamar told the tribunal that the first time she saw documented evidence of the selection criteria was when she received the documents for the tribunal hearing and had “not seen her scores before then”. 

PIE Pharma’s HR director told the tribunal that those at risk of redundancy were “not consulted” about the selection criteria used.

The tribunal upheld Khamar’s claim.

Judge Green said PIE Pharma had not acted reasonably toward Khamar during the redundancy procedure and had failed to consult her.

He said she was presented with a fait accompli rather than being told that she was at risk of redundancy. It was not a proper consultation.

Judge Green said the selection criteria were “nebulous and heavily dependent upon the subjective opinion of the person(s) undertaking the scoring exercise.

“While I accept that the selection pool reasonably identified that people working on labelling and in the warehouse were at risk and that the numbers needed to be reduced, the selection criteria they used were not objective. This was fatal to the selection process.

“Furthermore, the claimant and her colleagues were not consulted about the selection criteria in advance. They were simply presented with the outcome of the selection process. Matters were made worse by the fact that the letter notifying the claimant of the outcome of the selection exercise failed to identify all of the criteria that were used by management when they selected her for redundancy in December 2021.”

Khamar was awarded £2,616. However, as she received jobseekers’ allowance, the award was subject to recoupment, and she was only paid £500.

If you would like more information about the issues raised in this article or any aspect of employment law please contact Joanne on 01228 516666 or click here to send her an email.