Tag: redundancy

Facts: The employee, Mr De Bank Haycocks, was a recruitment consultant for the employer (ADP) and worked in a team of 16 which recruited for one single client (Goldman Sachs). By the end of May 2020, Goldman Sachs’ demand for new staff had dropped significantly due to the pandemic and ADP decided it needed to reduce the number of employees in the team.

At the beginning of June 2020, ADP undertook a scoring exercise for all members of the team. It used specific subjective selection criteria (provided by its US parent company) and the employee was scored the lowest. On 18 June, ADP decided it needed to reduce the team by two employees and on 19 June, ADP set the timetable for the redundancy process. This would commence with an initial consultation meeting with employees on 30 June 2020 to be followed by a consultation period of 14 days and ending with the redundant employees being notified on 14 July 2020.

At the employee’s initial consultation meeting (on 30 June 2020) he was told that there was a need for redundancies and that he could ask questions and suggest alternatives. He had one further meeting before being notified of his redundancy at a final meeting on 14 July 2020. At this time he was not told his selection scores or given his colleagues’ scores as a comparison.

The employee appealed against the redundancy. By the time of the appeal hearing he had been provided with his selection scores, but not those of his colleagues. He was unsuccessful at appeal and brought a Tribunal claim for unfair dismissal.

Tribunal decision:  The Tribunal said the employee had been fairly dismissed. It acknowledged that  he had not been provided with his selection scores before his dismissal but found that this procedural flaw had been rectified at the appeal stage.

The Tribunal also did not accept the employee’s criticisms of the selection pool or the redundancy criteria and the employee was unable to show that he should have scored higher than he actually did.

The employee appealed to the EAT. He argued that the Tribunal had failed to consider the issue of consultation adequately – particularly that the employee (and the wider workforce) had not been consulted about redundancy proposals before pooling and scoring took place.

EAT decision:  The EAT held that the dismissal was unfair. The failure to consult at a formative stage meant that ADP had not followed good industrial relations practice and had therefore not acted within the band of reasonableness. The EAT also said that ‘whilst the appeal could correct any missing aspect of the individual consultation process (e.g. the provision of the employee’s…scores), it could not repair [the] gap of consultation in the formative stage’.