In the final part of the series we look at whether you can exclude some jobs posts from being pooled for redundancy despite having the same job title and the same duties as others in the pool.

 

The short answer is yes provided the employer has a good reason for excluding some posts from the pool.

 

The classic example of this is the role of personal assistant to the Executive Directors. One way of pooling is like this but the obvious problem is that the secretaries are interchangeable and this pool could be easily challenged on that basis. Inevitably secretaries cover each others absences:

Post

Present

Future

Surplus

Secretary to Managing Director

1

1

0

Secretary to Sales Director

1

0

1

Secretary to Finance Director

1

0

1

Secretary to Operations Director

1

0

1

Secretary to Quality and Technical Director

1

0

1

Secretary to HR Director

1

0

1

Secretary to Marketing Director

1

0

1

 

The best way of doing it, is as follows, assuming the Managing Director has a dedicated secretary and not a shared one (MD’s prerogative and all that:

Post

Present

Future

Surplus

Secretary to Managing Director

1

1

0

Departmental Director secretaries

6

3

3

In this scenario, the MD’s secretary is ring fenced, on the basis that the MD is the job role most in need of secretarial support and personal assistance for managing diaries, appointments, filtering calls.

 

All the other secretaries are pooled, selection criteria applied with the bottom three being selected for redundancy.

 

Next week we will look at common challenges to redundancy selection during individual conusltation.