"Bumping" (Redundancy)

[MickMike]

Hello

I just discovered this site last week and it's been a great help already.

I'd like to make an enquiry please - it's concerning the process of "bumping" an employee and I'd like to hear if anyone has any direct experience of it.

I'd not even heard of the term until recently but I'm having trouble grasping the way it is inteded to work.

The information I've found so far appears rather muddled and even the .gov website hasn't provided a very clear description.

I'm stuggling to fathom the obligations on an employer who may wish to "bump" someone.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks, MM

 

[gouldie0]

Is that because your looking to do this or have been 'bumped'?

 

[gouldie0]

Just found this on a site (emplaw dot co dot uk), gives a rough description.

BASIC POSITION
Is a dismissal "by reason of redundancy" if some employee other than the one whose job is no longer required is dismissed? For example, a small family run garage business may provide a taxi service with the proprietor's daughter as taxi-driver. If the proprietor decides to close the taxi service because of lack of demand and sack an employee who runs the petrol pump cash desk so that his daughter can take on that job instead, the question arises as to whether the cash desk attendant's sacking was "by reason of redundancy" for purposes of unfair dismissal and redundancy law. In a general sense the sacking clearly would be "by reason of redundancy" but the redundancy is that of the proprietor's daughter not of the person who was sacked. Dismissals in this sort of situation are generally called "bumped redundancies" or "transferred redundancies"
They can give rise to tricky questions as to whether the dismissal was "by reason of redundancy" for the purposes of entitlement to statutory redundancy pay and for the purposes of the unfair dismissal rules.

 

[GillespieBS]

If within first year of an employment contract you can get rid of an employee without much reason. Otherwise you would have to have a genuine redundancy. If the role is shared with others in the business you need to evaluate them all on their performance and make an informed decision. If there isn't a genuine redundnacy and you just want to replace them, you should appraise their performance regularly with the intention of helping them turn their performance around - offer them any training they need to do the job to the expectation. If after this they are still not performing you can give them their notice.

does that help?! - I'm not an HR expert but have had similar experiences.

 

[MickMike]

Hello guys

Thanks so much for your replies.

Actually, I was asking on behalf of a friend who was a little stressed (I shall get him to sign up himself now you've helped to calm him down!)

In a nutshell, he runs a small business that needs to restructure. He uses a good outsourced HR service with which he is happy and has been trying to find out what bumping means.

The reason being, that an employee currently going through the consultation process told him "I am going to excercise my right to be bumped".

Having checked what this meant with his HR consultant, he remained a little confused (as did I) becuase the employee clearly believes bumping would benefit him.

As such, my friend started to feel he needed some reassurance that his HR people are indeed providing him with correct information and handling the process properly. The employee in question is actually quite reasonable, however, given he's mentioned his "right to be bumped" with such convincing authority it seemed strange.

As such, he began to doubt his own HR person and was seeking to clarify how bumping works / what it means and began to tie himself up in knots in the process.

It is now evident the employee has been misinformed - but as we have both learnt something new it is not such a bad thing.

Thanks again guys

MM

 

[johnasholding]

If the genuine redundancy is there I think it would be better to check their performance and on the basis of that you can judge whether to have that person for longer time or to fire him and as per the example of taxi service , I don't think that any rule is meant that a proprietor can't take his daughter in replacement of other employee, it's all upto proprietor.

 

[Charlie B ACS]

Last post a year and a half ago, probably not a lot of help now.....