Employment Selection Pools

[Evans1984]

Hi, hoping for some advice.
The company my daughter works for has decided to close their international business. Parts are being closed down completely and some of the activities are being brought into the UK team. My daughter is on the UK team and has been told they will not (at least initially) be picking up any of the international work. The business has decided to put staff which have the same job title into an employment pool because they are "merging" the teams. They do not want to increase the headcount on the UK team to cover this additional workload as they will not be taking up any of the workload, therefore it has been argued by a union rep for her colleague that this is therefore not legal as they are not actually "merging" the teams. Would you agree? It doesn't seem fair for the employee already in role.

My daughter has been told she is at risk of being put into an employment pool because 2 staff on the international team have general roles covering several tasks whereas my daughter is a specialist covering 1 of those tasks. To add complexity 1 person on the international team is currently on maternity leave and the 2nd is on secondment from the UK team covering the mat leave. My daughter has been covering the one on secondment. There are other specialists on the UK teams who cover tasks that the generalists on the international team cover, yet they are not at risk of a employment pool? So my question is should the UK specialist be at risk at all and if yes should they be the only one at risk?

Thanks

[ULA]

I presume that both teams are in the same or close proximity location wise.

In selecting the pool for redundancy, employers do have to give a good deal of thought as to who should be in the pool. Employees should be included where they undertake the same or similar roles in different parts of the business, hence the reason why the company is looking at similar roles in both the international and UK team. If they only made the international team in the similar roles redundant this could be considered by them as unfair dismissal because the pool did not include people doing a similar role in another part of the business.

Employees who are put into the pool should undertake the same or similar roles, they do not have to be identical. So, this will be about whether the role your daughter carries out although not identical is similar enough to those of other people identified as being in the pool. So, the employer, in this situation, could believe that the UK specialist role is similar enough to the generalist role that she should be included particularly if their skills are interchangeable. However, in my view if other similar but specialist roles exist why have they not been put into the pool like your daughter has. I think the union need to ascertain the reason why this has happened.

So, in answer to your questions based on the limited detail on your post and without knowing the full details of the roles concerned, I can see why maybe your daughter has been included but have a query as to why other specialists in the UK team have not been included.

Hope that helps.

[Evans1984]

Thank you for your insight, that's really useful.