Redundancy job or person

Annabananna

Hi

I was in a group of friends at the weekend and a question came up as one of the group company's is announcing a new plan 1st feb which is to include redundancies.

My friend is head of a department lets say head of tax and all my friends say that she is safe as its the job that is made redundant not the person so the company cant exist without her job.

But I thought that she can be made redundant and someone else can do her work just that the new person doing the work couldn't be called head of tax.
Any thoughts she rang me today and told me to look into my theory so i decided to ask yourselves.

dennyk

You are correct; they can let her go if the employer has decided they require fewer staff to carry on their business, which can include having another existing employee (or multiple employees) take on her job duties in addition to their own.

If they were to make her redundant and then immediately or within a very short time hire a new employee to perform her same role or tasks despite there being no material change in the state or operations of the business (no additional clients or work taken on, etc.), then she might be able to argue that she was unfairly dismissed rather than made redundant, but she'd have to speak with a solicitor about pursuing that should it come to that.

Annabananna

Thanks for the reply
I just wondering though as the head of tax role is a role that needs to be on every client and is governed by an outside agency can they then call the people who take over her work head of tax as that her title which they have made redundant her real title not head of tax but I can’t reveal as someone might cope on who I taking a out as she in a small niche industry.

dennyk

That really depends on the specifics of the law or rule in question; if it's "you must have a single employee of title X who is only responsible for duties Y and Z", then they may not be able to make her redundant unless the nature of their business has changed such that they are no longer subject to that rule. If it's "you must have a designated employee who is responsible for performing duty Y and a designated employee who is responsible for performing duty Z" or something along those lines, then it's possible other employees could assume those duties in addition to their own (provided of course that they met any required qualifications and were approved by the outside agency if applicable).

Similarly, if it's just "you must have a department responsible for duties Y and Z", then redundancy is still possible for the head of said department should the employer decide to change their management structure; it's quite common for companies looking to trim labour costs and increase efficiency to cut middle management positions and have multiple teams reporting directly to a higher-level manager, possibly with some of the individual contributors given some additional decision-making responsibilities themselves, instead of having a dedicated department head or team lead for each team.

Annabananna

Thanks its her title head of tax that the company sell it as to clients she is also registered and past a fitness and probability system with outside regulatory for this post.