My employer claims that my postion as HQ Office Manager " unique" & thus redundant

Hi,

I have just been made redundant and I am concerned that I have been hoodwinked" by my employer and their legal advisers.

After 5 years of exeplary performance I was in April 2010 advised that I had been provisionally selected for redundancy on the grounds that :

1) The employer's requirement for an Office Manager at the company's one and only location had ceased or diminished ,
2) My duties could be absorbed by other staff members, in particular my immediate supervisors , the General Manager and the Managing Director.
3) My role was " unique". My employer claims that they considered whether any other members of staff should be pooled with myself, but it was determined that I undertook a unique management role.

I sense that the definition of a " unique role" is a bit of a legal minefield and the determination of whether I have been unfairly dismissed will largekly be based on the facts. Thus, I have ( at length - apologies ) detailed them below .

I was dismissed on 15 June and have since appealed which was not upheld. I am fully aware of 3 months deadline to submit a claim for u/f dismissal etc

I am very confident that my role was not a unique management role and that as a minimum two to three other staff members should have been pooled. This is because :

1) Due to the fact that the company had such a busy workload in the past 12 month period two other administrative staff were employed and part of their duties were under my supervision. The job description for one of these staff ( Senior Service Advisor) was virtually the same as my own. The employer in denying my appeal wrote a lengthy letter detailing what they felt were the 18 no. wholly unique aspects of my role ; that said the actions that they listed were most definitely carried out on a routine basis by at least two other admin staff, and on occasions not even under my direct management / supervision. I have credible evidence that at least one of my so called unique actions ( chasing up slow payments) was carried out by another staff member from July 2009 up to the date of my redundancy / dismissal. My employer alleges that the so called 18 no. unique actions of my role could not be carried out by other staff members as these were skilled actions requiring training and involve access to sensitive documents. In my absence it was alleged the the Managing Director would carry out these unique tasks. To put this codswallop into perspective two of these unique actions as cited were :

(a) Checking and ordering stock for the drinks machine ! , and
(b) Opening up and closing the office.

These can hardly be described as unique " skilled " actions requiring training and involving access to sensitive documents that could, not , therefore, be carried out by any other staff member than the Managing Director. Moreover, I never even opened and closed the office and nor did the MD.

FYI the company had no financial problems and is still hiring new staff, inc one p/t admin consultant and 1-2 technical staff.

My employer did also attempt to " bump" me for the Senior Service Advisor, but this role was a full time role and I have only worked on a p/t basis and thus it was not a feasible alternative. Furthermore, such an offer was ever confirmed in writing.

I have searched some previous threads on this " unique" topic, and one post dated 2008 made reference to the following :

" From your post, I gather that your employer has identified the selection pool for redundancy which is just yourself as a Manager. The pool should contain ‘all employees’ who perform the same or similar type of work in a particular department or at a relevant location. In the circumstance where only one employee is identified within the selection pool, the individual performing that role should be in a unique position. Your employer needs to be able to show that the system for choosing the pool is fair. If it cannot, then you could have a claim for unfair dismissal. "

Based on the facts as presented which I can assure you are accurate do you believe that I have a case for unfair dismissal, and if so, is it a good claim ( ie 80/20 in my favour) , modest ( ie 66/33) , 50/50 ..or would I be wasting my time in making a claim ?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Kind Regards

Andrew Dean

I wouldn't want to say how good a case you do/don't have based on limited information, however a couple of points.

I don't think 'unique' in terms of a role means 'no one else does any of these tasks'. It's the role as a whole which needs to be unique, so the fact that other people can/do also perform elements of it doesn't mean it isn't unique. Divvying up the responsibilities elsewhere is fine to do.

However if there are people perfoming the same or very similar job as a whole, then they probably should have been included yes.

It's perfectly ok for a company to decide it doesn't need an Office Manager any more and that it will instead cope with different bits of the job being performed by others, so that is a valid decision from that point of view. Office Manager is often a unique job in that you don't normally have more than one, but if as you say there is another role virtually identical, and you more or less work in tandem, then yes it sounds as though that individual should have also been pooled.

I think you need to take fuller advice providing full information/documents/job descriptions/consultation information/proposed new structure if any.