Help Required Please

Hi All,

Think you offer some great advice on this site and I’m really hoping you can help me. For ease I’m going to try and keep this as simple as possible but can happily supply more details if required.

I have recently been placed at risk as my role is being ‘disestablished’. It has been expressly stated in the announcement that this change “is NOT an exercise to reduce headcount but a realignment to allocate the resource to best suit the work requirements”.

Currently I work in large company and manage all day to day operational communication to our shop staff. I have one exec that assists me with this. Outside of this department is a person (one grade higher than me) who manages retail communication, primarily focussed around supporting the retail directors and managing any aspect of work that falls outside the stores. It has been decided that all the work will transfer from my dept to the other manager in order to centralise it. My exec will be transferred over to report to her and another new exec role as been created to help support the new workload.

In has been accepted by all parties that all the work will remain and management of the various channels (all of which are currently managed solely by my team) will also transfer over. The new exec role is one grade lower than my current position and even though it is effectively my day to day job with some of the strategic aspects removed this has not been presented to me as a ‘suitable alternative vacancy’.

My questions are this:

Can I be made redundant when it is clear that no part of my role is actually redundant?
Should the company have offered me the other exec position as a suitable alternative role? (I had to chase getting a copy of this job description and only received it one week into my consultation)

By replacing 2 mgrs and 1 exec with 1 manager and 2 execs, could this not considered to be based around cost reduction even though the company has never stated this is the reason for the redundancy?

Should the other manager’s role have formed part of the consultation bearing in mind the role now has responsibility for 2 new execs (where previously there was none), budgetary responsibility (where previously there was none) in addition to the management of a significant number of channels on a day to day basis?

I am currently under consultation which I thought had to be ‘meaningful’ and my current role wouldn’t change whilst this was ongoing. Based on this is it appropriate for meetings to be held about next steps e.g. new channels being developed etc that I am excluded from during this period?

Really hopeyou can help, feeling very confused!

Not sure that that will be the answer your were hoping for but I hope things are a little clearer.