Redundancy Advice

I have been working for the same hotel company for 8 full years. This has included two posts over two hotels during this time. I returned from maternity leave on September of this year (2011).

Recently I have been informed by my company director and management that there will be three redundancies out of a pool of nine staff (not all from the same department) due to a down-turn in revenue. I was advised that this decision would be made by the use of a 'matrix' scoring system in order to take into account everyone's individual strenghts and weaknesses etc.

Subsequently, whilst the scores of everyone's result from the calculations in the matrix remain anonymous, I have been informed that I have scored the lowest and subsequently will be made redundant - this will be a statutory redundancy i.e. no enhancement.

On querying my score from the 'matrix' I was advised the reasons why my score was such, was due to my 'handwriting' with regards to figures i.e. some staff had issues with the way I wrote a 2 and a 5. I was also advised that I had made an error when calculating figures last year (when i was heavily pregnant - no excuse obviously however i have some concerns that the reason i am being made redundant may be due or partly due to having a young family). It must be added that these two issues that have been brought to my attention do not seem to be directly related to the categories in the scoring matrix. I was also advised that this information was passed to management from my "supervisor" (who was also included in the redundancy situation however escaped this situation.) I was also advised with regards to the scoring matrix that I needed "supervision" in carrying out some duties.

My concerns surrounding the "supervision" aspects are two-fold: the first is that I was never made aware that this other person was my supervisor in my four years at my current hotel and secondly I have never had any supervision from my supervisor or management.


I still awate formal notification in writing however I have currently appealed this and would greatly appreciate any help or advice from anyone who has knowledge of this frightening situation.

You need to obtain and understand the scores that you got. You may be able to ask for anonymised information about the scores of the other individuals, but given such a small group of redundancies this may not be agreed since any information given to you about others scores must not be in such a form that you can guess whose scores they are. BUt your appeal needs to be based on challenging the scores that you have been given. Although, to be honest, I probably wouldn't hold my breath as appeals seldom succeed. Sorry, but I think it is unlikely that you will get very far. And I am afraid that "bad management" won't help you any - not knowing that you had a supervisior, or not receiving supervision meetings isn't relevant to the score, although you may as well throw in the kitchen sink at an appeal because you have little to lose.