I'd preface the following by saying I am not a lawyer and this is my opinion. None of this should be considered legal advice.
What is Unfair?
Life is unfair, at least that is what my parents would say to me as a kid when something didn't go my way.
Out of the box, being made redundant feels unfair. Why me? I offered value to the business. Perhaps you can even prove that without you the company will actually do worse.
Unfortunately, making bad decisions isn't against the law. Redundancy is a perfectly legal way of terminating someone's employment whether it's in the best interests of the company or not.
Incompetence?
I've worked under my fair share of idiotic and incompetent managers in my time. You probably have too. Sadly, to me at least, the traits of of these people that aspire to middle/senior managment are mostly what make them bad as managers. I have worked for good managers too, I would add, and those people tend to share a gift for empathy and understanding.
If a bad manager, through their own ineptitude has led to a situation where you are made redundant, this obviously seems unfair.
Not necessarily. If they performed badly and made poor decisions that led the company to a situation where they needed to cut costs and therefore make people redundant then that doesn't necessarily mean the redundancy is unfair. Again, making bad decisions isn't against the law.
Relevance to the Law
The only way to combat redundancy, as I see it, is by looking at what "unfair" looks like in UK law. Because there is a different process for redundancies of more than 20 people, I'll be focusing on law related to individual redundancy - mainly, because that's what I have most experience in.
As I see it, there are two things to look at:
- Is there a genuine redundancy?
- Did the employer conduct a fair consultation?
These questions themselves are loaded with legal tests and arguments and you shouldn't just answer them yourself subjectively and come to the conclusion that your redundancy is unfair. Whatever stage of redundancy you are in, it's best to do as much research into these questions and how they are legally applicable.
How do you prove any of this? Well, here are a number of suggestions:
- Write down as many notes as you can, keep records of conversations, meetings etc. (Make sure you are abiding by any company policies though, so I would just write these notes personally rather than using company property)
- Make a subject access request - you can ask for all your personal information from your company
- Get legal advice - if you can afford it, a solicitor is the obvious answer, but there are services that you can use like justanswer.com and valla.uk
- Do your own research - the obvious caveat here is that there is a lot of conflicting information. AI is ok(ish), but beware of it's optimism and tendency to hallucinate legal cases.
Build up an understanding of everything your employer has done up to and including making you redundant. Be as objective as you can, I know this can be difficult. If you start drawing any conclusions - get confirmation, preferably from someone with objective legal experience.