A sales director’s team shrank after a restructure, and his employer decided his role was no longer needed given the reduced team size and the level of business in his sales region
“EATStands for Employment Appeal Tribunal. It hears appeals from employment tribunal decisions on points of law, not on the facts. It is not a way of simply asking for a second opinion on the outcome.: a reasonable employer will normally at least consider bumpingBumping is when an employer moves an employee whose role is redundant into a more junior colleague's job, instead of dismissing them, so that the redundancy effectively falls on the junior role. There... into a more junior role, even without being asked.”
Your employer should normally at least think about whether you could take over a more junior role instead of being made redundant, even if you never suggested it yourself.
- Ask directly whether bumping into a more junior role was ever considered during your redundancy process.
- There's no automatic right to bump someone out of their job, but a total failure to consider it can support an unfair dismissalA legal claim you can bring if your employer dismissed you without a fair reason or without following a fair process. You normally need two years of continuous employment to qualify, though some dismi... challenge.
- Don't assume you had to raise this yourself for it to matter. The responsibility partly sits with your employer.
The situation
A sales director's team shrank after a restructure, and his employer decided his role was no longer needed given the reduced team size and the level of business in his sales region. He was made redundant without his employer considering whether he could instead take over a more junior colleague's role, a practice known as "bumping."
He argued his employer should have at least thought about bumping before deciding there was nothing else for him.
What the tribunal found
The EAT didn't create an absolute rule that employers must always bump a more junior employee to make room for someone facing redundancyA dismissal that occurs when your employer no longer needs the work you do, either because the business is closing, a workplace is closing, or the requirement for employees to carry out that kind of w.... But it went further than saying it's purely optional too.
The key finding: a reasonable employer will normally at least consider bumping, even where the employee facing redundancy never raised it themselves. Whether not doing so makes a dismissal unfair depends on the particular facts, and it's for a tribunal to decide whether the employer's overall approach fell within the range of reasonable responses.
For more on what to check before you volunteer for redundancy, see our guide on voluntary redundancy: what to know before you volunteer.
Mirab v Mentor Graphics (UK) Ltd. UKEAT/0172/17. Employment Appeal Tribunal. 2018.