Banks be warned: more people will challenge redundancy selection
Despite the fact that a lot of banks are making deepish cuts, being selected for redundancy is never nice. If your severance package is good enough, you may accept the decision with good grace. If it's not, you need to make sure you were chosen fairly.
Employment lawyers are already anticipating a new raft of litigation cases from disgruntled financial services professionals who feel they've been unfairly singled out; particularly as new job prospects are likely to be limited in the immediate future.
Considering the proliferation of redundancies currently, it's unlikely you can challenge the rationale for making cuts. However, you may wish to question the selection process.
One obvious case to pursue is one of unfair dismissal. However, even if you're successful, the maximum payout for these cases is 68,400. Many high-earning City professionals may not think it's worth their while, suggests Jonathan Exten-Wright, partner at DLA Piper.
"There are, however, opportunities to claim on the basis of discrimination - whether that's gender, race or nationality - or past instances of whistle-blowing, when employees believe previous complaints have been held against them," he says. "In such cases claims for lost earnings are uncapped."
While it may be tempting to chance your arm on this, Philip Landau employment law solicitor and partner at Landau Zeffertt Weir Solicitors cautions against taking such a route unless there's a very clear argument for pursuing one. If there's a strong case, both parties tend to settle quickly, rather than undertake a lengthy, and sometimes messy, court case.
We've said previously that employment lawyers are dealing with cases banks accusing people of gross misconduct in order to avoid making redundancy payments and theres' a general propensity to be less generous with packages.
The key is to ensure the whole process is "transparent", says Landau.
"Banks selection criteria usually fall into several categories which include skills, length of service, future skills relevant to the business, illness record and performance," he says. "It's not simply enough to cut the bottom 5% performers from past appraisals, even though it would not be unusual for those ultimately selected to mirror the worst performers that have previously come to light."
