David Mills, partner at Mills & Reeve

Employers don’t have to be perfect, but it does help

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Redundancy is not something you readily associate with the National Lottery, but we have perhaps forgotten that the operators Camelot needed to cut costs to secure the renewal of its contract in 2009, and that involved a large-scale redundancy exercise.

It’s fair to say that Camelot’s redundancy selection process was practically flawless.

It made arrangements to interview every employee in the pool of 158 for 100 new positions.

All the managers involved were specially trained, and consistency interviewers were also appointed.

The redundancy selection process involved a combination of tests, performance-based criteria and the interview itself.

So what could possibly go wrong?

One employee who had scored poorly at her interview asked to see the interview notes.

After some delay they were provided, but not until after the decision to dismiss her had been made. The employment tribunal upheld her claim for unfair dismissal. It said that a challenge to her scores was implicit in her request for the notes, and the decision to dismiss her was taken before she had the chance to do that.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal upheld Camelot’s appeal. It said that it had not been obliged to provide a copy of the notes in any case. An employer does not have to respond to every “unspecific request for information”. The employee had been given ample opportunity to challenge her scores, including as part of a written appeal process, and had failed to do so.

So what could Camelot have done better? Not a lot, but it would have helped if it had made a firm decision on the provision of interview notes earlier.

This case will make it easier for employers handling redundancies to be firm about what information they are prepared to provide during a redundancy selection process.

But more importantly than that, it will remind tribunals that perfection in handling the redundancy process is not the standard that employers are expected to meet, though they would be wise to aim for it.

Read more about topical employment issues on Mills & Reeve’s blog www.hrlawlive.co.uk.