Where fewer than 20 redundancies are being implemented at one establishment within 90 days, employees must be offered the right to appeal against their selection for redundancy in order to meet the requirements of the statutory minimum dismissal procedure ( minimum dismissal procedures ). In larger scale exercises, an employee's dismissal will not necessarily be unfair solely because he or she has not been given an opportunity to appeal against selection. Nevertheless, offering the right to appeal is still advisable as an appeal will give the company a final opportunity to review the selection process, and to correct any mistakes that may have been made.
In redundancy exercises involving fewer than 20 dismissals, the appeal must be dealt with at a meeting, which should wherever practicable be conducted by a more senior manager than the manager who conducted the consultation meeting. The employee has the right to be accompanied at the meeting ( the right to be accompanied ) and should be notified of its outcome. In a larger-scale redundancy exercise, the appeal should, wherever possible, be conducted by someone who was not involved in the original selection decision. The employer may in these cases choose to consider any appeal on paper rather than at a meeting with the employee. If a meeting is held, however, companies may wish, as a matter of good practice, to allow the employee to be accompanied at the hearing by a work colleague or union representative, if he or she wishes to be.
The EEF national procedural agreements for the avoidance of disputes provide that employees who are dismissed can contest their dismissal, if necessary through an external conference, and remain employees until agreement is reached or the procedure is exhausted or their notice of dismissal expires, whichever comes later. Those companies that observe these national agreements may wish to consider whether this should be the only procedure for appealing against redundancy, or whether a separate avenue of appeal should also be provided. In either case, the statutory minimum procedural requirements will be satisfied ( minimum dismissal procedures ).
An employer is not under any general obligation to let an employee see the scorings of other employees who were not selected for redundancy. Indeed, disclosing that information without those individuals' consent would breach the company's duty to maintain the confidentiality of their personal information and would also be contrary to the principles of the Data Protection Act 1998 (data protection ). If, however, an employee makes a specific allegation of unfairness in the way in which he or she was scored compared with colleagues, the company may need to consider whether it is possible to address the allegation by disclosing the scorings without revealing the identities of the employees.