Should an employment tribunal find a redundancy dismissal unfair by examining the scoring in a selection process? No, says the Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) in Nicholls v Rockwell Automation Ltd, unless the employer’s motives were in question.
The Claimant’s dismissal followed a redundancy scoring exercise. The employment tribunal had found that there was a redundancy situation and a fair process, applied with no ulterior motive, but held that the dismissal was unfair as certain scores were ‘clearly lower than they should have been’.
The EAT applied an older case of British Aerospace v Green and substituted a finding that the Claimant’s dismissal was fair, holding that the employment tribunal had erred by:
- Engaging in a detailed critique of certain items of scoring in determining if it was reasonable for the employer to dismiss the Claimant, and;
- Substituting its own view for that of the employer.
The EAT held that using criteria that were not capable of objective verification was not fatal to a redundancy selection scheme.
Kate Fretten, Employment Partner, says “This is good news for employers who have to go through the tricky task of trying to score employees in a pool for redundancy. The nature of scoring is often subjective, despite best endeavours, and the EAT sensibly decided that it is not for an employment tribunal to go behind the scores in great detail to assess whether a decision to make an employee redundant is unfair or not.”
For a free initial meeting please call 01202 499255 and Kate or Paul will be happy to discuss any questions you may have.
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