redundancy sucks - even when its what you half want! (My experience of Redundancy)

Member Name: tigger1978

Product:	My experience of Redundancy
Date:	22/05/09 (52 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: lump su is quite nice if you have been there a long time

Disadvantages: thought of finding a new job, knock to your confidence.. amongst many others

After taking a year off on maternity leave I decided I would return to work full time... - my husband had decided this all along, but I like to irritate him somewhat. Also, the compnay pauy a "return to work" payment - after being back from maternity leave for 3 motnhs you get 6 months worth of pay over the next 6 months. - Alot of money to forfeit if I did not go back.

I had a meeting with HR and my line manager regarding flexible working. They finally agreed to allow me to change my hours from 8.30-4.45 to 8-4 with only a half hour lunch - no big deal there really. I also asked to work 2 days from home - i work in IT and can do my entire job from home, so this shouldnt really have been a big deal. However, the company is against this and no-one in the company has been allowed to do this before. After a few weeks I had a letter confirming the change in working times, and an agreement that I could do the 2 days from home as a trial period. Fantastic!

My first day back at work kicked off with a meeting with HR. During this meeting she told me that my home working days could start after Easter - allowing me time to settle back in and get up to speed. OK. Easter was 2 weeks away. - the trial was still officially starting from my first day back, but nevermind. I thought, they are letting me do what I want. I will just go along with it.

So, quick meeting with my boss. she said she would like me to cover someone elses work for a week and a half while they were on holiday. Fine, I wasnt really bothered what I did.... So I started doing this. At some point in the first days I popped into my colleagues office and asked him where we had got to with the project we wer working on previous to my leave. He said there was still a lot of the doumentation to write and that he hadnt done much of that at all - this was usually my side of the work. So I tried to get a list off him when the line manager walked into the room and was very short with me. What was I doing in there, why wasnt I sitting on the helpdesk like she hasked me to. - It was a very quiet day and there were not many calls coming in - I was giong to start doing the documentation in the quiet times rather than sitting bored stupid twiddling my thumbs. - No. go back and sit there. I then very quickly got allocated another task which no-one else in the department wanted to do - we had a back log of computer tapes - back ups from the servers, that needed numbering and catalogueing... fine. i started this mammoth task - there were about 5000 tapes waiting for me.

On my 6th day back at work (the 3rd full day that i was logging tapes), I got a call out of the blue from HR. Could I go over and have a chat with the head of HR please. I joked to my colleague that I was now going to get sacked...
Close. I was told that 2 positions in the department were to be made redundant - apparently there was no longer a need for my sort of work anymore. - interesting as there were 3 male colleagues with the same job titles. We did project work so the work was kind of mostly quick changing. Anyway. There was me and the junior member of the team (who nobody really liked from the off, he was also inefficinet and didnt do the work he was supposed to).

I didnt fight to keep my job. what was the point - whatever I said wasnt likely to make any difference as at the end of the day I had just had a baby, was likely to go off on leave again in the future for another one. - Also I'm sure that the main reason I was chosen was down to the flexible working I had requested. they did not want to seta precedent in the company for working from home and changing hours etc. - Infact when i first suggested working from home HR suggested that I drop some hours instead... - lucky I didnt as my entire redundancy payment would have been based on part time hours then!

I contacted citizins advice with a couple of questions. Yes, they could do it, and no, legally they were not obliged to give me the maternity pay that they owed if I did not work the period of time that was required. Says it all doesnt it.

I asked HR to have an idea of the package i would receive ready for the next meeting. Asked them about the maternity leave payment, she was very quick to point out legally they did not have to pay that, however they would do what was morally right and pay it.

Luckily I was also on a 3 month notice period, and had been there 8 years. - so the package was quite good and allowed me to do what I would have perferred and stay at home with my little girl a bit longer.

Luckily we had been very careful with money whilst I was off work and had managed not to run up debts etc. Otherwise this could have been absolutely disastrous.

All in all it was still an upsetting experience and very stressful - it is never nice to have choices taken away from you once you have made your mind up and mentally prepared yourself.

It effected my daughter - until that point she had never spent more than 4 hours away from me. she started playing up at bedtime and stopped sleeping through the night. - we are still struggling now nearly 2 months later.

Needless to say I never even received a card to say goodbye - thats the kind of department it was... - proabably better off out of it.

Summary: use you up and spit you out