Wednesday, 28 September 2022 – How Not to Not Answer a Question

The team received the outcome from our redundancy consultation today.  There is no reason why these things should happen in order because the council doesn’t even pretend that we have employment rights.  On this basis, I should receive my Job Description to apply for the job on Friday, the day after my interview tomorrow.

The email came from my manager rather than HR suggesting that the consultation was led, and decisions made, by him.  Contrarily, he already emailed me individually yesterday saying that, “I haven’t been able to get HR to reconsider the need for an interview…” suggesting decisions are made by HR. 

Today he informs us all that,

“In response to the queries raised by staff, during the consultation period…: [t]he requirement for interview for ringfenced roles remains in place.  This is part of the councils [sic] policy on confirming staff members to new roles that are higher in grade to their substantive post.”

 

Does this say that the interviews are required because they are required?  I’m glad that’s cleared that up then!  I would have liked him or his HR representative (come to think of it, have they ever been seen in the same room together?) to address my logic that questions the point of being interviewed.  My manager and I already agreed that I am already doing the role, just not being fully paid for it so as to adhere with some oblique HR diktat he cleverly found on the Council Intranet.  As for the logic of whether the role I am being paid for is my substantive role is tenuous.  I have neither a contract of employment for my job I was originally employed in in January 2021 (like for my ex-colleague who left as a result, my manager and HR allowed my fixed-term contract to expire in January 2022) nor doing it, nor being paid for it.  Instead, emailing us a truism to answer a genuine, happening-in-real-life, question means we were never really being consulted; that would be an employment right.

Our team manager (front) with his HR Business Adviser.

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