Understanding bumping in redundancy

When planning redundancies and conducting a consultation, one concept many employers are not familiar with is that of “bumping”.

In the context of a redundancy process, “bumping” refers to a situation whereby:

• Employee A’s role is potentially redundant;
• employee B’s role is not potentially redundant; but
• the employer makes employee B redundant and gives their now vacant role to employee A to save employee A from dismissal.

The result of this process is that the employee whose role was not at risk of redundancy is “bumped” out of their role so it can be given to somebody who was at risk of being made redundant.

In practice, bumping is usually used by employers where they consider that employee A is more valuable to the business than employee B, or they are simply the more senior employee.

As you would expect, bumping is controversial and invites employment litigation because it results in an employee being dismissed for no other reason than the employer wanting to give their role to someone who was at risk of redundancy.

As unfair as it sounds, bumping should be considered by any employer conducting a redundancy consultation process. Whilst bumping might not be something the employer can accommodate (or even wish to do), employees who are dismissed for reason of redundancy could try to challenge the fairness of that decision if this option was not even considered during the process.

The Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled in the past that an employer is not obliged automatically to consider bumping in every redundancy situation, but there is nothing to prevent the employer from considering bumping, even if it has not been raised by the employee.

Our advice is that, in any redundancy situation, an employer should at least consider the feasibility of bumping during the consultation process (even if it is not raised by the employee) and record their consideration of this option. By at least considering the possibility of bumping as an alternative to redundancy, an employer can strengthen its argument that any subsequent dismissal for reason of redundancy was procedurally fair.

If you have any questions about bumping and the redundancy process,  please call our Employment Law team today on 0113 207 0000.