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I am facing a redundancy & restructuring. Having worked for 7 years in a Permanent position, in a small organisation in Insurance industry. Now, my organisation is restructuring the our team of 5 members to 4 roles. There’s a hurried consultation schedule.

I was thinking if I could put forward a suggestion to make everybody’s role as part-timers (proportionately) so that job loss can be avoided.

Kindly suggest how to put it forward to the hr/management.

Thanks a lot

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  • In the US dropping too low will cause a cut in some benefits, or even a loss of some benefits; would your plan run into the same problem?
    – mhoran_psprep
    Aug 6, 2019 at 10:10
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    How do you know your colleagues would prefer everyone having less hours to one person being laid off?
    – YoupT
    Aug 6, 2019 at 10:12
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    Yes. colleagues in team are also facing it. But there's no co-ordination amongst colleagues & individual are need to respond their own case. Thanks
    – user6176517
    Aug 6, 2019 at 10:49
  • It's important to note that salary is only a portion of the expense of carrying an employee, and many expenses do not scale evenly (i.e. benefits or costs are usually different for part time vs full time employees). It's almost never the case that you can just split hours up over X number of people and end up at the same total cost. Further, in many jurisdictions, the regulations on how the employer needs to behave are dictated by the number of people they cut, so changing the head count number to accommodate a scheme like this may not even be possible if they're already locked in to a plan.
    – dwizum
    Aug 6, 2019 at 13:55

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Firstly you have my sympathies - the redundancy consultation process is never fun, it's stressful as all hell (Been there, done that!)

I was thinking if I could put forward a suggestion to make everybody’s role as part-timers (proportionately) so that job loss can be avoided.

This isn't a bad idea exactly.. but before you can even float this idea with the company I'd suggest talking about it with the others in the team. Because if they aren't all on board it's going to be non-starter. Assuming you are all financially equivalent (get paid the same, produce the same revenue for the company) then you'll need everyone to go to four days a week - and agree to a 20% cut in wages to match in order to make this the same as one person being made redundant. Unfortunately that's going to be a tough sell - not many people are in a position where they can afford to drop their wages by 20% on-going, and all it takes is one person in your team to be unable to afford that hit and you're back to square one. Or if one person in the team is feeling pretty confident they won't be the one to go, or one that is confident they can get another job easily enough at comparable wages then, well you're back to square one.

Kindly suggest how to put it forward to the hr/management.

It (and it's a mighty big "if") you can get everyone in the team on board then you need to all approach management as a group and propose it as a solution. You'll want to have come up with a workable way that the part-time aspect happens as well - this would need to be presented as a solution rather than "here's a different problem".

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  • I was going to answer similarly but you beat me to it. I would add that there are other permutations of others dropping work proportionally (2 people 50% etc.). It also has more reliance on roles being very similar to each other and that there aren't other factors in changing headcount but it really can't hurt to explore the options
    – Firedragon
    Aug 6, 2019 at 11:37
  • @Firedragon indeed, other permutations of reduced work are worth considering as well. Although the general approach would still be the same - get a solution worked out with whoever would be "dropping" and then take it to management.
    – motosubatsu ♦
    Aug 6, 2019 at 11:42
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    Also consider reducing salary rather than reducing hours. It's more unpleasant, but also an option. The key with this is to get an agreement in writing that it will get reviewed on a regular basis (annually?) and reinstated when certain business conditions are met. You might also negotiate something in return, e.g. more annual leave. Just make sure it's not a wildly unrealistic ask (e.g. 10% of the company as shares).
    – Justin
    Aug 6, 2019 at 11:49

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