I don’t know about you, but these early months are hibernation time in the Wahlen household, as we hide away from the wind and rain and catch up on some TV drama.
And recently – between dog walks – I’ve been diving into Death in Paradise; the sun and beaches are always welcome visuals when it’s beating it down outside.
Until they drop a clanger. From an HR perspective that is.
On one particular episode the murderer is revealed, and his motive?
“Well, you see I worked for his company for 30 years and then they made me redundant and I got nothing!”
And another one:
“I worked there for 5 years but when I got cancer they just fired me and I got nothing!”
Cue significant shrieking at the television.
Obviously the scriptwriters aren’t HR experts, and they’re just trying to conjure up motives, but when you dive in, they’re a million miles from reality (yes I know it’s fiction!).
Take the ‘redundancy murder’ excuse – in the UK, if you have over 2 years’ service, you would be entitled to one week’s pay for every year of service up to 12 weeks AND one week’s pay for every year of service up to 20 weeks, capped at £700/week.
It is not quite as straightforward as that, there is a weighting system based on age while employed, but the point being that the 60 year old with 30 years service would have qualified for the maximum tax free amount of £21,000.
Not enough to buy a house in the Caribbean, but also not “nothing”.
Second one is even worse.
Firstly, they would clearly have been unfairly dismissed, which would get them one year’s pay, capped at £115,115. They’d also qualify for disability discrimination due to being dismissed for having cancer. The award for discrimination? Uncapped! Hundreds of thousands of pounds of potential compensation.
Couple of takeaway points:
- If you’re an employee, don’t believe that you would have to commit murder if you lost your job
- If you’re an employer, don’t get any ideas, because it could get very expensive if you believe what you see on TV!
