Redundancy -personal circumstances.

A question about : Redundancy -personal circumstances.

Are employers obliged to consider personal circumstances for redundancy -ie a single person more at risk than someone who has dependants?Also can length of service be ignored -or should that be factored in ?

Best answers:

• I certainly hope that personal circumstances aren't taken into account. I would hope that they are irrelevant to an employer. I'm sure its probably all about performance/reliability etc.
• Not in my experience. When I was made redundant some years ago, it was along with others in differing circumstances. I was single and poor and went down with colleagues who were wealthy older people and equally poor folk with dependent children and grandchildren.
  Work life is totally separate from home life.
  Best wishes to you OP. x
• They don't have to and they shouldn't.
• I'm pretty sure in the UK it's illegal to take a employee's personal circumstances (dependents, etc.) into consideration, but I've heard rumours that it does sometimes happen informally in the company I work for.
  As an aside, in Germany, it's legal and to some extent compulsory to take these "Social Criteria" into account.