Mr C Smith v IBM United Kingdom Limited — 2020

The tribunal found that the reason for dismissal was redundancy. Employment Judge Miller accepted that the decision-maker, Mr Bradbury, genuinely believed there was a reduced need for engineers working on on-premises products, and the tribunal did not assess whether that was a sound commercial decision.

The unfairness arose from the selection and consultation process. The respondent relied on Checkpoint appraisal outcomes and managers' views in the scoring exercise, but the claimant had not agreed those assessments and had not been told they might be used in a redundancy selection exercise. The tribunal found that the scoring was not transparent or obviously objective, and that the claimant was not given a fair and proper opportunity to understand or challenge the reasons for his selection before dismissal.

The tribunal found that the respondent took reasonable steps on redeployment and that no suitable alternative employment was available. It concluded there was a 50% chance the claimant would still have been selected for redundancy if a fair process had been followed, so any compensatory award would be reduced by 50%. The contractual redundancy payment claim failed because the claimant had not shown that a one-off ex gratia enhanced redundancy payment by Micromuse had become a contractual entitlement.