Grand tour | HR made worker travel 200 miles for redundancy chat

When an employee’s job is at risk of redundancy, HR should communicate this clearly, effectively and sensitively.

Giving employees space to psychologically prepare for what is coming their way by warning them in advance is the correct way for HR to go about it. Where appropriate, these conversations are better had in-person to avoid misinterpretation and to give the employee any support or answers that they may need.

Yet, a recent redundancy thread on Twitter recalled an employee being asked to travel more than 200 miles from the North East of England to London to be told that their job was on the line and at risk of redundancy. David D’Souza, Membership Director at the CIPD, wrote on Twitter that he recalled hearing from another person that “the HR team wanted to do it face to face” therefore the employee was forced to trek from up north for the day. “So the poor person had a whole day of anxiety, tiring travel, bad news,” he wrote.

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While this is clearly not HR best practice as D’Souza highlighted, most HR professionals would find a more suitable way of navigating that meeting to prevent an employee from unnecessary travel.