Collective-Redundancy Fair-Selection Director

The mandate

The group has approved a strategic reduction in operating cost and overlapping roles, but organisation charts do not reflect work shared across countries, contractors and remote teams. Managers propose selection pools around reporting lines and recent performance, while protected leave, temporary assignments and inconsistent ratings make those methods unsafe and potentially unfair. Consultation bodies require credible alternatives and employment decisions must occur on different local timetables. The company needs one evidence architecture without pretending every jurisdiction follows one process.

The deliverables are a role-and-work baseline, selection-pool rationale, criteria and evidence standard, calibration protocol, consultation information set, alternative-role pathway, appeal design and implementation controls. The work must distinguish role removal, headcount reduction, performance management, location change and contractor substitution. Criteria must be observable, relevant to future work, consistently available and tested for indirect impact, with counsel owning jurisdictional legality.

Four milestones govern four months: week three accepts scope, work baseline and legal-advice protocol; week seven completes pool and criteria design; week twelve accepts calibration, consultation and alternative-role processes; and week seventeen delivers simulation evidence, manager guidance, audit trail and rollout plan. Billing follows those milestones. No live employee outcome will be decided by the consultant or used as an undeclared design experiment.

Acceptance requires business leaders to reconcile proposed future work to selection pools, employee relations to reproduce sample scores from evidence, privacy to approve data use, and consultation owners to test information completeness. Two calibration exercises must surface missing or incomparable evidence, and the sponsor will return one consolidated exception list within five working days with counsel dependencies clearly marked.

The client provides strategy, organisation and role records, work allocation, contractor use, performance and skills evidence, leave and assignment statuses, consultation obligations, policies, counsel advice and secure workflow access. The consultant does not select employees, provide legal advice, conduct consultation, make redundancy decisions, score live cases, determine protected status, negotiate severance or communicate outcomes.

Why this is external work

Business leaders know future work, managers know individuals and employee relations knows process, but each has incentives that can distort pool and evidence choices. A generic legal template cannot resolve inconsistent role reality or data. External fair-selection expertise can build a challengeable method and audit trail without deciding who leaves or replacing consultation.

What you will own

• Reconstruct future work, duplicated responsibilities, locations, contractor substitution and genuine role-removal boundaries.
• Design selection pools with business rationale, comparable work, mobility, reporting history and jurisdictional dependencies explicit.
• Establish criteria and evidence standards that are relevant, observable, available, time-bounded and independently reviewable.
• Test ratings, leave, temporary assignments, disability, remote work and manager discretion for comparability and indirect impact.
• Build calibration, consultation, alternative-role, employee response, appeal, privacy and record-retention controls.
• Run two exercises, recording evidence gaps, manager variance, unsafe proxies and questions reserved for counsel.
• Deliver the method, information packs, guidance, governance, audit trail and phased country implementation.

Candidate qualifications

• Has designed collective-redundancy selection and consultation governance across several European jurisdictions and business units.
• Understands pools, criteria, calibration, alternatives, protected leave, indirect impact, appeals and works-council dependencies.
• Can connect future work to role decisions without converting performance or personal preference into hidden criteria.
• Has challenged inconsistent ratings and skills evidence across remote, matrixed and temporarily assigned employees.
• Brings credible collaboration with business leaders, employee relations, counsel, works councils, privacy and reward.
• Is independent of outplacement, litigation, executive search, severance administration and employee-selection decisions.

Non-negotiables

• Can attend monthly Helsinki consultation weeks and both selection calibration exercises despite remote delivery.
• Brings direct collective-redundancy design; general organisation design or employment law alone is insufficient.
• Will not score live employees, predetermine consultation, hide contractor substitution or treat leave as adverse evidence.
• Will disclose ties to unions, works councils, outplacement firms, employee counsel and restructuring advisers.

1. 49 words maximum. Which fact should determine a selection pool when reporting lines and actual work differ?
2. 49 words maximum. How would you test a future-skills criterion for hidden manager discretion?
3. 49 words maximum. What evidence must exist before a calibration score is defensible?