Making People Redundant

This paper looked at the correlates of individual’s recommendations for making people redundant. Participants ranked the importance of various criteria (length of service, attendance, disciplinary/performance records) used to make job redundancies. They were also asked to add any additional criteria, and their many suggestions included individual circumstances, organisational costs, and employee engagement. The focus was on individual difference correlates of rating 10 criteria to make redundancy decisions. In all, 499 working British adults completed various questionnaires, including Just World Beliefs, Organisational Disenchantment and Equity at work. There was considerable agreement on redundancy criteria, with the three most important being performance records, skills and competencies, and disciplinary records. The variable that most correlated with the chosen redundancy criteria was education. Regressions indicated that different individual difference variables were related to different redundancy criteria preferences. Limitations are acknowledged, and implications considered.