[fredfish]

In what sense do you need to be cynical to believe the purpose in testing employees and then keeping the 50% of staff that did best when reducing staff was for the reduction of staff?

[ralferoo]

In many countries, making a large percentage of your workforce redundant requires following special procedures. This is true in the UK and Ireland (as in this case), and if more than 20 people are being made redundant within 90 days a certain process has to be followed, which will add at least 2-3 months before the staff can be let go.

The reason it would be a cynical view is that firing a lot of people for failing to reach some required standard wouldn't be classed as redundancy, but a firing. This also reflects worse on the affected employees when seeking future employment.

I actually hope some of the people challenge this in court, as there are also regulations around this - if the people had already passed their probation period, and especially if they had already been working a significant length of time without issue, and then fired because of this test, it might well be found to be unfair dismissal. And, as I said before - if over 50% of your workforce don't know your policies, that shows a failure in management for not providing adequate training, not a reflection of the employees.