Redundancy is an ever present fear even in the IT sector - and with the current so called credit crunch, probably an increasing fear just now.

Under existing employment legislation, in a redundancy situation involving more than 20 potential redundancies, employers have to consult with employee representatives; either trade union representatives where there is a trade union recognised, or elected representatives from amongst the workforce where there is no recognised trade union.

Where an employer fails to consult meaningfully, it is possible to bring a legal claim against that employer, and if successful obtain a sum of money for each person affected. This is called a protective award.

In a case recently decided at the Court of Appeal (Northgate HR Ltd v Mercy), the Court confirmed that if an employer fails to consult properly, only the employee representatives and not individual employees can bring a complaint.

This is an important ruling, and highlights the difficulties and problems for non-union representatives who may not have the necessary skills and resources to pursue a claim. Furthermore, it takes some considerable strength of character for someone acting as an employee representative to bring a legal claim against the employer they may still be working for, with the understandable fear – based on some real likelihood in my experience – that they may find their name in the list of people to be made redundant in a future redundancy programme.

This case further emphasises the value of access to skills and resources in a redundancy situation.

I saw reference in a recent article to a comment that skills should be “demand led”.

But should they – and in any event, whose demand? Employers or employees?

A recent visit to a telecoms products warehouse in Northern Ireland illustrates this only too graphically. The company has just introduced a new SAP-based system to replace the previous software. One of our Unite members told me that he had asked to go on SAP training so he could gain the competence and skill to  be able to use the new system and put in for a higher level job to secure promotion..

He was told that as his present job doesn’t require such skills, he could not go on the training course. Naturally without the training, he does not have the skills and competences for the higher-level job and thus is denied the opportunity for  promotion.

Although things are slowly changing in the UK, the British disease over many years is a failure to invest adequately in people at work, both equipment and skills.

Just look at the following quotations:

•    “The case for action is urgent and compelling…Our intermediate and technical skills lag behind Germany and France..”
•     “Firms need to change or upgrade…skills…our methods and attitudes contrast markedly with …Germany and France..”
•    “Other countries are making an immense effort to train more scientific and technical manpower…we are in danger of being left behind..”
•    “The development of technical education is the greatest need of this country.”
•    “The greater part of what is taught. does not seem to be the proper preparation for …business”

The above were written in 2006, 1981, 1945, 1924 and 1776 respectively. All are taken from official reports apart from the last, which is from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.

Even now – and this is as true for the IT sector as anywhere – we have a just-in-time approach to skills development, as we do for the supply of products and services.

The UK is never going to be able to compete against the rapidly-expanding economies of India and China either in goods or services on pay costs. Nor should we. There is no mileage in a race to the bottom, lowering our pay rates towards those, for example, of Eastern Europe or south east Asia, not that pay rates in these areas are remaining static in any case.

The only way – and the only sustainable way – now and for the future will be for the UK to compete on skills and the quality of our goods and services.

Just-in-time skills – or demand-led skills – is the wrong way to approach this, implying that we can develop the required skills at the time they are needed. Wrong – this will be too late.

We have to think and plan ahead, preparing in advance for the needs of tomorrow and not just today. Needs-led and not demand-led.

If you work for an IT company and have experience of being bullied, then unfortunately you are not alone.

In research carried out over the three months to February 2008, nearly two thirds (65 per cent) of the 860 Unite members surveyed in the electronics and IT sectors reported that they had experience of bullying at work, and more than half (55 per cent) said they had witnessed bullying in their workplace. This is also borne out by a further survey carried out by the Work Life Balance Centre and Coventry University, reported recently in the human resources journal Personnel Today, which highlighted the IT sector as being one of the sectors with the worst incidence of bullying.

Bullying at work is deeply destructive of workplace relationships and undermines people’s health, confidence and ability to cope. In the Unite survey, we found that more than one in five of respondents said they had to take more than a month off work as sick leave because of their experience of bullying.

We know from our schooldays that there is usually a bully in every playground, but most people do not get up in the morning to go to work intending to bully their work colleagues. It is the working environment that creates the circumstances where bullying arises, and all too often is then tolerated or accepted as a feature of working life.

Bullying is organisational and can only be adequately combated by an organisational approach. At the very least, employers should have a clear statement that bullying will not be tolerated, have procedures in place on bullying and harassment, send a strong message from the top of the organisation that complaints of bullying and/or harassment will be taken seriously, and provide training on how to apply and operate the policy, in particular for managers.

Sixty per cent of respondents in our survey reported that their employer did not have an anti-bullying/harassment policy, and even where such policies were in place, nearly a quarter said they had not received any information or training about the policy. In addition, and as borne out by our survey and experience, all too often people are reluctant to make a complaint because they do not believe this will be seriously considered, or even worse they are too scared of the consequences.

Employees and their know-how are the key assets of most IT companies and it is vital that employers improve the way in which people are treated. Since workplace bullying was recognised as a problem more than a decade ago, many organisations have adopted policies to address the issue. However, a policy is no use unless all parties work together to take on the challenge.

The Dignity at Work Partnership has been established with funding jointly from the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Unite to tackle the problem of bullying and harassment in the workplace. The aim of the project is for employers and employee representatives to work together to find ways of addressing the issues around bullying, and develop sound practices based on sharing of experience.