Need help understanding Voluntary Redundancy Programme at work

Dear all,

My company is offering voluntary redundancy packages to all employees throughout Europe. After that, no one knows what will happen.  Everyone is tight-lipped but I am sure that they will start laying people off if they don’t have enough takers.  I am considering taking the voluntary scheme as my department might be one that is on the chopping block (marketing) and the payoff is actually quite nice. There’s of course, one catch. Your boss/department can deny you the package scheme if (I suppose) they consider your role too important to lose.  However, my real fear is that what if I choose to take voluntary redundancy and my request is denied, but then a few months later they do try to lay me off later this year?  For how long am I protected until I can say I tried to sign on to the voluntary redundancy scheme?  I don't want to be fired with just a lousy one month's pay if I can get a much better package now (and a head start in the market hiring season of September).

Also – has anyone take their company up on this scheme? Any snags I should be aware of (other than a going straight in to a bad economy?)

Thanks everyone!
Tulip

You might want to look at the following site to get some idea of your redundancy rights and pay entitlement, which could be more than one month depending upon your age and length of service.
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/RedundancyAndLeavingYourJob/Redundancy/index.htm
Bear in mind that it's a few years since I was in HR  , but as far as I am aware there is nothing to stop your employer turning down your voluntary redundancy application, then deciding to make you compulsorarily redundant, providing they followed the correct procedures. However you would have grounds to question whether this was in fact the case - how could you be indispensible one minute, then not needed the next? If you have a union or professional organisation they may be able to help/advise you.
Speaking from the point of view of someone who has done this from the other side, most employers will do what they can to let people go voluntarily, even if they are the "better" employees and hard to replace. It usually saves time, trouble and money in the long run.

Can you sue the employer in case of the scenario described by the OP? Is there a ground for law suit?

This thread was from 2009!