Worker

Employer

Anonymised Parties

A HR Manager 

A University

Representatives

Cillian McGovern Bl Instructed by Crushell & Co Solicitors

Lian Rooney of IBEC

Act

Dispute Reference No.

Date of Receipt

Complaint seeking adjudication by the Workplace Relations Commission under section 13 of the Industrial Relations Act, 1969

IR - SC - 00002705

28/05/2024

The Worker joined the Employer in November 2019 as a Human Resource Manager.

She is paid at the Senior Administrative Officer IV Scale and was granted incremental credit when she joined. She is currently paid €106,873.

In late 2023 the Employer began a process to reorganise their HR Department. This has involved the creation of new roles and those roles have had to go into a regrading process. Importantly for the Woker, her existing role, which involves overseeing HR Operations, including recruitment, has been split into two different roles. One will focus on recruitment and resourcing. The other will continue to perform the HR operations functions. These roles have recently been put through a grading exercise as they were newly created. They are also at the same grade of the Worker’s current role. The Worker has been allowed elect between the two roles and has chosen the role related to recruitment and resourcing. 

The Worker has raised an array of issues with this process and may consider herself constructively dismissed when these changes come into effect in a few weeks’ time.

However, the only matter which she appears to have exhausted local avenues for resolution and to which she seeks specific recommendations from the WRC on, is that of a request to regrade her current role.

The Worker is extremely concerned that the reorganisation will affect her future promotional opportunities and that she is suffering a significant diminution in her role.

She is seeking this regrading exercise now, in the role she currently occupies, so that it might reveal that full implications of this move and ensure she is mapped to new roles of appropriate seniority.

Her barrister made extensive written and oral submissions on her behalf.

The Employer consulted with the Worker and her colleagues about these changes. A new HR strategy has been a necessary change and they had thought that the Worker was on board with it.

Regarding regrading exercises they are only able to do this where there are new roles or significant changes to existing roles. The new role, which the Worker will move to in a few weeks, went through such a process. This was carried out by an external auditing and accounting firm.

The Worker’s current role remains the same as it was when she joined in 2019 there have been no substantive changes to it which would justify a regrading exercise. 

In conducting my investigation, I have taken into account all relevant submissions presented to me by the parties.

Much of the hearing focused on the process of the new HR organisational structure being discussed and approved. Ultimately that issue does not appear to be the subject of the trade dispute referred to me but I note the Worker is operating under a concern that a reduction in scope of her role may result in her occupying a de facto more junior role though paid the same. Reduction in an employee’s scope of duties or of workload doesn’t necessarily mean reduction in seniority but that can be the result in some cases. Ultimately this cannot be ascertained from the information in front of me and I suspect it won’t actually be known to the parties until after the Worker takes up her new role.

What is before me is the issue of the Worker wanting a regrading exercise for her current job description/role which will no longer exist in a few weeks. Her Counsel has argued that there is a custom and practice that where there is a lack of clarity about the scope of a role there is an entitlement to a regrading exercise. I see no basis for such an assertion.

Regrading requests are an extremely contentious matter in the current public sector industrial relations climate and require sanction by the parent department and DPENDR. The Employer, has in the past organised two separate regrading exercises. One was in 2018 where some 36 members of staff who occupied jobs which had outgrown the grade assigned to them were allowed to be considered for regrading. There was a subsequent regrading excise of 6 other posts which related to an internal reorganisation. Neither of these exercises support a general individual right for employees to insist on a regrading review by way of custom and practice.

Most importantly the Worker does not dispute that her role has not changed substantially since she took it on in 2019. There is no reason to justify a regrading exercise. The role she will take up in a few weeks’ time has recently been through a grading exercise.  

In the circumstances I do not think it is appropriate to recommend that the Worker’s current role be considered for regrading.