UK employees face hostile HR practices during redundancy and disciplinary processes

Yeh ‘informal meeting’, I had one of those once. We just want to go over a couple of issues, nothing to worry about as it’s informal etc. OK so we’d like to discuss why you did XYZ & then Agent X Whose identity we want to keep secret says you told him you think management are shit. Based on this we’re moving straight to a disciplinary hearing today, right now. Actually NO. You were told explicitly by the full time union representative (I was cc in email) that if you try to initiate a disciplinary hearing, I was to say I wish time to look at your evidence, & HR would inform my union on a suitable time to reconvene meetings. Ambushed & Kangaroo Court thwarted.

I have been stuck with onboarding for a conditional offer I had for about 3 months now. I completed all the documentation process from my side a month ago and HR recruitment head said they had all the docs and waiting for hiring manager to sign off and will soon get in touch with start dates. its been a month , I have been following up. the main hr person who I was speaking to is ghosting me, the others are like we haven't heard back from hiring manager.

I work for what sounds like a very similar business (large company with heavy US base) and what I would say is that there is very little knowledge of UK employment law and an assumption that the approach to work, the culture of work and the legislation allows them to do the same thing. As HR we have to balance demands/expectations of US based leaders with UK legislation and what is fundamentally the right thing for employees. At times, that balancing act can be incredibly tough - it has cost me a lot of sleep and more than a few tears in this year alone.

We are in the same situation. I responded in the same way as you by resigning with immediate effect and not to HR to the owner/line managers faces and they blew up. I initially questioned the same as you - is HR completely incompetent? But I just know they were under pressure to do their dirty work. HR was visibly shook, head in hands level of despair. Which I took as her making mistakes at first but hindsight tells me she’s exasperated by what’s coming, the advice she probably gave and was ignored and now the level of emotion she’s about to have to deal with the owners.