Bumping definition

Employees at risk of redundancy can be given the opportunity to ‘bump’ another employee out of their position, so it’s the second employee that actually gets made redundant. This often happens when employers don’t want to lose senior, valued staff and those staff don’t mind moving to a more junior position in order to stay at the company.

Bumping can be emotionally taxing on all parties involved and can open the company up to legal action should the second employee claim unfair dismissal. Bumping is not appropriate in all cases and employers should take a look at all possibilities to see if there’s scope to keep both employees in the job.