Attendance, reliability and timekeeping as selection criteria

Attendance, reliability and time-keeping are all valid selection criteria. It is legitimate for an employer to value reliability and punctuality. However, the selection process should be structured to guard against employees being disadvantaged by a single unexpected event causing an absence, such as a one-off injury or illness. This can be achieved by examining attendance over a longer period (Byrne v Castrol UK Limited EAT/429/96).

Care must be taken not to discriminate, for example through a disproportionate impact on women, who take more time off as carers. The danger of discrimination can be reduced by using a wide range of criteria, so that no single factor less favourable to one sex dominates the selection process.

It is automatically unfair to select an employee for redundancy for asserting, or proposing to assert, a statutory right, such as the right to take unpaid parental leave, or unpaid time off (dependent leave) to deal with family emergencies.

Time off for pregnancy or maternity-related reasons must always be disregarded.

Employees on long-term sick leave and in receipt of sick pay can be included within the pool of employees at risk of redundancy, as long as adjustments are made to take account of disability. In particular, taking into account disability-related absences is potentially discrimination arising from disability. The position of disabled employees in the context of redundancy is the subject of the next Chapter.