"Can a full-time employee, transferring role within a corporation at the employer's request and within the same legal entity, request or expect their employer to include within the unchanged terms and conditions a reference to redundancy?"

 So, in this scenario, the transfer is occurring between two separate teams in the same corporation. And the redundancy terms of the originating team have been typically very generous. The employee is concerned that their new global team's redundancy terms may not be as generous, and thus disadvantage them. The employer is refusing to comment on redundancy terms in the new T&C.

Seamus: Well, it's a cracker of a question, as they say. It is a good one. I suppose some of the issues . . . I mean, I think my gut reaction is that I would go with the majority in relation to this.

I would see it that this is not a TUPE scenario where the employee is transferring from one employer to the other, or from one entity over to another entity. It seems that the employer remains the same. This is a transfer between roles or between teams.

And the other important aspect is that there isn't any written policy and procedure in respect of the redundancy. So really, what we're looking at here, Christine, is a circumstance where you have a custom and practice that has built up.

Now, it would be a bit of a concern, I have to say, that you might have one employer who has a different approach to redundancy within different teams. There may be good reasons for that, but in a general process, we're looking at continuity in relation to that, and that tends to be the fairer way to deal with things.

I've had a number of tribunal cases where an issue of continuity arises. It creates a question mark and involves probing from the tribunal panel.

But it seems to me that in these circumstances, there isn't any written policy and procedure in respect to the terms and conditions. That puts the employee in a very difficult position because if there's this knowledge that one team is treated differently than the other, there might be a disadvantage of him or her moving across to a new team.

So I think that probably my advice to the employee would be that you're probably best putting a written request in and asking for written confirmation from the employer as to what the position is on the terms and conditions.

Really underlining and highlighting the position that under your existing terms and conditions, you would consider that there has been a custom and practice that has built up whereby there has been an enhancement to the redundancy policy and procedure, and asking for confirmation that that will be the position going forward.

I would imagine that might send a few heads into spin in the employer, a few HR advisors maybe with a bit of panic. But I think if I was advising the employee, that's what I would ask them to do.

If I was acting for the employer, I think that the advice to the employer would have to be, "Well, look, you really should have a clear policy and procedure in place".

And the other thing that struck me about this was that usually whenever you enter into a redundancy process, it is about consultation. And if there isn't a redundancy policy and procedure in place, the employer in advance of making any decisions about redundancy, this is at the very infancy of the redundancy process where you're advising that there's risk of redundancy, should be engaging and consulting with your employees about the policy and procedure. And particularly if you have a unionised place of work, the trade union should be involved in that process as well.

So where there isn't a formalised or written policy and procedure, one should be produced to deal with that redundancy process.

Now, I am looking at that on the guise that you have a significant number of redundancies in a larger employer. If this was just a pool of one or a pool of four or five employees, you can see the logistics of all of this being very different. But at the same time, I think the principles are the same.

I think that the employer should be open and transparent, and I think that you're at risk if you end up at a tribunal if you haven't been open and transparent about your processes.

And unless there's some formal or some very good, justifiable reason as to why you would have two different redundancy policy and procedures or packages available in these different departments . . . And there could well be a very good justification and a clear justification for it, but we need to know a wee bit more about the ins and outs of this particular organisation or employer.

 But in general, I think that, legally, the way that I would see it is the employee's terms and conditions are not changing, and therefore the employee is moving across to a different role, a different team. And unless the employee is formally advised and consulted about changes to terms and conditions of employment, they should remain the same. And if there's nothing in writing about it, then the onus would maybe be on the employee to seek clarity and written clarity from the employer.