Told her job was gone, then dismissed the next afternoon on leave

Alana Fayad worked in the call centre of NobleOak's Genus life insurance business, answering queries and complaints and keeping customers. Counting her time with the business NobleOak had taken over, she had been there since June 2014. In 2020, as COVID-19 hit, NobleOak merged two client service teams. Twenty positions went, 16 new ones were created, and four roles, including hers, did not fit the new structure.

On 3 June 2020 she was called to a meeting of 15 to 20 minutes and told her role was redundant. She broke down and cried. She was given a letter inviting her to spend "the next couple of days" thinking about redeployment, with a list of vacancies attached. She went home on authorised leave. Nobody contacted her. Late the next afternoon she was emailed a letter ending her employment. It described a consultation process that the Commissioner called "a work of fiction".

NobleOak said this was a genuine redundancy. The Commission accepted that her job really had gone. But the insurance award required consultation, and there had been none: the company "moved with indecent haste". There was also a vacant Sales and Service Consultant role. NobleOak's own managers agreed she could have done it, and one said she would "more than likely" have been redeployed into it had she said she was interested. Instead, they had told her they did not think she had the skills.

So the redundancy was not genuine, and the dismissal was unfair. The Commission found she would have worked in the sales role, on $55,000, for at least a year. After deducting her notice pay and taking 10% off because she had not made reasonable efforts to find work, that came to $44,932.50. The law caps compensation at roughly six months' pay, so the order was $32,987. Her 10 weeks' redundancy pay was not deducted, because redundancy pay is not wages.