Bumping is a practice followed by many organizations to reserve the talent pool when it goes through downsizing. It denotes the offer made to the senior level employee, whose position is chosen for elimination. The offer could either be an alternative position or a position of lesser seniority in the company itself. Bumping is often considered to be an effective practice for employers, as it enables them to retain the workforce with good skills, experience, and expertise, who would otherwise be downsized. However, many employers do not generally opt for bumping, which apparently results in injustice to the bumped employee.
Bump redundancy is a process wherein an employee, who is at the risk of being redundant has been offered a position of similar or lower level. This transfers the redundancy from one employee to another.
There are no rules which describes bumping as legal or illegal for organizations. However, there are situations where employers can perform bumping for a fair and clean dismissal or during downsizing of the company.
Bumping rights are the advantages given to an employee in a senior position and at the threat of lay-off to consider selecting a low-level place. The risk of lay-off is transferred to the employee who is at that lower position.
Whether bumping employees is right or wrong can be decided based on the following questions.
Bumping up refers to an employee being transferred to a higher position than his own in an organizational tree. Whereas bumping down is an employee transferred to a lower position.
