This is an inherited problem from a recent merger:-
Employee has continuous service of 29 years from previous mergers but in Oct 2002 after a lot of sick days and at employees request reduced down to 3 days per week, gave up managerial role of Manager, Software Development and given a consultant’s title of Engineering Consultant however, the salary at managerial level was merely pro-rata to new hours with no re-negotiation to a non managerial rate of pay.
Next appraisal caried out in Jan 2004 where he was rated as good with a smooth transition from manager to consultant and had picked up the required development skills from a period of self study and mentoring i.e. no formal training.
In 2005 team advised of proposed redundancies and this employee with another colleague reduced hours down to offset a redundancy situation. Hours are now 19 hours per week i.e. 2.5 days.
Since 2006 more illness and was allowed to regulate the 19 hours to a better pattern for himself.
June 2007 current manager has tried to tackle underperformance in current role and salary pro rata is in excess of his abilities. He is still being mentored by his peers and his reduced hours do not allow his manager to give him anything but the most basic of work leaving the more compelx work to the team members who work full time. This employee does not agree with this assessment.
Problem: Employee is a Snr Software Engineer who does not perform this role operating as a junior and has poor technology skills.
Salary paid could fill one full time vacancy but we are loathed to employ a junior at this time because they come in and perform at a higher level than this employee.
We need a Snr Software Engineer full time, this employee has not carried out an engineering role for many years and he cannot deal with stress so how do we achieve downgrading this employee in both job and salary?

Do we for example have to restructure dept and make everyone reapply/reassess the positions available?
Regrade everyone in the dept set salaries (up or down) against each grade.

Or can we just tackle this employee but am mindful of constructive dismissal and age discrimination.

I would welcome any advice and any pitfalls that we need to be aware of.
Many thanks

Jackie

Jacki Hall