As @tinybreak infers, they may be trying to get people to leave so that they donβt have to payout redundancies.
If you take your LSL and AL, you can bypass all the issues. When you come back you will either be invaluable to them and be able to get a payrise, or they would have decided to issue redundancies after all and you can cash-in again.
It is a gamble though.
Oh noooo. Sorry to hear. Certainly brings up a lot of anxiety. What a shit way to restructure... I agree with taking your LSL as part of your plans. If they're going to be merciless, so can you