A small business owner messages on a Sunday. Work has dried up, she cannot afford two of her five staff, and she has decided which two. She plans to tell them on Tuesday.
She has chosen people rather than roles, has no pool, no consultation and no selection criteria, and she has already mentioned it to a third employee. Everything after this depends on what the first reply says.
1. Recognise what this enquiry actually is
Somebody who has made a difficult decision, feels guilty about it, and wants it over quickly. The instinct to move fast is the single biggest risk in the whole process.
2. Ask them to say nothing until you have spoken
The most valuable first instruction. Conversations held before a process starts are frequently the evidence that undoes it.
3. Establish what has already been said
To the affected people, to colleagues, in a meeting or in a message. This is the question that most changes the advice and it is rarely volunteered.
4. Test whether it is genuinely redundancy
Whether the role is disappearing, reducing or changing. Where the work continues and the person is being replaced, it is something else entirely.
5. Identify the selection pool properly
Who does similar work, and why the pool is drawn where it is. An employer who selected individuals before defining a pool has the sequence backwards.
6. Establish objective selection criteria
Applied consistently and capable of being evidenced. Criteria invented after a decision are visible as such.
7. Set out the consultation requirement
Individual consultation, its purpose, how many meetings and what genuinely has to remain open during it. Consultation that has already decided is not consultation.
8. Check the numbers against collective thresholds
Where enough roles are affected, additional obligations apply with their own timescales. Employers do not know these exist.
9. Explore alternatives genuinely
Reduced hours, redeployment, ending contractor arrangements, voluntary redundancy. An employer who considered them is in a different position from one who did not.
10. Get the payment calculations right
Statutory entitlements, notice, holiday and anything contractual. Errors here are the most common cause of a claim that would otherwise not have happened.
11. Handle the timing with some humanity
Not on a Friday afternoon, not by message, not in an open office. The process is legal and the delivery is what the person remembers.
12. Plan for the people who remain
The team is watching how this is handled and drawing conclusions about their own position. Employers consistently underestimate this.
13. Keep the first reply free of any view on the merits
Facts and process, not an opinion on whether the decision is right, which is the discipline in redundancy process enquiries handled without advice.
14. Respond with the care the situation deserves
These messages carry real distress on both sides, which is the tone described in redundancy process enquiries that need immediate care and end of life questions and the care they need.
15. Capture the facts when the employer is awake
Which is a Sunday evening. An assistant that asks what the situation is, how many people, what has already been said and when anything is planned, then asks them to take no action before speaking to somebody, prevents Tuesday. The same urgent triage pattern appears in ai receptionist it support. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under consultants.