Business Restructuring & Reorganisation

Once you have identified if someone is in a unique post or, alternatively, the pool of potentially redundant roles, you must consult with the affected employees. Consultation involves explaining why redundancies may be necessary and why their roles are affected, and looking for ways in which to avoid their redundancy, for example reducing working hours or alternative employment.

If there are a number of people in a particular area, you may have to decide on selection pools and then consider how to decide who from the pool will be selected for redundancy. This is generally done by scoring employees against a set of criteria agreed with the employees at an early stage of the redundancy consultation process.  Under employment laws the criteria must be fair, objective and not discriminatory in any way. ‘Last in, first out’ is unlikely to be a fair method of selecting who should be made redundant unless there is no other way to choose between the employees, for example if they have exactly the same skill set, attendance record, and so on.

If you think it may be necessary to make 20 or more employees redundant at one work site within 90 days (‘collective redundancies’), a more stringent redundancy consultation procedure is applicable. This requires you to consult not only with the potentially affected employees but also with any relevant trade unions or employee representatives for a minimum period of 30 days (this is increased to 45 days if it is 100 or more employees).

You also have an obligation to notify the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills by submitting a HR1 form.

You should always take legal advice when you are contemplating collective redundancies.