Redundancy Process: How to Plan and Follow a Fair Procedure
A fair redundancy process starts before anyone is told their role is at risk. Leaders need to be clear about the business reason for the proposed change, consider alternatives, map the redundancy procedure, identify who needs to be consulted, prepare managers, and leave genuine room for employee feedback to influence what happens next.
By the time a leadership team starts discussing employee redundancy, it has often spent weeks working through forecasts, organisational charts, client commitments, costs, and future roles. The people affected have had none of that time. They receive the news at the beginning of a process that senior leaders may feel they have already mentally completed.
That difference matters.
Acas says employers must follow a fair redundancy process that includes consultation. It also recommends creating a redundancy plan covering the alternatives considered, the proposed number of redundancies, consultation, timeframes, selection criteria, notice, redundancy pay, employee support, and appeals.
A good redundancy plan therefore does more than keep the organisation compliant. It creates enough structure for you to make difficult decisions consistently, communicate them properly, and make sure consultation remains genuine rather than becoming a series of meetings held after the answer has already been decided.
What should happen before you start a redundancy process?
Before beginning a redundancy process, establish whether redundancy is genuinely the issue you are dealing with and whether there are realistic alternatives.
Acas describes redundancy as usually occurring when a role is no longer needed. This might happen because part of the organisation is closing, the number or type of roles required is changing, or work is moving to another location. If the real concern is an individual's conduct or performance, a redundancy procedure is not the appropriate route.
That distinction sounds straightforward on paper. It can become less clear when a business is redesigning a team and also has concerns about particular individuals.
The safest starting point is the organisation and the roles within it, not the person.
Ask what work the business needs in its future structure, what work has reduced or disappeared, which roles are required, and how many people are needed to perform them. The structure should drive the redundancy planning rather than selecting individuals first and designing a process around the desired result.
You should also look seriously at alternatives.
Acas suggests options including changing working arrangements, voluntary redundancy, reducing or stopping overtime, freezing recruitment, redeployment, and considering whether employees could move into other parts of the organisation.
Not every alternative will be commercially realistic.
The requirement to consider alternatives does not mean you have to preserve every role at any cost. It means you should be able to explain what you considered and why the proposed redundancy remained necessary.
That work becomes the foundation of the business case and the consultation that follows.
What should a redundancy plan include?
A redundancy plan should map the entire process before the first announcement is made, while leaving the outcome genuinely open to consultation.
Acas recommends including the alternatives already considered, the number of proposed redundancies, how employees will be informed and supported, consultation arrangements, realistic timeframes, fair selection criteria, notice and redundancy pay, and an appeal process. The plan should also account for all affected employees, including people who are away from work on maternity leave or sick leave.
For a growing business, we would think about the plan in five connected parts.
1. The business case
You need a clear explanation of the change you are proposing and why.
That does not need to become a 40-page board paper. It does need to be coherent enough that a manager can explain it to an employee without improvising.
The business has lost two major client accounts and the current structure assumes a level of work that we no longer expect to return in the next financial year. We are therefore proposing to reduce the size of the account management team from eight roles to six.
That gives employees something concrete to respond to. Compare it with:
We need to become more efficient.
The second statement creates more questions than it answers.
If cost reduction is the reason, say so. If technology has changed the work, explain what has changed. If two teams are being combined, explain why the new structure is being proposed.
Clarity does not make redundancy easy. It makes consultation possible.
2. Who is affected
Work out which roles are affected by the proposed organisational change before deciding which individuals may ultimately be selected.
Where a role disappears entirely and there is only one employee doing it, the position may be relatively straightforward. Where you need fewer people doing the same or similar work, you will normally need to consider an appropriate selection pool and fair selection criteria.
Acas says selection pools should generally include roles that are the same or similar, and employers should also consider roles involving similar skills. Selection criteria should be fair and as objective and measurable as possible.
The words "as objective as possible" matter.
Performance can form part of selection, for example, but the evidence behind the score needs to withstand scrutiny. A manager's recollection that one person is "stronger commercially" is very different from documented evidence gathered consistently across the pool.
This is one reason good redundancy planning cannot be separated from the quality of the HR foundations you already have.
3. The consultation process
Plan how consultation will work before telling employees they are at risk.
You need to know who will conduct meetings, what information will be shared, how employees can make suggestions, how those suggestions will be considered, and what the likely timetable looks like.
Acas says consultation should happen before a decision is made. Employers should discuss the proposed changes and reasons, possible ways to avoid or reduce redundancies, future skills requirements, selection criteria, employee concerns, and support available to affected people.
Consultation is not simply the stage where the employer explains a finished plan.
It is a process of talking and listening.
You do not have to accept every alternative an employee proposes. You do need to consider suggestions seriously enough that consultation is capable of changing something.
4. Communications
Redundancy announcements need planning at organisational, team, and individual level.
Acas recommends informing affected employees as soon as possible once redundancies are being considered. Employers should explain why redundancies might be necessary, the proposed number, and what happens next. Employees who are at risk should also receive written confirmation and information about consultation and potential alternatives.
The order matters.
People should not discover that roles are at risk through rumours, an accidental diary invitation, a Slack message, or a colleague who was briefed earlier.
You should also think about employees whose roles are not at risk.
A restructure changes their organisation too. They may lose colleagues, inherit work, change manager, move teams, or worry that another redundancy round is coming.
5. What happens after consultation
Your redundancy plan should continue through selection, notice, alternative employment, appeal, and support.
Acas says an employer should only issue notice once consultation and selection have finished. Employers must also identify suitable alternative employment where available and offer an appropriate role rather than requiring an employee selected for redundancy to compete for it in the usual way.
Acas also recommends an appeal process where an employee believes they were selected unfairly or the redundancy procedure was not followed properly.
Planning these stages at the beginning helps avoid a common problem: the organisation manages the announcement carefully, then starts making decisions reactively as individual situations emerge.
When does collective redundancy consultation apply?
Collective redundancy consultation is required when you are proposing 20 or more redundancies at one establishment within a 90-day period.
Where the threshold applies, consultation takes place with a recognised trade union or elected employee representatives, alongside individual consultation. Employers must also notify the government's Redundancy Payments Service before issuing individual notices of dismissal.
At the time of writing, Acas states that the government must be notified at least 30 days before the first dismissal where 20 to 99 redundancies are proposed, and at least 45 days beforehand where 100 or more redundancies are proposed.
This is an area where we would recommend checking the current position every time rather than relying on a previous redundancy process.
Employment law is changing; thresholds and requirements can move, and the commercial pressure surrounding a larger restructuring is precisely when assumptions become risky.
If your proposed numbers are close to the collective consultation threshold, plan carefully rather than designing the process around staying just below it.
Acas also notes that collective consultation can still be good practice even where it is not legally required.
What does effective redundancy consultation actually look like?
Effective redundancy consultation gives employees a real opportunity to understand the proposal, challenge assumptions, suggest alternatives, and influence decisions before they become final.
Acas says employers should seriously consider ideas employees put forward to avoid or reduce redundancies. Consultation does not have to result in agreement, but the employer should be able to demonstrate that points raised were genuinely considered.
That creates an important test.
If an employee proposed a workable alternative tomorrow, could the plan still change?
If the honest answer is no because every role, selection decision, leaving date, and new structure has already been confirmed, the organisation needs to look carefully at whether it is genuinely consulting or simply announcing.
Good consultation often means being comfortable saying:
We are proposing this, and this is why.
rather than:
This is what is happening.
The distinction can feel small in a script. It is substantial in practice.
Give people enough information to participate
An employee cannot suggest credible alternatives if they do not understand the problem the proposal is trying to solve.
You do not necessarily need to share every commercially sensitive document. You do need to give people enough information to engage with the reasoning.
If the proposal is about reducing cost, employees need some sense of the scale of the problem. If it is about redesigning roles, they need to understand what the future work will look like. If the proposal is about combining teams, they need to understand why the new structure is expected to work better.
Consultation works badly when employees are asked for ideas but denied the information required to form them.
Record what employees suggest
Keep a proper record of the suggestions and concerns raised during redundancy consultation, together with how the organisation considered them.
This matters even when the answer is no.
We considered moving the work into the operations team but decided against it because that team does not have the required technical accreditation.
shows reasoning. "The proposal was considered but rejected" tells the employee almost nothing.
Clear records also help different managers remain consistent, particularly when several people are consulting employees at the same time.
Why manager preparation is part of the redundancy procedure
Managers should understand the redundancy plan, the reasons behind it, what they can and cannot say, and how to escalate questions before they begin employee conversations.
Acas specifically recommends training and supporting managers so that they understand the plan, can explain it, are confident working with employees, know how to raise issues with the people leading the process, and know where to seek further support.
This is one of the areas that deserves more attention during redundancy planning.
The leadership team and HR adviser may have spent days discussing the proposal. The manager delivering the message may have been briefed for 30 minutes.
Why me?
Who decided this?
Has my performance affected the decision?
Could I do the new role?
Is the decision already made?
What happens if I disagree with my score?
I am on maternity leave. What happens to me?
A manager who does not know the answer will either speculate or retreat behind a script. Neither builds confidence in the process.
Managers do not need to memorise employment law. They need enough information to explain the proposal accurately, recognise the questions they should not improvise an answer to, listen properly, and know how to capture what is raised.
That preparation becomes even more important when the manager is also personally affected by the restructure.
What P&O Ferries shows about deciding before consulting?
P&O Ferries remains one of the clearest public examples of what happens when the decision and the consultation process become disconnected.
On 17 March 2022, P&O Ferries dismissed 786 seafarers without prior consultation as part of a move to an operating model using third-party agency workers. The House of Commons Library subsequently examined the employment-law issues created by the dismissals, while a Transport Committee report described the redundancies as having been conducted without the proper consultation period.
The scale and circumstances are unusual, and most SME redundancies bear little resemblance to P&O Ferries.
The practical lesson is still relevant.
Consultation cannot meaningfully influence a decision when the employer has already committed itself to the outcome.
That is why the order of a redundancy procedure matters as much as the individual steps.
Business case → Proposal → Consultation → Consideration → Decision → Notice
When the order becomes business case, decision, announcement, consultation, the meetings that follow have very little room to do their job.
What the Wilko redundancy case shows about timing
The Wilko administration provides a more recent reminder that consultation which starts too late can still create substantial consequences.
A CIPD event on redundancy consultation in May 2026 referred to the June 2025 tribunal outcome involving Wilko's administrators. The CIPD event page states that the administrators were told to pay £2 million compensation to around 10,000 employees after failing to meet collective consultation obligations before redundancy notices were issued. A GMB update on the protective award confirms that consultation did take place, but the statutory consultation timescales were not met.
This matters because employers can sometimes think of consultation as a number of meetings to fit into a timetable.
The real question is when consultation starts relative to the decision.
Giving people four consultation meetings after the practical outcome has become inevitable does not necessarily make the process stronger than starting earlier with two meetings while genuine alternatives remain available.
Current financial pressure can make early consultation feel commercially uncomfortable. Leaders may worry about uncertainty, morale, confidentiality, or losing people before a decision is reached.
Those are real concerns. They do not remove the need to plan the process around genuine consultation.
How much could failing to collectively consult cost?
From 6 April 2026, an employment tribunal can make a protective award of up to 180 days' full pay for each affected employee where an employer fails to comply with collective redundancy consultation requirements.
Employees do not need two years' service to qualify for a protective award.
The increase from the previous maximum of 90 days makes the commercial consequences of poor redundancy planning even more significant.
A protective award is not redundancy pay. It is a remedy connected to a failure to meet collective consultation obligations.
For an organisation proposing a larger restructure, the potential cost can therefore multiply quickly across the affected workforce.
There is also a broader cost which is harder to put into a spreadsheet.
A badly handled employee redundancy process takes management time, creates additional grievances and appeals, damages confidence among employees who remain, and can affect how candidates, clients, and former employees talk about the organisation afterwards.
Legal risk matters. So does everything around it.
How should you select employees fairly for redundancy?
Where you need to choose between employees doing the same or similar work, selection should be based on a fair pool and criteria that are as objective and measurable as possible.
Acas gives examples including work performance, skills, qualifications, expertise, and attendance records, while cautioning that attendance information must be accurate and must not improperly include absence connected to disability, pregnancy, or maternity.
The criteria should come from the future needs of the business.
If the new structure genuinely requires a particular technical capability, it may be reasonable to assess it.
If "commercial mindset" appears as a heavily weighted criterion simply because one manager prefers one employee, the process is harder to defend.
Evidence matters too.
If you use performance, decide what evidence will inform the score. If you use skills, define the skill. If you use qualifications, make sure the qualification genuinely matters to the future role. If managers score employees, consider how you will moderate those scores and challenge inconsistencies.
The purpose is not to create a mathematical process that removes judgement entirely. That is rarely realistic. The purpose is to make sure judgement is applied against clear, relevant criteria rather than personal preference.
How should suitable alternative employment fit into redundancy planning?
Suitable alternative employment should be considered throughout the redundancy process rather than added after selection has finished.
Acas says employers must try to move employees selected for redundancy into other available jobs within the organisation. Where a suitable role exists, the employer should offer it rather than asking the employee to apply through the normal recruitment process.
Determining suitability involves more than matching a job title.
Pay, status, responsibilities, location, working arrangements, the employee's skills, and personal circumstances can all matter.
Employees offered alternative employment will normally have a four-week trial period. Certain employees who are pregnant or taking specified forms of family leave also have additional protection and priority in relation to suitable alternative vacancies.
For planning purposes, keep an active view of vacancies from the beginning.
A role that becomes available halfway through consultation may change the outcome for an affected employee.
That is another reason redundancy planning needs to stay live until decisions are complete.
What does good employee consultation look like outside a redundancy crisis?
NatWest Group provides a useful example of the infrastructure that can make organisational consultation stronger before a difficult change begins.
A CIPD case study on collective employee voice describes how NatWest uses employee consultative bodies when it needs to consult groups not covered by its existing collective agreements, including during restructuring and entity changes. Employees can volunteer to participate, and the organisation has guidance for elections, representative training, process documentation, and training for managers working with representatives.
NatWest is far larger than the typical JourneyHR client, so the model does not need to be copied.
The principle is relevant at any size.
You do not want the first time your managers learn how to consult properly to be the morning before a difficult redundancy meeting.
If people understand how employee voice works during normal organisational change, consultation is more credible when the stakes become higher.
What should happen after redundancies are confirmed?
Once decisions have been made, the process still needs careful management.
Employees selected for redundancy should receive the appropriate notice. Acas states that notice should only be issued after consultation and selection have been completed.
You should also explain the appeal process clearly.
Acas recommends allowing employees to appeal where they believe they were selected unfairly or the redundancy process was not followed correctly. If an appeal identifies serious problems, the organisation may need to correct part of the process or, in some circumstances, revisit it.
Then there are the people staying.
Acas advises employers to consider support not only for employees at risk but also managers delivering messages, people leading consultation, employee representatives, and the wider workforce.
The period immediately after a restructuring deserves as much thought as the announcement.
People who remain may be relieved, upset, uncertain, or worried about increased workloads. Managers may be exhausted. Teams may need new responsibilities clarified quickly.
The new organisation does not become functional simply because the consultation timetable has ended.
What should be on your redundancy planning checklist?
Before announcing a proposed redundancy process, you should be able to answer the following questions clearly:
What business problem are we trying to solve?
Why might redundancies be necessary?
What alternatives have we genuinely considered?
What does the proposed future structure look like?
Which roles are potentially affected?
Do we need a selection pool?
What selection criteria would genuinely reflect the future needs of the business?
Are collective consultation requirements likely to apply?
Do we need employee representatives or trade union consultation?
What information will employees receive?
When will consultation begin?
Who will conduct individual consultation meetings?
Have those managers been properly briefed and trained?
How will suggestions raised in consultation be recorded and considered?
How will employees who are away from work be included?
What current or expected vacancies could provide alternative employment?
What are the potential notice and redundancy pay implications?
What appeal process will be available?
What support will be available to people leaving and staying?
Who has responsibility for checking that the process remains on track?
The purpose of the checklist is not to create more paperwork. It is to expose gaps while there is still time to fix them.
How JourneyHR can help
Redundancy processes are often started when the business is already under pressure. There may be a need to reduce cost quickly, restructure around changing client demand, combine teams, remove management layers, or build a different organisation for the next stage of growth.
That is exactly when a clear process matters.
We work with leadership teams to turn the commercial requirement into a redundancy plan that can actually be implemented. That can include reviewing the business case, mapping the proposed structure, identifying affected roles and selection pools, designing fair criteria, planning redundancy consultation, preparing documentation, briefing managers, considering alternative employment, and supporting meetings throughout the process.
We can also provide an independent perspective where a proposed restructure has become complicated or where there is significant employee relations risk.
For larger redundancy exercises, where collective consultation requirements apply or the legal position is particularly sensitive, we will also identify the points at which specialist employment-law advice is appropriate. JourneyHR provides HR and People + Culture support rather than legal advice on an individual case.
The earlier we are involved, the more useful that support tends to be. Once roles have effectively been promised, selection decisions have been communicated informally, or managers have told employees what the final structure will be, the room to run a genuinely open process becomes much smaller.
Get in touch: Start a conversation with JourneyHR + how they can support you
The strongest redundancy processes are not the ones with the most paperwork. They are the ones where the thinking happens in the right order.
The order is what matters. Build the business case, plan the process and prepare the managers before telling people what is proposed. Then listen properly, consider what changes, and make the decision from there.
That sequence gives you a much better chance of reaching the change the business needs without treating consultation as something that happens after the answer has already been decided.
FAQs
What is the correct redundancy process for a UK employer?
A fair redundancy process normally involves establishing a genuine redundancy situation, considering alternatives, creating a redundancy plan, informing affected employees, consulting them meaningfully, applying fair selection where required, considering suitable alternative employment, making final decisions only after consultation, giving the correct notice and redundancy pay, and providing an appeal process. Collective consultation rules also apply to certain larger redundancy exercises.
How long should a redundancy consultation last?
There is no statutory minimum period for individual redundancy consultation, although consultation must be genuine and effective. Different statutory requirements apply to collective redundancies. Acas states that where collective consultation applies, employers must notify the government at least 30 days before the first dismissal for 20 to 99 proposed redundancies and 45 days beforehand for 100 or more. Always check the current requirements for your particular process.
Can an employer decide who is redundant before consultation?
An employer can develop a redundancy proposal before consultation, but consultation should happen before final redundancy decisions are made. Employees must have a genuine opportunity to comment on the proposal, suggest ways to avoid or reduce redundancies, and raise concerns about matters such as selection. If the outcome is already fixed and nothing employees say could influence it, there is a significant risk that the consultation will not be regarded as genuine.
What should a redundancy plan contain?
Acas recommends that a redundancy plan covers the alternatives considered, proposed number of redundancies, communication and employee support, consultation, timeframes, fair selection criteria, notice, redundancy pay, and appeals. It should also account for all affected employees, including people away from work. A practical plan should additionally identify responsibilities, manager briefing, suitable alternative vacancies, required documentation, and how consultation feedback will be considered.
What happens if an employer does not follow collective redundancy consultation rules?
Affected employees or their representatives may be able to bring an employment tribunal claim. From 6 April 2026, Acas states that a tribunal can award up to 180 days' full pay for each affected employee where collective consultation requirements have not been met. Employees do not need two years' service to qualify for a protective award. Employers facing a potentially high-risk collective redundancy process should take appropriate advice before acting.
