Why a Fair Redundancy Process Matters More Than Ever
“Redundancy matters because how you decide who gets made redundant, the criteria that you use, how you go about supporting those individuals affected at risk of redundancy, how you consult, needs to be done in a fair, inclusive and accessible way,” Victoria explains.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. A poorly managed process doesn’t just risk tribunal claims – it can “unintentionally disadvantage or discriminate against particular protected characteristics or groups under the Equality Act 2010.” More fundamentally, it affects real people going through “a very tricky time,” making it essential to “put the human and the compassion side into redundancy at every single stage.”
The Power of Equality Impact Assessments
One of the most powerful tools for ensuring a fair selection process for redundancy is conducting equality impact assessments. “It’s essentially like a risk assessment,” Victoria explains. “It’s an information gathering, decision making tool that helps employers to assess and record the likely and actual impacts a key decision like redundancies could have on different protected characteristics.”
These assessments challenge a critical assumption: “that decision affects everyone the same way and quite clearly it doesn’t.” They force organisations to look beyond surface-level fairness to examine whether their processes might inadvertently discriminate against certain groups.
Hidden Discrimination in Selection Criteria
A fair selection process for redundancy requires careful scrutiny of the criteria being used. Victoria highlights a particularly concerning area: performance-related criteria that might actually reflect disability discrimination.
“There was a tribunal case where an employee had dyslexia and it meant that they might have made some typos, some errors in their emails. Their communication was quite rushed. That then affected their performance ratings, which was then taken into consideration in the selection criteria when it should have been discounted.”
This demonstrates how seemingly objective criteria can mask “discrimination arising from disability,” which is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010. Employers need robust systems to identify and exclude factors that arise from protected characteristics when making redundancy decisions.
Reasonable Adjustments: The Details That Matter
Creating a fair redundancy process extends far beyond selection criteria to how consultation meetings are conducted. Victoria emphasises the importance of considering “where, when and how” meetings take place.
Simple adjustments can make enormous differences: avoiding school drop-off times for parents, offering online formats for those on parental leave, providing information in advance for neurodivergent colleagues and ensuring meeting rooms are accessible and private.
“I remember when I was going through the redundancy process, it was an open plan office but they had these glass meeting rooms that didn’t feel very confidential,” Victoria recalls. These seemingly minor details can significantly impact someone’s experience and ability to participate fully in the process.
Training Managers for Inclusive Conversations
Even with perfect processes on paper, the success of a redundancy often comes down to how individual managers handle conversations. Victoria stresses the importance of training managers to recognise their own biases: “It’s about being aware of their own biases and how that can influence how they might judge, interpret or react to certain individual situations.”
Active listening becomes crucial. “A lot of our communication is nonverbal, about 90%. So really being paying attention to the body language. Are they looking down? Do they look worried, concerned?” Managers need to listen to understand, not just to deliver information.
The Evidence That Protects Everyone
Conducting thorough equality impact assessments isn’t just about compliance – it provides crucial evidence if challenges arise. “It provides evidence that supports how you went about making that decision. What were the key things that you considered? What was the data that you looked at?”
This documentation demonstrates that employers have “taken all the necessary steps” and “considered all areas” rather than scrambling to gather evidence after the fact. It shows a proactive commitment to fairness rather than a reactive response to problems.
Making Inclusion the Default
Victoria’s experience illustrates what good practice looks like. When she faced redundancy while pregnant, her HR professional “was very good in terms of keeping that communication but also keeping it not formal, not robust but very kind of informal, very personal, recognising, checking in on when’s baby due, how’s it going?”
The key was treating her “as an individual” rather than “like a number.” This personalised approach, combined with equal access to outplacement support, created a positive experience despite difficult circumstances.
Beyond Compliance to Compassion
Building a fair redundancy process isn’t just about avoiding legal challenges—it’s about recognising that “not everyone has the same needs” and “putting the human and the compassion side into redundancy at every single stage.”
By conducting equality impact assessments, training managers to recognise bias, making reasonable adjustments and maintaining clear documentation, organisations can ensure their redundancy processes are truly fair. The goal isn’t just legal compliance but creating processes that treat every employee with dignity during one of the most challenging times in their working life.
As Victoria puts it, when planning and managing redundancies, “we need to ensure that our decisions are fair, inclusive and ethical and transparent.” The tools exist to make this happen – the question is whether organisations will commit to using them.
Victoria Dale is founder of Inclusion 365, supporting busy HR and DE&I Leaders to forge inclusive workplace cultures.
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