Redundancy: the options

If you decide to make compulsory redundancies, you will need to:

• create an objective and non-discriminatory redundancy selection criteria
• identify the pool of employees from which all or some employees will be made redundant

Redundancy selection criteria

The criteria that can be used to select employees for redundancy can include:

• skills, qualifications, and aptitude
• standard of work performance
• attendance/disciplinary record
• experience

If attendance or disciplinary records are to be used as a basis for choosing people for redundancy, it will be necessary to make sure that they are accurate and not indirectly discriminatory. Before choosing people because of their attendance, it is important to know the reasons for and extent of any absences. This is particularly important when considering sickness absence.

The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 makes it illegal for an employer to treat a disabled person less favourably because of a reason relating to their disability, without a justifiable reason. Employers must make reasonable adjustments to working conditions or the workplace where that would help a particular disabled person. Employers should take account of this law when considering making a disabled person redundant.

Criteria used should be verifiable, ie, you should have supporting, objective evidence of it. It should be precisely defined, non-discriminatory, and applied consistently to avoid the possibility of unlawful discrimination.

Download redundancy procedure (PDF, 319K) and sample redundancy selection matrix template (DOC, 17K).

Automatically unfair selection criteria

Some criteria will make any subsequent redundancy dismissal automatically unfair.

You should not select an employee for redundancy because of issues related to:

• trade union membership or non-membership or taking part in trade union activities
• taking legally organised industrial action lasting eight weeks or less (or more than eight weeks in certain circumstances)
• being an employee representative or carrying out related duties
• actions taken on specified health and safety grounds
• refusing, or planning to refuse, to work on Sundays
• pregnancy, maternity, paternity, adoption, and parental leave
• part-time or fixed-term contract status
• asserting an employment right they had by law
• a reason relating to rights under the Working Time Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1998
• a reason relating to rights under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998

For a complete list, see unfair dismissal.

Redundancy webinar

The Labour Relations Agency (LRA) redundancy webinar recording provides useful information on the topic of redundancy and how to ensure the redundancy process is managed fairly and in line with employment legislation.