Home / Common mistakes employers make during a redundancy process
30th October 2026
Claire Treacy, Senior Associate
The Employment Rights Act 2025 has brought a host of significant employment law changes, making it more important than ever for employers to approach redundancy exercises carefully.
Both the time limit in which employees have to bring a claim in the Employment Tribunals and the compensation that an employee can claim for a failure to properly collectively consult have already doubled. These changes along with the change to unfair dismissal protection and compensation makes it even more important that redundancy exercises are properly planned and executed.
In this article, we explore some of the common mistakes made by employers in redundancy situations and the practical steps that employers can take to avoid these mistakes.
Once employees are told that they are at risk of redundancy, HR and managers should expect a significant number of questions. Starting without a clear plan as to what the company’s proposals are and what process the business intends to follow can lead to inconsistent messages.
Before making any announcement, map out the proposed timetable, communications, pools of employees at risk of redundancy and selection process. A clear plan helps the business and its employees understand what will happen and enables the business to answer questions consistently. Employees who feel informed and understand the process are generally less likely to become disengaged or challenge it.
Another common mistake is beginning consultation before the rationale for the proposed redundancies has been properly formulated and documented. The business should be able to explain what change is proposed, as well as why the change is proposed. However, employers should be careful not to create a situation whereby a meaningful consultation can no longer take place because decisions are too concrete.
Prepare a clear business case that can be shared with affected employees. It should explain the business case for redundancies without suggesting that the outcome is predetermined.
Employees with protected characteristics have protection from discrimination. This is no different in a redundancy process. Employers should review the at-risk group of employees to determine the relevant protected characteristics and assess what, if anything, needs to be taken into account or modified in the redundancy process.
For example, reasonable adjustments may need to be made for disabled employees either to the redundancy consultation process itself and/ or the intended selection criteria.
Employers should also be aware of additional protections that apply to pregnant employees, employees on maternity leave and those that have recently returned from maternity leave as these employees have priority to suitable alternative employment within the business if they have been selected for redundancy.
Whether collective consultation obligations apply depends on the number of redundancies the business is proposing to make and in what timeframe. Under the current legal framework, a proposal to make 20 or more redundancies in any one business establishment within a90-day period triggers collective consultation which requires a more onerous redundancy process. However, the threshold for when collective consultation applies is set to change in April 2027 – we know the new threshold will apply to redundancies across the whole business rather than at one site but the Government is still consulting about what the threshold will be.
Businesses therefore need to maintain oversight of all proposed redundancies across the organisation and over the relevant period to determine if collective consultation duties apply. There are strict timeframes as to how long collective consultation must last and that the penalties for getting it wrong have doubled from 90 days gross pay per employee to 180 days gross pay per employee.
Consultation must be genuine and meaningful. A process is vulnerable if decisions have effectively been made before employees have an opportunity to comment, or if meetings simply communicate a settled outcome.
Listen to employees, give them sufficient information to respond and remain open to changing the proposal. Employees may identify ways to avoid dismissals, suggest a different pool or selection criterion, challenge an inaccurate score or propose suitable alternative roles. Employers do not have to accept every suggestion, but they should consider each one conscientiously and explain their response.
Don’t be tempted to cut corners by preselecting people that you want to offer a settlement agreement to and then embark on protected conversations. If the people you have chosen have an argument that they have been selected because of a protected characteristic or if you have placed undue pressure on the individual to accept the deal, you may have opened the business to significant risk. Protected conversations do not offer limitless protection.
Outside the statutory collective consultation regime (explained above), the law does not state how long a consultation period should last for. However, consultation must last long enough to be meaningful. A rushed exercise may prevent employees from understanding the proposal or putting forward alternatives, while an unnecessarily protracted process can increase uncertainty and stress.
Plan a realistic timetable but keep it under review. The appropriate length will depend on the scale and complexity of the proposal, the number of employees involved and the issues raised during consultation.
A fair redundancy exercise requires more than a genuine business need. It depends on careful planning, appropriate pools and criteria, proper attention to equality issues, meaningful consultation, genuine consideration of alternatives and clear records showing how decisions were reached. Redundancies are never nice processes for any organisation but to adopt an old medical proverb “the cleaner the cut, the quicker the wound will heal”.