Making staff redundant
Compulsory redundancy
If you decide you need to make compulsory redundancies, you must:
- identify which employees will be made redundant
- make sure you select people fairly - do not discriminate
Fair selection criteria
Fair reasons for selecting employees for redundancy include:
- skills, qualifications and aptitude
- standard of work and/or performance
- attendance
- disciplinary record
You can select employees based on their length of service (‘last in, first out’) but only if you can justify it. It could be indirect discrimination if it affects one group of people more than another.
Do not rely on length of service as your only selection criteria - this is likely to be age discrimination.
Unfair selection criteria
Some selection criteria are automatically unfair. You must not select an employee for redundancy based on any of the following reasons:
- pregnancy, including all reasons relating to maternity
- family, including parental leave, paternity leave (birth and adoption), adoption leave or time off for dependants
- acting as an employee representative
- acting as a trade union representative
- joining or not joining a trade union
- being a part-time or fixed-term employee
- age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation
- pay and working hours, including the Working Time Regulations, annual leave and the National Minimum Wage
You should always consult employees in a redundancy situation.