Why The Redundancy Announcement Script?

A redundancy announcement can be a very hard thing to do.

It is one of the most unpleasant tasks that you will have to do, telling staff that their position in the company is potentially no longer needed.

Unfortunately, it is a task that nearly every employer will have to do at some point in their working career.

Nobody relishes this task, which is why we created this redundancy announcement script.

It can be scary trying to formulate how to begin the meeting – especially if you don’t want to hold this meeting in the first place.

I know how I am if there is a task I don’t really want to do: I will either put it off until it is almost too late, or I will rush it, getting it over with as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, in the case of a redundancy announcement, haste can lead to you using the wrong words, which leaves the business open to being sued for unfair dismissal (click here to see our page on this), as well as leaving the
staff even more upset than they would otherwise have been.

As I’ve seen so many employers struggling with the wording to use, I’ve devised the redundancy announcement script to help you out through the meeting.
 
 

What is the meeting?

This script is for the general meeting, without offering voluntary redundancy – and with roles for staff to apply for. This is the first meeting in the redundancy process.

For employees, there are not normally any difficult questions to answer – this will be a shock to them. Do not worry about trying to make the statement any “nicer” than it is. Those who you are speaking to will not be listening to any nuances – they will be in shock.

You don’t have to use it word for word, and please do put the redundancy announcement script into your “voice”.

But you do need to keep the essential parts:

1. That the roles are at risk of redundancy. They are not redundant.
   Using the wrong words in the redundancy announcement script means that you are open to an unfair dismissal claim at tribunal. As long as you put the words “at risk” in there, the danger is much lower.
2. Keep it short and sweet. This is a five minute announcement, with some questions afterwards. The redundancy announcement will be a shock to the staff, even if they have been expecting it.
   Do not go into lots of detail, and convoluted explanations of what went wrong. They are not able to hear what you are saying because they are in shock.
3. NEVER burst into tears and say that this is the worst day in your life, and that it is so difficult for you. You still have your job, they probably won’t have one soon.
   They are worrying about paying the bills next month. Your role is to be fair and reasonable and focus on them, not on your own pain.

They will want more details about the situation than we would include in the redundancy announcement script. But these are often best answered on a one-to-one basis in the individual consultation meetings.
The problem with having questions in the redundancy announcement meeting is that they can get aggressive and accusing, which is not great if everyone is there.
So, if the questions are headed in that direction, we recommend ending the redundancy announcement meeting and saying that you will be happy to answer any questions anyone has in the individual meetings.

The redundancy announcement script contains all you need to begin the redundancy process. If there are any concerns that you have about making your employee(s) redundant, feel free to schedule a free 15-minute consultation meeting with me, using the Calendly link in the sidebar.

When starting the redundancy process, another thing that you should be aware of is the cost to the employer. Thankfully, there is an easy way to calculate how much each employee will get. Read our article about it here.

The process normally is three weeks consultation – it is a grey area.

The ACAS guide is that it should be a reasonable consultation period.

I have argued with clients, who then didn’t stay clients for very long, that one day was a reasonable consultation period.

No, it’s not and you don’t want to be paying a lawyer £250 to £350 an hour to argue that it is with a judge.

So what has been seen as fair and reasonable is if you are closing down the business entirely, which is unlikely in a golf club but not impossible, then two weeks because it is absolutely closing dead, there’s nothing left, fine

But if you are keeping on the business then it’s going to be three weeks consultation period is seen as fair to get people used to the idea of being made redundant to look for other roles within the old club and then to make the termination at the end

So you’ve spoken to them individually. You’ve offered them all the jobs that are open, you don’t make any decision at this stage about whether they are suitable for them or not.

You don’t say, “Oh but that s not going to pay enough so therefore, I’m not going to offer it”. You offer every single role in the golf club to every person and every person has the right to apply for it.

It doesn’t mean they have the right to get it, but they have the right to apply for it

And then the next stage is they have about a week to think about which jobs they want to apply for.

And then you would say, “Who wants to apply for this job?”

And then if it’s one person that’s a really straightforward process of having a meeting and if they’re suitable, obviously, that they then get that job.

If there are several people you will have to work on the criteria’s to make sure you get the right people in that role.