Redundancies: Doing it Right

Case Studies

The Situation: Covid-19 and Its Fallout

Our client was a medium-sized company, with 22 employees. Unfortunately, as a result of a downturn in business resulting from the recent Covid-19 pandemic, the firm needed to reduce overheads, and thus with regret, redundancies were on the cards.

The Task: To Assess the Situation in Full, and Agree the Best Way Forwards

As highly experienced consultants, our team always works on full transparency, therefore we needed to see the full picture, and for our client to consider the following three scenarios. It was vital for the owners to recognise the full impact that specific changes would bring to the company, based on three distinct scenarios. Thus, we discussed and agreed that the following would “look like”:

  • Business continues at its current level
  • Business increases
  • Business declines

Based on each of these what-if outcomes, HR Business Consultants helped our client put practical plans in place, including a full headcount review. From this clearer overall picture, not least regarding their pipeline and forecast, the business was in a better position to create their 12-month strategy going forwards.

The Actions: Practical Solutions

We encouraged our client to consider alternatives to redundancy. These included reducing working hours or salaries; however, they were obliged to reject these as insufficient ways to reduce costs.

The review completed, and with no increase in business, our client’s employees engaged fully in the process.

We discovered that should they decide to halt a single project, rather than affect just one or two people,  there would have been a considerable across-the-board effect for the whole team. As there were eight developers, a Quality Assurance specialist and a Head of Development on board, and given that the entire team worked on all current projects, this course of action would have had across-the-board, one-for-all results.

HR Business Consultants met the consultants with their manager, and then the developers to explain the situation, including full disclosure regarding potential redundancies. We outlined the process, and the steps that were planned:

  • Individual consultations
  • Agreement of redundancy selection criteria
  • Scoring and verification by their manager and then verified by another colleague,
  • Announcement of scores
  • Informing those who scored the lowest, along with a discussion of the scores
  • The removal of the list of not at-risk individuals
  • Continuation of the consultation, and a review of alternatives, including sabbaticals, job shares and/or reduced hours

The Results

It became clear that it was necessary to make two developers and one consultant redundant, which took place. Two consultants came forward during the process, requesting to reduce their hours, resulting in one headcount being reduced – thus saving two consultants.

We successfully managed an amicable final result: the removal of two developers and two consultants due to the business downturn.

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