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I need to lay off two of my three staff. How objective do I need to be when selecting who to make redundant?
I run a small firm and need to lay off two of my three admin staff. I know which one I would like to keep and am wondering how objective I have to be when selecting who to make redundant. I do not want to get a claim for unfair dismissal but there again I do not want to keep what I believe are unproductive staff.
In a redundancy situation you need firstly to consult with the employees concerned, announce the proposed reduction in staff from three to one and see if they have any suggestions for avoiding the redundancies, and how you propose to choose who will stay - see below.
Having consulted over the reasons for the redundancies you then need to outline how you will select the one employee who will be staying. You need to devise a selection criteria against which you will score each employee - use things like interest & flexibility, quality of work, quantity of work, attendance, sickness etc. Avoid subjective terms like 'attitude' and be careful not to discriminate against disabilities, age, sex etc. Think of the strenghths of the person you want to keep and bear this in mind when choosing the criteria. Apply the criteria, try to provide evidence to support your scores.
You then need to formally write to the two who are 'at risk' of redundancy, invite them to a meeting to tell them they are redundant, and consider any alternative employment you may have for them. After the meeting formally write to confirm dismissal on grounds of redundancy giving appropriate notice, but you also need to offer an appeal against dismissal.
If the redundant employees have more than two years service they are legally entitled to a statutory redundancy payment.
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