Redundancy Consultation — What Employers Get Wrong… HR risk guidance for employers in Sheffield and South Yorkshire

Consultation is the part of redundancy that employers most consistently underestimate. Not because they're trying to cut corners — usually — but because the gap between what consultation feels like and what it's legally required to be is wider than most people realise.

What consultation is supposed to be

The purpose of consultation is genuine consideration of alternatives. Before the decision to make someone redundant is finalised, the employee should have the opportunity to understand why their role is at risk, to ask questions, to challenge the rationale if they think it's flawed, and to propose alternatives — whether that's a different role, different hours, or a different way of working.

That's the theory. In practice, consultation often looks like this: the manager has a meeting, explains that the role is at risk, hands over a letter, and asks the employee to come back in a week for a second meeting at which the decision will be confirmed. The employee is shocked. The meeting is uncomfortable. Nothing the employee says changes anything. The decision was made before the first meeting happened.

That's not consultation. That's notification with a waiting period.

The timing problem

Consultation has to happen before the decision is made. Not before it's communicated — before it's made. That's a distinction employers routinely miss. By the time the at-risk meeting happens, the business case has been written, the restructure has been presented to the board, the new structure has been decided. The individual's role in that process is to be told what's happening to them.

Starting genuine consultation at that point is almost impossible. The decision is effectively made. The employer is going through the motions.

The alternatives question

One of the most important parts of consultation — and one of the most overlooked — is the genuine consideration of alternatives. Is there another role the person could do? Could their hours be reduced rather than their role eliminated? Is there a redeployment option that hasn't been explored?

Employers are not obliged to create a role that doesn't exist. But they are obliged to look. And to be able to demonstrate they looked. A redundancy process where there was no real consideration of alternatives — where the person was effectively walked out of the building — is a process that will be difficult to defend if challenged.

The number of meetings

There's no legal minimum number of consultation meetings for individual redundancies, but one meeting is almost never enough. Particularly where the employee has raised questions, proposed alternatives, or challenged the process. Each of those deserves a genuine response — which usually means at least one further meeting.

Rushing through consultation because the business wants certainty quickly is understandable. But the cost of a procedurally unfair dismissal — compensation, management time, reputational damage — is almost always higher than the cost of doing the process properly.

What good consultation looks like

It starts earlier than feels comfortable. It's honest about the business rationale without being brutal. It gives the employee genuine information — about the selection criteria, about the alternatives considered, about the timeline. It takes their responses seriously and responds to them substantively. And it's documented throughout, not reconstructed afterwards.

Across Sheffield and South Yorkshire, the redundancy situations that resolve cleanly — without tribunal claims, without reputational damage, without lasting bitterness — are the ones where consultation was treated as a genuine process rather than a legal obligation to be discharged as quickly as possible.

Navigating a redundancy consultation in Sheffield or South Yorkshire? King HR Advisory works with employers who need experienced HR support to get the process right.