Redundancy Consultation Script - First Formal Meeting

This is a structured, word-for-word script to help you confidently run the first formal redundancy consultation meeting — ensuring the process is fair, compliant, and genuinely consultative.

This stage is absolutely critical. It’s where you move from informing the employee to actively engaging with them — listening to their views, exploring alternatives, and demonstrating that no final decision has been made.

The script guides you through how to handle the conversation properly: recapping the rationale, explaining the selection approach, exploring redeployment options, and inviting meaningful input from the employee.

It ensures the consultation is real — not a formality — reducing the risk of challenge and helping you run a process that stands up to scrutiny.

Who is it for?

• Founders and CEOs leading redundancy processes
• Managers responsible for consultation meetings
• SME owners without in-house HR expertise
• HR professionals who want a consistent and defensible approach

What does it cover?

• Opening the consultation meeting clearly and professionally
• Reconfirming this is a proposal (not a decision)
• Recapping the business rationale and structure changes
• Explaining selection logic (including pools where relevant)
• Exploring alternatives to redundancy
• Discussing redeployment opportunities
• Inviting employee feedback, ideas, and challenges
• Managing companion input appropriately
• Summarising key points and confirming understanding
• Setting next steps and ongoing consultation process

When is it used?

• After the initial “at risk” conversation
• At the start of the formal consultation process
• When you need to engage the employee in the proposal
• Before any final redundancy decision is made

Word document (docx) |  4 pages