Redundancy

[ch 17: page 117]

Discrimination can happen at every stage of the redundancy process. Employers can reduce the risk by:

• using several different selection criteria rather than just one. This will help to reduce the discriminatory impact of any selection criteria that carry a high risk of discrimination, such as attendance;

• engaging in meaningful consultation with a view to reaching agreement with a recognised trade union;

• carrying out an equality impact assessment of redundancy or reorganisation proposals, looking at how the proposals impact on those sharing protected characteristics;

• making sure that whoever does the scoring has been trained on how to avoid discrimination (including unconscious bias); and

• introducing effective checking processes, for example, building in an extra stage so that provisional scores or assessments are double-checked and agreed with a second manager.

Organisations that must comply with the public sector equality duty must also ensure that any redundancy programme does not breach that duty, by paying due regard to the need to avoid discrimination at every stage (see Chapter 19).