Nobody starts a business dreaming of the day they'll have to make someone redundant. It's one of the hardest conversations an owner will ever have — not because the paperwork is complicated, though it can be, but because it means telling someone who trusted you with a chunk of their working life that their role no longer exists. Most owners have never been trained for this. They just have to do it, once, badly, and learn.
Redundancy is about the role, not the person
The first thing worth being honest with yourself about: genuine redundancy is about a role disappearing — because the work has gone, the business has restructured, or a function is no longer needed — not about a person underperforming. If the real issue is someone's performance, that's a different, separate process, and treating a performance problem as a redundancy to avoid the harder conversation is both unfair to them and legally risky for you. Get the diagnosis right before anything else.
Get the process right, not just the outcome
In the UK, a fair redundancy process generally means a genuine business reason, a fair way of selecting who's affected if it's not a whole-role removal, real consultation before the decision is final rather than after, and consideration of suitable alternative roles if any exist. Skipping the consultation step — deciding first and 'informing' second — is one of the most common ways owners turn a difficult but lawful redundancy into an expensive unfair dismissal claim. The process feels slow when you're already stressed about it. It's slow for a reason.
The legal process exists to force you to actually think it through before you act, not just to protect the employee — it protects you from a decision you made in a rush you'll regret in six months.
Having the actual conversation
When it comes to the conversation itself, resist every instinct to soften it into vagueness. Be clear early — 'I need to tell you that your role is at risk of redundancy' — rather than building up to it through small talk that only prolongs the anxiety. Explain the genuine business reason honestly. Give them space to react badly, because it's a genuinely bad piece of news, and don't take a difficult reaction personally. And know your numbers before you walk in: notice period, redundancy pay if applicable, and what happens next, because vague answers to practical questions make an already hard moment feel chaotic and unfair.
What you owe the rest of the team
The conversation with the person leaving isn't the only one that matters. The team who stay are watching closely — how you've handled it becomes the story of what kind of employer you are, told and retold long after the person has gone. Handle it with genuine care, honesty and fairness, and it says something true about the business, even in a hard moment. Handle it badly, and the damage to trust with everyone still there often costs more than the redundancy was meant to save.
The practical support that actually helps
Beyond the legal minimum, a handful of small, practical gestures do a disproportionate amount to soften a genuinely hard moment: a fair, honest reference given without being asked twice; time off during notice to attend interviews; a clear, written summary of exactly what they're owed and when it'll be paid, so they're not chasing you for answers in the weeks after. None of this is required. All of it is remembered — by the person leaving, and by everyone still watching how you handled it.
Getting the timing and numbers right
A surprising amount of unnecessary distress comes from getting the practical basics wrong or leaving them vague for too long. Work out redundancy pay, notice pay and any outstanding holiday accurately before the conversation, not after — turning up without firm numbers, then having to correct them later, reads as either incompetence or bad faith, neither of which is the impression you want to leave. If you're unsure how the calculations work, particularly for longer-serving staff where statutory redundancy pay scales with length of service, get it checked by an accountant or HR adviser beforehand rather than guessing and hoping it's close enough.
When it's the founder who's hit hardest
It's worth naming the part nobody warns new owners about: this often affects the founder as much as the employee, just differently. Guilt, second-guessing the decision for weeks afterwards, replaying the conversation. That's a normal reaction to doing something hard and necessary, not a sign you got it wrong. The businesses that come through a redundancy round in the best shape are usually run by owners who let themselves feel the weight of the decision rather than pretending it was purely operational — and who used that discomfort as a reason to get the process right, rather than a reason to rush through it and move on.
Why the hard route is the right one
It would always be quicker to skip consultation, avoid the awkward conversation, and just tell someone it's over. It's also how owners end up with tribunal claims, a shaken remaining team, and — worse, if you're an even remotely decent employer — the knowledge that you handled someone's livelihood badly when a bit more care would have cost you very little extra. Slow down, do it properly, and treat it with the weight it deserves. It's one of the very few business decisions where doing it right and doing it kindly are, genuinely, the same thing.
