Letter warning employee of a potential redundancy situation

What is an at risk redundancy letter and when should you use it?

You should use this letter when you are facing a situation where you may have to let some employees go and will not be replacing them.

An employee is at-risk when they’re placed under warning of redundancy, for example if their role isn’t needed or affordable for the business.

‘At-risk’ doesn’t mean they’ll definitely be made redundant, however, and you should consider re-deploying them instead, where possible.

This is the first letter you should send in any redundancy related communications with employees who you have identified at risk of redundancy.

Your at-risk employee group should receive this letter before you begin any individual consultations.

Ideally, before you send any letters, you’ll have a chat with your employees first, so that the news comes from you.

The start-to-finish process is likely to be less stressful, for you and your employees, if your people can see you behaving in a human, approachable way.

The at-risk of redundancy letter and your conversation with employees needs to make clear:

• why you may need to make redundancies
• why particular jobs may be affected
• how you’ve tried to find alternative options, and
• that you’d like employees to put forward any suggestions for avoiding these redundancies

You can invite people to put themselves forward for voluntary redundancy or early retirement.

Use our letter to staff inviting applications for voluntary redundancy for this

If you decide to do this, you’ll need to make it an option for everyone who’s at-risk, rather than individual employees.

Our Step by Step guide to handling redundancies sets out a practical action plan to help you handle the process