The Restructure Consultation You Did Not See Coming
You are a junior manager responsible for a marketing team of 11. Your director has asked you to deliver a 15% headcount reduction (two roles) within eight weeks, and has told you the two people 'should be obvious' from performance data. One of the two is a single parent who has been on a performance improvement plan for four months and whose last review showed improvement. The other is a long-serving administrator whose role has genuinely become partly automated. Your team does not yet know anything. A colleague in another department heard a rumour and asked you about it at lunch. The organisation has a formal consultation policy and a recognised trade union.
1. What are the immediate risks in how this has been set up, and how do you respond to your director?
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The instruction as given carries several serious risks.
Risks:
- Selection risk. Choosing people because they are 'obvious' from performance data, especially someone on a live improvement plan, invites a claim of unfair selection or victimisation. Improvement on a plan is evidence against dismissal, not for it.
- Process risk. A formal consultation policy and a recognised union mean there is a required process: meaningful consultation, objective selection criteria, and consideration of alternatives. Skipping it is a procedural failure regardless of outcome.
- Confidentiality risk. The rumour is already circulating. If it is not managed, the team will hear it from the wrong source and trust will collapse.
- Timing risk. Eight weeks is tight but not impossible if consultation starts immediately.
Response to the director:
- Acknowledge the 15% target and confirm you will deliver it.
- Ask for the objective, documented selection criteria and confirm that HR and the union will be involved from the start.
- Flag that selecting the person on a live improvement plan creates legal and morale risk and ask for the criteria to be applied to the whole team, not pre-decided.
- Propose a communication plan so the team hears it from you first.
2. How do you handle the lunchtime question from your colleague?
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Do not confirm, deny or speculate.
Approach:
- Give a short, neutral holding response: 'There's a review underway and I'm not able to discuss it. When there's something to share, it will come from me and the team first.'
- Do not add detail, and do not ask them to keep it quiet, which creates a conspiracy.
- Afterwards, tell your director that a rumour is circulating so the communication timeline can be brought forward.
Reasoning: Denying something true damages credibility when it emerges; confirming it breaches confidentiality and takes control of the message away from the people affected. A neutral holding line protects both.
3. How do you structure the consultation so it is genuine rather than a formality?
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Genuine consultation means the outcome is not pre-decided and you can show you listened.
Structure:
- Criteria first. Agree objective, documented, consistently applied selection criteria with HR before any names are discussed.
- Alternatives. Consult on ways to avoid or reduce redundancies: redeployment, reduced hours, natural attrition, pausing recruitment, retraining the administrator into a role that survives automation.
- Individual meetings. Meet each affected person privately, explain the situation and the process, and give them time and a companion.
- Record and respond. Document the points raised and show in writing how they were considered and what changed as a result.
- Support. Offer redeployment, notice, and access to support services.
Key judgement: the administrator's role is partly automated, which is a genuine business reason, but consultation may reveal a redeployment route that avoids a redundancy entirely. The person on the improvement plan should not be selected on that basis alone; if they are ultimately affected, the process must show the criteria were applied to everyone.