Selecting a redundancy pool: advice questions

A redundancy pool identifies the employees from whom selection may be made. Define it by the work and interchangeability of roles, with reasons, before scoring individuals. Selecting the person first and designing the pool afterwards risks an unfair process.

Explain the pool boundaries

Compare duties, skills, reporting arrangements and how employees cover for one another. Record why similar roles elsewhere are included or excluded. A pool of one may be appropriate in some circumstances, but its rationale still needs assessment rather than assumption.

Acas guidance addresses fair selection pools and criteria. ^[1] Discuss the proposed approach during consultation and consider employee representations about who should be included.

Make scoring reviewable

Use criteria supported by evidence and relevant to the future work. Define scoring scales before applying them, train assessors and moderate inconsistencies. Check whether attendance or availability measures could disadvantage protected groups or include leave that requires different treatment.

Retain the scoring evidence and explanations for changes. Consultation planning sets the wider process; reasonable adjustments can matter when assessing performance or attendance. Provide a meaningful opportunity to question individual scores and do not quietly change criteria to obtain the preferred result.

Compare the work before comparing the people Describe the duties and skills needed in the proposed structure, then identify the existing roles capable of performing that work. Use job descriptions as a starting point and verify actual practice with managers. Employees may routinely cover one another despite different titles, while similarly named roles may involve materially different work. Record those facts before settling the pool. A decision based only on the organisation chart may miss the practical interchangeability that staff will reasonably ask the employer to consider during consultation.

Explain why comparable roles in another team or location are included or excluded. Consider the operational relationship and any relevant policy or collective agreement. Acas advises considering the same or similar roles and relevant skills when establishing pools. ^[1] A pool of one is not automatically wrong, but the employer should be able to explain its reasoning. Do not begin with the person management wants to lose and work backwards to a description that excludes everyone else from consideration.

Consult on boundaries before treating them as fixed Present the proposed pool and rationale with enough information for affected staff or representatives to respond. Invite factual corrections about duties, skills and cover arrangements. If a challenge reveals missing information, investigate it and record the result. A consultation response should explain why the boundary remains appropriate or how it changes. Avoid using a standard statement that management has discretion as the entire answer; discretion still needs to be exercised with a defensible understanding of the work and circumstances.

If the business proposal changes, review whether the pool remains suitable. A revised structure retaining different activities can alter the relevance of the original role comparison. Keep the earlier and revised rationale, with the date and reason for the change. Explain any material adjustment to those affected and consider whether further consultation is needed. Quietly modifying a pool after preliminary scores are known can make it appear that the process was designed around a desired person, even where a genuine operational reason exists but was not recorded.

Set evidence standards before assessors score Define each criterion, scoring scale, weighting and evidence period. Explain what distinguishes scores so assessors do not apply personal meanings to labels such as strong performance or adaptability. Use criteria relevant to the work that remains and as objective as practicable. Identify the records needed and gaps that could disadvantage employees whose work is less visible. A recent manager should not score from a few weeks of observation where the agreed period is much longer without obtaining the relevant evidence from appropriate sources.

Review criteria and data for unlawful disadvantage. Attendance records require particular care, including the treatment of disability, pregnancy and maternity-related absence identified in Acas guidance. Other protected leave and activities also need consideration. Do not assume an apparently neutral availability criterion is harmless if it effectively penalises a working arrangement or protected circumstance. Obtain advice on the proposed measure and its application. Record adjustments to the scoring approach before it is finalised, rather than attempting to repair a discriminatory result through an unexplained manual change to one person's total.

Moderate inconsistencies without engineering the ranking Ask assessors to retain the evidence and explanation for each score. Compare how the same scale has been used and investigate outliers or inconsistent interpretation. Moderation should improve consistency, not force scores into a predetermined distribution. Keep original and revised scores with reasons for changes. If an error affects several employees, correct it consistently rather than only for the person who complains. A transparent audit trail helps distinguish a legitimate correction from an attempt to alter the outcome after management sees who would otherwise remain.

Give individuals a meaningful opportunity to understand and challenge their assessment while respecting others' personal information. Record the challenge, enquiries and response, including any effect on ranking or selection. Keep the pool decision distinct from vacancy consideration and any special priority protection requiring separate handling. Before confirming selection, check the final evidence and consultation position together. The completed record should show why these roles were compared, how the criteria related to future work and how factual errors were addressed before the employer reached its individual dismissal decisions.