In an ideal situation the organisation will have put in place clear policies concerning handling redundancy issues well before they were needed.

There will have been discussions with management, employee representatives and a subsequent human resource briefing paper and procedural document. Relevant staff will have been trained in the procedures and well-briefed. Clear measurement criteria will have been developed to identify the progress of the programme, the resettlement rate of leavers, the effect on business performance and morale of the stayers.

The contents of any redundancy procedure will vary from organisation to organisation. Planning needs to start as early as possible and must be properly co-ordinated. For the management team, the advantages of a redundancy programme are that it provides a joint agreement for avoiding or minimising redundancies and for carrying out such a measure after all other avenues have been exhausted. This reduces the risk of conflict and can help to plan necessary changes with less resistance.

For employees, a planned redundancy procedure will help to ensure that all agreements are fair and consistent. The fear of the unknown is reduced and there has been an opportunity for employee groups to influence policy. This makes it far more likely that the whole procedure can be adopted or "owned" by both management and workforce alike.

The main features of any redundancy policy may be outlined as follows.

• Establish with senior management the anticipated human resource needs of the business both now and for the foreseeable future.
• Conduct an audit with line-managers of the current workforce in terms of competences matched to the business need. Look at age-ranges, experience and length of service.
• Complete a skills-gap and headcount analysis between requirements/needs and supply. This might include: reduced recruitment; reduction of the use of contract/temporary staff; retraining; reducing overtime.