Dismissing staff and redundancies

Being taken to an employment tribunal

You can be taken to an employment tribunal by an employee or someone else (for example a job applicant or trade union) over various issues, including:

  • pay
  • dismissal
  • discrimination

This guide is also available in Welsh (Cymraeg).

Calculate your employee’s statutory redundancy pay

Redundancy payments are based on age, weekly pay and number of years in the job.

Your employee’s weekly pay is the average they earned per week over the 12 weeks before the day they got their redundancy notice.

Handling an employee's grievance

 

If your employee has a concern or problem that they haven’t been able to resolve informally, they may make a formal grievance complaint to you.

Businesses must have a written grievance procedure in place and share it with all employees. It must say how the process works and how long it takes.

Handling staff resignations

An employer cannot refuse to accept someone’s resignation and they must follow certain procedures.

When a member of staff resigns you must:

  • get them to confirm their resignation in writing
  • tell them what their notice period is
  • agree when their last day at work will be
  • confirm whether they should work all or part of their notice period

Employee decisions to retire are a form of resignation.

Making staff redundant

Redundancy is when you dismiss an employee because you no longer need anyone to do their job. This might be because your business is:

  • changing what it does
  • doing things in a different way, for example using new machinery
  • changing location or closing down

For a redundancy to be genuine, you must demonstrate that the employee’s job will no longer exist.

Solve a workplace dispute

Problems with your employer usually fall into one of two categories:

  • grievances – when you raise your concerns, problems or complaints with your employer
  • disciplinaries – when your employer has concerns about your work, conduct or absence

Explain your concern to your manager to see if you can sort out any problems informally. You may find it helpful to suggest what you would like them to do to solve your problem