Redundancy You Cannot Run
The role disappearing is your decision; the process that follows belongs to an employer that is not you.
Ending the service agreement
Ending the person's employment
Moving them to your own entity
The person simply resigning
YoursThe provider'sCrosses the twoNeither contract
Four matters, and no share: what any one agreement covers differs by agreement. One crosses both, and the handoff is where these arrangements fail. Three endings, and only one of them is yours to start and finish.
Deciding that a role no longer exists is your decision. Everything that follows from it — selection, consultation, notice, payment, whatever the country requires — belongs to an employer that is not you.
The practical lesson in “Redundancy You Cannot Run” is that a third-party arrangement still leaves day-to-day management with the operating team. Used for self report bias, check the relevant feature information can make time and project context easier to review, provided the purpose is disclosed, access is limited and every consequential inference receives human review.
You own the cause and none of the process, which is an uncomfortable position and a workable one if planned.
For a separate perspective on “Redundancy You Cannot Run”, consult the Deloitte global employer services insights. Compare it with the actual contract, country and operating process rather than using a general resource as a local conclusion.
The sequence that actually works
Decide. Tell the provider, privately and in writing, before anybody else. Ask what the local process requires and how long it takes. Agree the communication. Then act.
The step buyers skip is the third:
- Decide.
- Tell the provider, privately and in writing, before anybody else.
- Ask what the local process requires and how long it takes.
- Agree who communicates what, and when.
- Act.
It is also the one that determines the cost and the timeline.
Asking the provider first also protects the person: it means that when they are told, somebody has already established what they are entitled to rather than improvising it afterwards.
What the local process may require
Consultation with the person, with a works council or with a union. Notification to an authority. Selection criteria applied across a pool. Minimum periods that cannot be shortened.
None of it is familiar from your own jurisdiction and all of it is mandatory where it applies.
The pool problem
Where several people do similar work for the same employer, selection may have to be made across a pool. The provider's pool is its own employees, not your team.
That usually works in your favour and occasionally does not. Ask rather than assume, because the answer shapes who can be selected at all.
Cost
Statutory severance, notice, accrued leave, and in some countries an additional payment or a contribution to retraining.
Ask for the number before deciding, not after. It is frequently large enough to change the decision about whether the role goes at all.
Timing
Weeks to months, depending on the process. A decision made in March may not take effect until June, with full cost throughout.
Build that into the plan that produced the decision. A restructuring timeline drawn from your home jurisdiction will be wrong.
Where several countries are involved at once, the timelines will not match, which means the announcement cannot be simultaneous everywhere without somebody's process being compromised.
The provider may refuse
Where what you are asking would be unlawful or unsafe locally, they will decline, and they are right to.
Ask what would be acceptable instead. There is usually a route; it is slower and costs more, and knowing it early is better than arguing about the first proposal.
A refusal is also information about the exposure you were about to create. Providers decline the things they would have had to defend.
The negotiated exit
In several countries a settlement by agreement is quicker, cheaper and less contentious than a formal process.
The provider will know whether that is the norm locally. Ask early, because it changes the shape of the whole thing.
What you must not do
Tell the person before the provider has begun anything. Run your own process in parallel. Suggest that the decision is the provider's when it is yours.
The last is the most tempting and the most damaging. People find out, and in a small market they talk.
Saying it is your decision
Where it is, say so. A person being let go because your company changed direction deserves to hear that from your company rather than to receive a letter from an employer they have never met.
Coordinate with the provider on who says what. Then do your part in person.
Doing more than the minimum
Extra notice, an ex gratia payment, help finding something else, an honest and specific reference, time to look while still employed.
None of it is required and all of it is available. For somebody whose position was weaker than an employee's throughout, it is the difference between an ending and a grievance.
The rest of the team
They are watching, including the ones in the same arrangement. A redundancy handled coldly tells everybody employed this way exactly how much the structure protects them.
That lesson is expensive and lasts longer than the saving.
Say something to the people who remain, including what the decision was and was not about. Silence after a departure is read as a warning.
What you cannot delegate
The judgement about whether the role should go. A provider will tell you what is lawful, what it costs and how long it takes, and will not tell you whether it is the right call.
That stays entirely with you, as direction always does, and it is worth noticing that the one part of employment that never transferred is also the part that creates the whole of this situation. The structure moves the process and leaves the decision, which is the same shape every other note in this collection has described.