Team Shape Check

What we look at

• Team shape vs your business plan: do the roles match where the business is going?
• Roles, overlap and gaps: where work is doubled up, missing or could be organised differently. We look at roles, not at named people.
• Fair process basics: when you need to consult, how to choose fair, objective selection criteria, and when the collective redundancy rules may apply.
• Alternatives to redundancy: for example, pausing hiring, redeployment, or changes to hours agreed with the people affected.
• Keeping key skills: which skills the business can't afford to lose, and how to keep them.
• Hiring only where truly needed: whether any gaps really need a new hire.

Points we will flag early

These are general pointers, not advice on your situation:

• Collective consultation: if you propose 20 or more redundancies at one establishment within 90 days, you must consult employee representatives (at least 30 days before the first dismissal for 20 to 99, at least 45 days for 100 or more) and notify the government using form HR1. Failing to consult properly can lead to a protective award of up to 180 days' pay per employee. Further changes to these rules are planned.
• Unfair dismissal: for dismissals where employment ends on or after 1 January 2027, most employees gain ordinary unfair dismissal protection after six months' service instead of two years, and the cap on compensation is removed. Discrimination and automatically unfair reasons already apply from day one.
• Changing contracts: new protections on dismissing and re-engaging staff to change core terms ("fire and rehire") are planned.
• Fair selection: criteria such as sickness absence, flexibility or hours can disadvantage disabled people, carers, part-time staff, older or younger workers, or people who have been on family leave. We'll flag criteria to check, and reasonable adjustments to consider.
• Pregnancy and family leave: people who are pregnant, on (or recently back from) maternity, adoption or shared parental leave have extra protection, including priority for any suitable alternative vacancy.

Why Mandy

Mandy has led global HR and run HR teams of around 70, including reorganising HR at scale.

How it runs

1. A short call about your plan and your team.
2. You share a role list and organisation chart (role titles, not names, is best), plus template contracts or policies if useful.
3. We send your summary and top 3 next steps.

Your team's data

Please send role titles, numbers and anonymised details where you can, and leave out names, health details and other sensitive information. If we do need any personal data, we will only ask for what is needed, keep it secure, use it only for this review, and delete it once it is no longer needed. We do not put your staff's personal data into AI tools unless you agree in writing to a named tool that does not train on your data. See our privacy notice.