Nobody Talks About the Stress on the Person Running the Redundancy

Every article about redundancy talks about the impact on the employee being let go. The uncertainty, the financial worry, the loss of identity that comes with losing a job. That is real and it matters.

But there is another person in the room. The small business owner who has decided that they need to let somebody or multiple people redundant. Who has to write the letters, hold the meetings, look someone in the eye and tell them their role is gone. Who then has to go home, make dinner, and somehow switch off. The first time you do this you will not sleep well for some time I can personally assure you of that.

That person's experience is almost never discussed. This article is for them.

The context: redundancies are rising and small businesses are bearing the weight

2026 could see as many as 327,227 redundancies in the UK, with the 2024 to 2025 period already seeing an 18.1% increase in redundancies. Between May and July 2025, redundancies affected around 3.5 per 1,000 UK employees, reflecting the challenges that companies currently face in uncertain market conditions.

Behind every one of those redundancies is a person who had to manage the process. In large organisations, that person is an HR professional with support, training, an employee assistance programme, and a team around them. In a small business, that person is the owner. The founder. The managing director who also does the sales calls. The person who hired them, worked alongside them, probably knows their family.

There is no HR department to hand it off to. No one else to run the meeting. No protocol for how you feel afterwards.

The emotional weight nobody prepares you for

Running a redundancy process when you genuinely care about your people is one of the most emotionally demanding things a business owner does.

The guilt starts before the process does. You know what is coming. They do not. You have been sitting on this decision for weeks, maybe months, weighing the financials against the human cost, hoping for another way. By the time you issue the at-risk letter, you have already been carrying this alone for a long time.

Then comes the consultation period. You have to sit across from someone and tell them their role is at risk, while knowing in your heart that the decision is very likely final. You have to listen genuinely, consider alternatives you have probably already considered, and maintain a professional composure while the other person processes shock, confusion, or anger.

Then comes the confirmation. The moment the decision becomes real. For them and for you.

Mishandled redundancies can lead to emotional strain, reduced productivity and reputational damage, affecting both departing and remaining employees. Poorly executed processes harm morale, breed distrust and increase turnover. The pressure on the person running the process to get it right — emotionally, legally, practically — is enormous.

The numbers behind the stress

The stress experienced by small business owners is not anecdotal. It is documented, measured, and consistently alarming.

More than one in three UK entrepreneurs and company directors are grappling with severe burnout, anxiety, and depression, often in complete isolation.

Half of SME owners say they have experienced poor mental health over the past twelve months a rate 124% higher than the national average.

The Health and Safety Executive reports 22.1 million working days lost due to stress, depression or anxiety in 2024/25 — the highest contributor to work-related ill health. Each affected employee takes an average of 22.9 days off.

Work-related mental health issues now cost the UK economy £57.4 billion each year. Stressed employees are 60% more likely to make errors and 50% less productive than their unstressed counterparts.

And this is the baseline. Before a redundancy process. Before the added weight of making a decision that directly affects someone else's livelihood.

High workloads, fear of redundancy, and unpaid overtime are leading stressors for UK workers. For the person running the process, all three can apply simultaneously. The workload of managing the redundancy on top of everything else. The fear — not of their own redundancy but of the legal and human consequences of getting it wrong. The additional hours spent researching, preparing, and worrying outside normal working time.

The time burden that compounds the stress

One of the things that makes a redundancy process so draining for a small business owner is how much time it takes on top of an already full schedule.

Consider what is actually involved in running a single individual redundancy correctly:

Researching the legal process and understanding your obligations. Writing or adapting the at-risk letter. Preparing for the consultation meeting. Holding the consultation meeting. Writing up the consultation notes. Considering any alternatives raised. Writing the outcome letter. Writing the confirmation letter. Calculating redundancy pay, notice pay, and holiday pay. Dealing with any appeal. Managing the remaining team's reaction. Handling the administrative close-down of the employment.

Each of those steps takes time. Research alone, for a business owner with no HR background, can consume hours. The consultation meeting requires preparation and emotional energy. The financial calculations require care and accuracy. A single error in any of them creates the risk of a dispute or a tribunal claim.

Time spent on admin and operational tasks is costing business owners almost £19,000 per year. A redundancy process adds a significant one-off block of that time at a moment when the business owner is also dealing with the financial and operational challenges that made the redundancy necessary in the first place.

You are managing a difficult business situation. You are managing your own emotional response to making a decision that affects someone you know. And you are trying to run the rest of the business at the same time. The idea of also becoming an expert in UK employment law process is not realistic. It is too much.

The fear of getting it wrong multiplies everything

For most small business owners, the redundancy process is unfamiliar territory. They have not done it before. They are not sure what they are supposed to do or in what order. They know the stakes are high — tribunal claims, financial exposure, reputational damage — but they do not know exactly where the risks are.

That uncertainty is its own form of stress. It follows you home. It surfaces at 2am. It makes you second-guess every letter you send and every word you say in the consultation meeting.

The number of workers reporting stress-related conditions rose from 776,000 in 2023 to 964,000 in 2024, marking the largest increase on record. Employment tribunal claims for unfair dismissal are up 72% year on year. The environment in which small business owners are running redundancy processes has never been more legally exposed or more stressful.

The fear is not irrational. Getting the process wrong genuinely does carry serious consequences. A single procedurally flawed redundancy can result in a tribunal claim costing upwards of £30,000 once legal fees and management time are included. For a small business already under financial pressure, that is not an abstract risk.

What is irrational is carrying all of that fear alone, without proper support or structure.

The impact on the remaining team

The stress does not end when the redundancy is confirmed. The person running the process then has to manage the aftermath with the team that remains.

Survivor guilt is a documented psychological phenomenon in redundancy situations. The employees who keep their jobs often feel guilty, anxious about their own security, and less trusting of the management that made the decision. Productivity drops. Morale suffers. In some cases, key employees who were not made redundant choose to leave because the experience shook their confidence in the business.

Mishandled redundancies lead to emotional strain, reduced productivity and reputational damage, affecting both departing and remaining employees.

For the small business owner, this creates a second wave of people management pressure on top of the first. Not only did you have to run the redundancy process. Now you have to lead the team through what comes after.

If the process was handled well with genuine consultation, clear communication, fair treatment, and professionalism throughout the remaining team can process it and move forward. If it was handled badly, hurried, opaque, or visibly unfair, the damage to trust can last for years.

How the process is run directly affects how the business recovers. That pressure falls on the person who ran it.

What good support looks like

A small business owner running a redundancy process needs three things that most of them do not have.

A clear process they can follow with confidence. Not a general overview of employment law. Not a generic checklist. A step-by-step guide that tells them exactly what to do, in what order, on what dates, personalised to their specific situation. Something that removes the uncertainty and replaces it with clarity.

Documents that are right. Letters that say what they need to say, in the right sequence, with the right language for their specific business reason and their specific employee's circumstances. Not templates with blanks left to fill in. Completed, professional documents they can use with confidence.

Someone to call if it gets complicated. Because sometimes it does get complicated. A protected employee. A consultation that goes in an unexpected direction. An employee who responds with anger or legal threats. In those moments, a business owner without HR support is completely alone. Having a specialist they can call — someone who already knows their situation — changes everything.

None of this eliminates the emotional weight of the process. Making someone redundant, when you have any empathy at all, will never feel easy. It should not feel easy. The difficulty of it is a reflection of your humanity.

But the process does not have to add to that weight. The legal complexity, the uncertainty about whether you are doing it right, the hours of research and document preparation — those can be taken off your plate.

The hardest part of a redundancy, for the person running it, is the human part. That is where your energy should go. Not into trying to become an employment law expert overnight.

What Redundly takes off your plate

Redundly does not make the decision for you. It does not make the conversation easier. It does not eliminate the emotional weight of looking someone in the eye and telling them their role is gone.

What it does is remove every other source of stress in the process.

The uncertainty about whether you are doing it right. Gone. The hours spent researching the correct process. Gone. The risk of sending the wrong letter in the wrong order. Gone. The calculation errors that create financial disputes. Gone. The worry that a risk flag you missed could turn a fair redundancy into a tribunal claim. Gone.

You answer the questions. You receive the complete process pack. You follow the guide. You hold the meeting. You process the payment. You close the file.

And then you get back to running the business — and looking after yourself.

Redundly generates a complete, legally structured UK redundancy process pack in 15 minutes. From £149 at redundly.co.uk.