Redundancy and ‘suitable alternative employment’ explained

If an employee’s job is at risk of redundancy, an employer can offer the employee ‘suitable alternative employment‘ to another job in the same company, if one is available (to avoid the redundancy). In this article we look at what this means, how do you offer it, is the job suitable?.

(updated October 2025).

Redundancy

Redundancy is a ‘fair’ means of dismissal by an employer, so long as the procedures they follow and the circumstances are correct. A redundancy situation happens when there’s no more, or not enough, work for the employee/their colleagues (e.g. the employer closes or relocates the business, or now needs fewer workers). An employer needs to take the following steps to ensure the redundancy is ‘fair’:

• Employees need to be informed of proposed redundancies by the employer.  The employer needs to undertake Consultation with the ‘affected employees’ (or their representatives) with a view to ‘reaching agreement,’ which means they should consider alternative ideas to redundancy and explain their decisions to the affected employees.
• The employer must select those who are at risk of redundancy in a fair way.
• The employer must consider offering affected employees any alternative work that’s available and suitable and they must tell affected employees of any vacancies at the company.
• They must pay you your Statutory Redundancy Pay entitlement (if you have two years continuous service) if there is no suitable work available for you at that time.

Please also see this article about ‘Redundancy Protection’ for those who are pregnant on maternity or family leave after April 2024.

Redeployment

Employers need to consider the following factors when deciding if an alternative role will be ‘suitable’ to replace an employee’s redundant job:

• Will the employee have the right skills and experience for the new role?
• Are the terms of the alternative job similar – e.g. status, place of work, job duties, pay, hours of work, responsibility?

If the job is not suitable it may be reasonable for the employee to refuse a ‘suitable’ alternative role and receive a statutory redundancy payment. The employee will not be due a redundancy payment if they unreasonably refuse a suitable alternative job offer.

Deciding if it’s reasonable for an employee to turn down an offer of alternative employment will depend on their specific circumstances, including:

• The amount of time they’ve been given to consider the new job
• Whether the role is temporary or not and the role’s status
• The impact it will have on their personal situation (e.g. if it’s in a different location, the effect on their family life or health)

An employer cannot force an employee to accept an offer of alternative employment. However, if the employee refuses such an offer unreasonably, they will forfeit their right to statutory redundancy payment as long as:

• The offer of the alternative employment was made before the end of the previous employment and the employee was given details of the new job
• The new job starts on the termination of the old job or within four weeks of it
• The job that’s offered has the same terms as the original contract, or if they differ, the job is still seen as suitable alternative employment.

The onus is on the employer to show both an employee’s suitability for the job and that the employee unreasonably refused the job. If an employer believes the alternative job is suitable but the employee disagrees, the employeemay be able to claim for statutory redundancy pay and unfair dismissal at an Employment Tribunal after they’ve followed the company’s internal grievance process.

If an employer has alternative work available that’s suitable but doesn’t offer this to the redundant employee, the redundancy dismissal of the employee may be an unfair dismissal.

In Dunne v Colin & Avril Ltd 2017, Ms Dunne had leukaemia and worked 24 hours per week over three days as a bookkeeper. Her employment transferred to a new business (same owner) and initially she was offered 16 hours per week, which she declined for financial reasons. She was then offered 24 hours per week involving 16 hours per week as bookkeeper, plus eight hours of other work that included some work in the company warehouse. Ms Dunne declined, reasoning it was inconsistent with her skills and experience and wouldn’t be cost effective (as she was paid more as a bookkeeper); she was then dismissed. At the tribunal it became clear, for the first time, that she couldn’t work in the warehouse because of the cold environment. The Tribunal found her dismissal for redundancy was fair as the second offer was suitable (substantially office based and the same pay) and her refusal of it wasn’t reasonable. The case went to EAT who weren’t happy with the ET’s approach, and the case has been sent back to Tribunal to reconsider whether the second offer was ‘suitable’, as well as whether her refusal was reasonable or not. The EAT said that the Tribunal should have asked if the employer had demonstrated that her refusal was unreasonable.

In Aramark (UK) Ltd v Fernandes, Mr Fernandes was due to be made redundant. He argued that, before being made redundant, he should have been added to Aramark’s list of ‘additional workers’, which was a pool of workers to be called upon to work as and when work was available. Without doing this, Mr Ferenandes said he had been unfairly dismissed.

These ‘additional workers’ were not employed by Aramark and were not guaranteed work. The original Employment Tribunal agreed with Mr Fernandes and said that, by not consulting with him about the pool of additional workers, his dismissal was unfair. However, the Employment Appeal Tribunal in 2020 disagreed and said that if Mr Fernandes had been added to the list of additional workers, this would not have avoided his dismissal by reason of redundancy, as he would not have been provided with work that guaranteed alternative employment.

Statutory Trial periods

If an employer offers a potentially redundant employee a new job that is a reasonable alternative to their old job, but where there are some differences to the old position and it’s terms and conditions, the employee is entitled to a 4 week statutory trial period in the new job.

• If, during the four week trial period (or at the end of the four weeks), the employee does not want to stay in the new job and either they or the employer terminates the new contract or gives notice to terminate the contract – because it’s not considered a suitable alternative due to the differences between the old and new contracts – the employee will be classed as being dismissed by redundancy and will still qualify for a redundancy payment.
• If at the end of the four weeks the employee need more time for re-training, the period may be extended (as long as this was agreed at the outset). This only applies for re-training; if an extension is for other reasons, this may take the trial period outside of the statutory regime, meaning the right to a redundancy payment would be lost.
• If the work is ‘suitable’ and the employee seen to be ‘unreasonably’ terminating the contract (resigning or giving notice to resign), they will lose the right to a redundancy payment. However, The Employer needs to show that the alternative employment that was offered was suitable and the employee’s refusal to do the job was unreasonable – Tribunals set this bar quite high for Employers to prove, as they are not keen on depriving an employee of their redundancy payment.
• If the employee stays in the new job after these four weeks, they will be considered to have accepted the new job (assuming they’ve not said differently) and will forfeit their redundancy payment.
• It is possible to start a new four week trial period in another alternative job if the first new job/trial period is unsuitable (and everyone agrees).
• The four week trial period should generally start immediately after the previous job has ended, which means that the employee must have been given notice of redundancy dismissal from their previous job for the trial period to start; and they must have accepted an offer of the new alternative employment before the original job ended.
• If the new job/four week trial period doesn’t start immediately after the previous job ends, it must start within four calendar weeks of the old contract
• If an employer refuses to give a trial period for a job that should attract one this can make a redundancy dismissal unfair.

In East London NHS Foundation Trust v O’Connor in November 2019, the EAT found that telling an employee that his job was being “deleted” did not in itself amount to a redundancy dismissal and therefore a statutory trial period was not automatically triggered.

Mr O’Connor was told that, after a restructuring exercise in March 2017, that his role was at risk of redundancy and he was later told his role would be ‘deleted’ from 3rd July 2017.

Formal notice of dismissal was not given and Mr O’Connor was later offered a trial period for an alternative role, starting on 3rd July. This was extended to 9th August to accommodate Mr O’Connor’s pre-booked holiday, although the Trust was unaware that it could not legally extend a statutory trial period.

At the end of the trial period, the Trust offered Mr O’Connor the role on a permanent basis. However, there was a dispute as to whether the role was in fact a suitable alternative role (he argued it wasn’t), which would mean Mr O’Connor would not be entitled to a redundancy payment. Mr O’Connor went off sick and raised a grievance saying the new role was not a suitable alternative. The Trust agreed to extend the trial period while the grievance was ongoing, but the grievance was rejected in November 2017.

The Trust offered him the new role again, which he declined, and they terminated his employment in December 2017, declining to make a redundancy payment, saying the statutory trial period had ended on 9th August and that he had unreasonably refused suitable alternative employment. Mr O’Connor bought a claim for statutory redundancy pay (he had been paid for his notice period). The Trust appealed the original ET decision but the EAT upheld the ET’s findings that formal notice of dismissal was not given on or before 3rd July and that the trial period for the new job was not a statutory trial period, and that Mr O’Connor had been dismissed in December 2017.

This would have meant that his entitlement to a redundancy payment was not automatically extinguished by the trial period. The case has now gone back to Tribunal to determine if it was a redundancy dismissal and so if a redundancy payment was due.