Redundancy is the only business decision that gets announced with a town hall and a counsellor, which tells you everything about how businesses feel about it.
No company brings in emotional support because they're launching a new product. Or opening a new office. Or hiring fifty people.
They do it when they're taking livelihoods away.
Because beneath the spreadsheets, cost-saving targets and restructuring plans, everyone knows this is different.
Businesses call redundancies "necessary". Sometimes they are. But necessary does not mean painless.
The hardest part is not always the people leaving. It is often the people staying.
The trust changes. The optimism fades. The conversations become quieter.
Every announcement feels loaded. Every meeting invitation carries a little more anxiety than it did the week before.
We talk about reducing headcount, but it also reduces confidence in the business.
The numbers disappear from the payroll overnight. The culture often takes years to recover.
A well-managed redundancy process can preserve dignity. A badly managed one can damage an employer's reputation for years, making every future hire just that little bit harder.
Redundancy is sometimes unavoidable. But how you treat people on their worst day is still a choice.
So here is the uncomfortable question. If a business needs counsellors, town halls and carefully scripted speeches to explain a decision, what does that tell us about the decision itself?