Individual Consultation Training for Managers

Redundancy & Employee Consultation Training for Managers and HR Teams

Our Individual Consultation Training course helps organisations conduct more effective, meaningful and legally robust consultation processes. Designed for those leading individual consultations, such as HR professionals, managers, employee relations specialists, this practical course provides the knowledge and skills needed to manage individual consultation meetings, redundancy consultations, and the employee consultation processes with confidence.

High-quality individual consultation plays a vital role in achieving better outcomes for both employers and employees. Effective consultation helps organisations demonstrate a fair and reasonable process, reducing the risk of unfair dismissal claims, employment tribunal challenges and costly disputes.

This consultation training for managers and HR teams focuses on delivering a fair consultation process, improving communication skills and ensuring compliance with ACAS consultation guidance and UK employment law best practice.

Why Individual Consultation Matters

Where workplace change, redundancy, restructuring or contractual change is proposed, employers must follow a fair and meaningful consultation process. In many situations, individual consultation meetings are a legal requirement and form an essential part of good employee relations practice.

Employment Tribunals will consider whether an employer acted fairly and reasonably when making decisions that affect employees. A well-planned and properly documented employee consultation process can help demonstrate procedural fairness and support a defensible position should a dispute arise.

Effective consultation requires employers to approach discussions with an open mind, genuinely consider alternatives and avoid any appearance of a predetermined outcome. If a decision has already been made before consultation begins, the process may be viewed as a sham consultation, undermining both legal compliance and employee trust.

Who Should Attend this individual consultation training?

This individual consultation training course is suitable for:

  • HR professionals and HR business partners
  • Managers leading redundancy consultation meetings
  • Business leaders responsible for organisational change
  • Employee relations teams
  • Operational and line managers
  • Employee representatives and workplace representatives
  • Anyone who may be involved in employee consultation, restructuring or contractual change projects

Whether you are managing a redundancy consultation process, implementing organisational change or supporting employee relations activity, this course provides practical guidance and proven consultation techniques.

CONTENT

  1. The Purpose of Individual Consultation

  • Aims and objectives
  • The need for an open mind with no pre-determined outcomes
  • To avoid imposed contract changes or redundancy
  • To reach agreement on a way forward

2. Situations when Individual Consultation May Apply

  • Changes to Contracts and Redundancies
  • After Collective Consolation or Instead of Collective Consultation – understanding the difference

3. Legislation, Case Law and Good Practice – key points

  • Individual consultation v collective consultation
  • Specified information
  • Periods of time, meeting requirements
  • Example contract variations and support measures

4. Typical Time Lines and Stages

  • An announcement
  • Initial individual consultation meetings with each potentially affected employee.
  • Employee reflection period including time off work
  • Second Individual Consultation meeting – alternatives and Options
  • Selection Process
  • Post Selection Process Individual Consultation Meeting
  • Employer Review and additional Individual Consultation Meetings as required
  • Final consultation meeting
  • Final Individual meeting with each employee. – Confirming the outcome individually

5. Individual Consultation Meeting Guidance

ACAS guidelines specify a minimum of one individual consultation but in most scenarios, where employers want to act fairly, support their staff and be seen to do so more are often required.  Employers need to consider time lines and time limits, together with the number of people involved and make a decision on strategy and approach. 

Using case studies and example scenarios this session explores how many meetings may be needed and the focus of each, including:

  • Immediately, after the change announcement. To clarify the situation and how it may impact on the individual
  • After the employee has had time to consider pending situation.
  • After the selection process has been completed
  • General reviews, updates on process and feedback on previous concerns/suggestions
  • The dismissal meeting

6. Hints and Tips for Effective One to One Meetings

This session explores a range of communication and soft skills that help make one-to-one meetings more effective.

6.1 Developing an Effective Structure Right

  • Ground Rules
  • Planning a meeting
  • Opening the meeting
  • Conducting the meeting
  • Testing Understanding
  • Before closure
  • Records and note taking
  • Defensible Documentation – “see you in court”
  • Data Protection and Confidentiality

6.2 Effective Communication Hints and Tips

Making consultation and meetings more effective revolves round effective communication.  This session explores some simply, easy to apply techniques that allow those hosting a one-to-one meeting to improve its effectiveness

  • Active Listening
    • Concentrating, being non-judgmental, showing empathy and respect
    • Reflective listening, Paraphrasing, Summarising
  • Questioning Techniques
    • Open, Probing, Reflective, Closed
    • Multiple Questions, Hypothetical Questions, Leading Questions

6.3 Supporting Different People – Hints and Tips

Employees attending individual consultation meetings will show a range of different emotions.  This session provides hints and tips on how to engage, better, with those who are:

  • Anxious or Nervous
  • Angry
  • Confused and Rambling
  • Shy and Diffident
  • Upset

Explore our Redundancy and TUPE related Training Courses

Redundancy Training - understanding the law and good practice
Redundancy Training
Redundancies - Planning & Implementing
Pre-Redundancy Planning
Implementing Redundancies
Defensible Documentation
TUPE Process Training
Individual Consultation
Redundancy for Staff Reps
Redundancy & TUPE Training
More Effective Consultation
Job Search

Redundancy and Tupe Reference Guides

Concrew Training’s papers and guides on Redundancy and TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations, are designed to help you get process right.  They highlight good practice as well as the common errors employers make. Our redundancy and TUPE training courses build on these help make the process smooth and effective for all parties. 

The Redundancy Process Explained

The redundancy process is complex. Don’t get caught out. This free reference guide explains the steps and stages in an easy to understand way.

Redundancy 12 Common Employers Errors

This free reference guide highlights the common errors and mistakes employers make in redundancy situations. It raises awareness and in turn helps employers implement the correct redundancy process

Individual Consultation Explained

Collective consultation is required by law, but so is individual consultation.  Each and every employee who is affected by the changes needs to be consulted in a meaningful way.  This demands several meetings.  Our free resource document explains.

Redundancy Meetings – making them easier and more effective

Seven short tips to help ease anxieties and move conversations along at different parts of the individual consultation process.  These approaches transferable to most meetings. 

FAQ Courses - Frequently Asked Questions about our training courses

Answers to common questions about our training courses can be found below.  Our website details our overall base course offer and prices.  Answers to  questions about our courses can be found below.  Answers to questions about Concrew Training as a company can be found on our “about-us” page on our “FAQ” page
 

Our training courses can be aligned to the specific needs of:

  • Human Resources, HR and L&D teams
  • Governors and Trustees
  • Directors and Senior Leaders
  • Managers and team leaders
  • Department Specialists
  • Internal trainers and subject experts
  • The general workforce, specific departments and individuals
  • Businesses and organisations across the UK

Whether you’re upskilling a small team, undergoing change, rolling out training organisation-wide, we can support you.

Our courses are highly participative and interactive. To ensure we involve everyone and cater for each attendees’ individual needs we limit attendance as follows. We can run multiple sessions where attendee numbers need to be higher.

  • Up to 15 people can attend online training courses.
  • Up to 20 people can attend face-to-face “training room” based training courses

Most of our training courses are attributed with 6 face-to-face learning hours. Including breaks, they usually run for about 7 hours.

We can condense most topics into 3 hour sessions.

We can combine and/or extend our courses to create bespoke multi-day programmes for you.

We deliver online courses via our clients’ video conferencing platform, throughout the UK.  Attendees can be based abroad but payment needs to be made by a UK based organisation.

We can deliver face-to-face training on your premises in England, Scotland and Wales.

Yes, we can deliver all our courses online in real time on your video conferencing platform, on a date and at a time that works for you.

We do not offer pre-recorded training.

Yes. We can deliver at your premises, in a training room, office, boardroom, classroom or at a venue organised by you

Yes, we can deliver at weekends, evenings and during night shifts.  This makes our training more accessible for Governors, Trustees and shift workers.

We publish detailed course overviews for all courses. These course overviews are based on the individual course learning plans.

Each course overview outlines indicative content as final content is always based on each individual customer’s own requirements.

Factual content is updated to reflect the very latest developments before each course runs.

Yes. We align final course content to each individual customers’ needs. This includes dovetailing content with your own policies and procedures, when required.

Why should you use Concrew Training?

  • Specialist HR, Employment Law & Compliance training provider
  • We reference to official Government bodies such as ACAS, ICO, EHRC
  • Content tailored to your policies and procedures
  • CPD certificates included
  • 12 months of post-course support
  • UK-wide delivery
  • Online and face-to-face options
  • Open and transparent pricing

Yes. We prefer to do this. Including your  policies and procedures in the training helps us contextualises the learning and improve quality

It makes it easier to demonstrate how, where and why good practice applies.

We do not charge extra for aligning content to your prevailing situation, internal policies and procedures

Yes, of course. We treat all the information you provide as strictly confidential. We only use the information you provide for the specific training assignment/s you book with us

We use a team of subject specialists to deliver the training. They all have in-depth subject knowledge and experience. They are able to answer most questions posed to them, on rare occasions complex or obscure questions may require post course answers. Our subject specialists are also highly experienced trainers, trainers who can make even dull and boring subjects come alive.

Our trainers bring years of industry experience and deliver engaging, interactive sessions that keep participants engaged, involved and learning. Our trainers are subject specialists and able to answer virtually any subject related question.

Yes, we can provide CPD certificates for all our courses. They detail the number of learning hours and headline course content.

Certification is included in all half-day and one-day courses, it is an optional extra for 60/90 minute lectures.

Our customers and clients say things like:

We recommend our training is booked 2 to 3 months in advance. We only reserve dates against form bookings. Availability decreases with time.

During quieter periods we may have a very limited amount of short term, 2-week or less, lead time availability.

You are required to:

  • Provide the video conferencing platform (Teams/Zoom etc) or training room
  • Provide all the equipment, including a laptop for the trainer, when the training is delivered face-to-face on your premises or similar
  • Issue invites to all parties
  • To print/distribute materials and CPD certificates from PDF files we supply*

*Most materials can be distributed electronically

  • We are a specialist HR, Employment Law & Compliance training provider
  • We reference to official Government bodies such as ACAS, ICO, EHRC
  • Content can be tailored to your prevailing needs, inhouse policies and procedures
  • CPD certificates are included
  • 12 months of post-course support is provided
  • We offer UK-wide delivery
  • we have online and face-to-face options available
  • Our pricing is open and transparent 

Our training is high quality and budget friendly. We charge the same price for all topics.

Our prices include reasonable alignment to your specific needs, your inhouse polices and procedures.

Our prices vary according to training location, the number of attendees, and payment terms. Our prices page gives full information.

Please complete our quote form.  This form captures the key information we need to provide a quote and answer any related questions you may have. 

Our prices page and Company FAQ Page may also be of help