Every other line covers what might happen to them. This covers what you will do.
Life cover. Income protection. Private medical. An employee assistance programme nobody uses. Every one of them insures a misfortune that may never arrive. Redundancy is different: it does not befall your workforce, it is something you decide — on a date you choose, for reasons you will have to defend. The only item on that list whose timing you control, and the only one with no provision behind it.
Group risk & wellbeing
Death in service, income protection, an assistance programme. Priced per employee per month, renewed annually, usually through a broker. Familiar, uncontroversial — and every one of them covers an event entirely outside your control.
Redundancy
Far more likely than a death-in-service claim, and the only one you initiate yourself. Yet there is no standing provision for it. It gets bought in a panic, at list price, in week three of a consultation, by whoever has the least time to shop.
The missing line
The same shape as everything else on your sheet: per employee, per month, renewed annually, budgeted once. Except this one prepares you for a decision you will actually have to take, rather than a risk you hope never lands.
Outplacement is bought reactively, under time pressure, by whoever is running the consultation. Standby is bought calmly, once a year, by the person who owns the benefits budget — alongside the group risk renewal. Same money, completely different conversation, and a far better outcome for everyone in it.
- What it is
- A standing agreement that job-search support for anyone you make redundant is already contracted, priced and ready to start.
- What it costs
- £5 per employee per month. Annual agreement, invoiced monthly or yearly. A 250-person company pays £15,000 a year.
- What you get every year
- Programme rates locked below our published pricing, 24-hour activation, a redundancy readiness review, and pay benchmarking for your roles — whether or not anyone leaves.
- What it is not
- Not insurance, and not a credit pot that builds up unused. Everything listed is delivered annually.
- Who it suits
- Employers of roughly 40 people and upward who would rather decide this calmly at renewal than in week three of a consultation.
- Who it doesn't
- Anyone already in consultation — you need the programme itself, today.
What this actually protects
Standby is on the benefits sheet, but it is not really a perk. It is the cheapest available mitigation for four exposures every employer carries and most only price after the fact.
The cost of getting a redundancy wrong just doubled
From 6 April 2026 the maximum protective award rose to 180 days’ pay per employee. On a twenty-person redundancy that is a materially different number from the one in most budgets, and it is awarded for failures of process, not outcome.
Standby does not make a claim impossible — nothing can. What it does is put a readiness review, current comms templates and a briefed management team in place before the consultation starts, which is when process failures actually happen.
Collective consultation, HR1 filing and the protective award apply at 20+ dismissals at one establishment within 90 days (the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992, s188). Below that threshold this exposure does not arise — and we will tell you so rather than sell you something you do not need.Survivors watch how leavers are treated, and act on it
This is one of the most replicated findings in organisational psychology: after a restructure, the commitment and productivity of the people who remain is predicted less by whether they kept their jobs than by whether they judged the treatment of those who left to be fair.
Which makes visible, funded support for leavers one of the few retention levers that works on the people you are not talking to. Replacing a capable employee is routinely estimated at six to nine months of their salary once recruitment, notice and lost productivity are counted.
Organisational justice and layoff-survivor research, Brockner and colleagues. Replacement-cost estimates vary by role and source; treat six to nine months of salary as an indicative range, not a precise figure.Every leaver has a LinkedIn account and a Glassdoor login
How a company handles redundancies is now published, permanently and by the people it affected. Candidates research employers before they apply, and a restructure handled badly is visible to every future hire long after the cost saving has been banked.
The inverse is also true and rarely used: people post about being looked after. A company that can say “support was already funded before any of this happened” is making a claim its competitors for that hire cannot match.
Direction of effect is well established; specific figures on candidate research behaviour vary considerably between surveys, so we have not quoted one.Your directors already owe a duty here
Under s172 of the Companies Act 2006 — the duty that governs how directors must weigh competing interests — directors must have regard to the interests of the company’s employees, and larger companies publish a s172 statement in their strategic report explaining how they did so.
“We maintain funded job-search support for anyone leaving through redundancy” is a concrete, evidenced sentence for that statement, and for the social pillar of an ESG report. Most companies have nothing specific to write there.
Companies Act 2006 s172(1)(b). Reporting requirements depend on company size — check what applies to you.Restructures get delayed, softened and half-done because leaders dread the human cost — and the drift is expensive in its own right. Knowing that real support is already contracted and paid for does not make the decision easy, but it removes one of the reasons it gets put off. Several of the employers we have spoken to reached that point before they reached the money.
What we are claiming, and what we are not
We would rather show you the basis for each argument than assert it. Where the evidence is strong we say so. Where it is directional, we say that too — and where there is no good data, we make no claim at all.
| What we say | How solid it is | What we build from it |
|---|---|---|
| The protective award is now up to 180 days’ pay per employee | Settled law. In force from 6 April 2026.Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992, s189, as amended | Readiness review before consultation, not after. And we tell you when your headcount puts you below the threshold. |
| Directors must have regard to employee interests | Statutory duty.Companies Act 2006 s172(1)(b) | A specific, evidenced line for your s172 statement and ESG reporting. |
| Survivors judge the company by how leavers were treated | Strongly replicated across four decades of organisational justice research.Brockner et al. and the wider layoff-survivor literature | Support that is visible and funded in advance, not improvised in week three. |
| Replacing a capable employee costs six to nine months of salary | Indicative. Widely cited, but varies substantially by role, sector and method.Treat as a range, not a figure | We use it to frame scale, never to calculate a return we cannot evidence. |
| Candidates research how employers treat people before applying | Direction certain, magnitude disputed between surveys.We quote no percentage | The employer-brand argument, made qualitatively. |
| Outplacement reduces tribunal claims | We do not claim this. There is no reliable data, and it would be an easy and dishonest thing to assert.Deliberately omitted | Nothing. It is not on this page for a reason. |
Every legal reference above is public and named so you can verify it. If you find something here that is out of date or overstated, tell us and we will correct it the same week — that is a standing commitment, not a courtesy. Figures were accurate when this page was written; employment law moves, and an organisation-wide consultation threshold is expected to follow.
Four things, delivered every year
Standby is not a pot of money you hope to use. Everything below happens whether or not you ever make anyone redundant.
Your rate, locked
Programme pricing fixed for the term, below our published rates. No negotiating under pressure, no emergency procurement round, no budget approval in week three of a consultation.
24-hour activation
Contracts signed, DPA in place, security questionnaire already completed. If the day comes, your people start the next working day rather than three weeks later.
Annual readiness review
Your process, your comms templates, your manager briefings, reviewed by people who do this constantly. Most companies discover the gaps during the consultation. You would find them in a quiet month.
Talent market intelligence
What your competitors actually pay for your roles — including the bands they do not advertise, which we confirm in writing every week. Nobody else can produce this, because nobody else is asking.
We will not offer CV writing or career coaching to the staff who stay. It is the obvious thing to bundle and it is quietly against your interests — you would be funding a leaving kit for people you are trying to keep. If you want development for your team, buy development. Standby covers the exit, and helps you fill roles from the people you already have.
£5 per employee, per month
| Employees | Per month | Per year | Compared to |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | £500 | £6,000 | less than one emergency outplacement engagement |
| 250 | £1,250 | £15,000 | roughly 4% of a typical group risk premium |
| 500 | £2,500 | £30,000 | under £1 per employee per week |
| 1,000 | £5,000 | £60,000 | a fraction of one senior hire’s recruitment fee |
Annual agreement, invoiced monthly or yearly. Programme rates are fixed for the term and set out in your engagement letter. A 90-day qualifying period applies before programmes can be activated at the locked rate.
Private medical typically runs £60–120 per employee per month. Group life is a few pounds. An EAP costs around £14 per employee per year and gets under 10% utilisation. Standby sits between the two — and unlike the EAP, everything in it is delivered whether or not anyone claims.
This is a service agreement, not insurance
The distinction is not marketing. It changes what this is legally, and we would rather be exact than let you assume something convenient.
No risk transfer. We never promise cover beyond what you pay for, and programmes are always charged per person at the agreed rate. And a 90-day qualifying period, so nobody signs up mid-consultation to secure the rate. Both exist to keep this a straightforward supply agreement rather than something that needs a regulator — we would rather build it correctly than discover the problem later.
You don’t have to buy Standby to get the coaching
Some employers want the coaching and nothing else — no redundancy support, no readiness review. That’s a perfectly sensible thing to want, and you can buy it that way. It’s your company; you decide how many people get it.
Buy the seats you want
Seats are bought in blocks and run continuously — when one person finishes a programme, the next begins. There’s no per-company ceiling and no requirement to take anything else. Ten seats or two hundred, it’s your call.
One thing we’ll always tell you up front: our current capacity. Coaching is delivered by people carrying deliberately small caseloads, so seats are limited by how many coaches we have, not by policy. If we can’t start you this month, we’ll say so before you commit — and tell you when we can.
We’d rather lose the order than take money for a start date we can’t hit. It’s the same reason we don’t promise application numbers we can’t reach.
We publish prices everywhere else, and we will here too. But coaching capacity is being built right now, and quoting a rate we might not be able to honour at volume would be exactly the behaviour this whole site argues against. Ask us and you’ll get a real number, a real start date, and an honest answer about how many seats we can actually staff.
If not everyone gets it, who does?
This is the question that decides whether a scarce benefit builds goodwill or resentment. Get it wrong and eighteen coached people create two hundred and thirty who feel overlooked. So the allocation is never a manager’s favour — it is a published rule about a moment, not a judgement about a person.
At the start of each year you pick which triggers apply and tell your people what they are. Nobody has to wonder why a colleague got it and they didn’t — the reason is written down, it is about a situation anyone could be in, and most of them will be in one eventually.
If we selected who gets coaching, we would be making decisions about your staff with no sight of performance, context or protected characteristics — which is bad practice and a real discrimination exposure for you. You allocate. We deliver, and we report in aggregate only, exactly as we do on the redundancy side.
Your seats are continuous, not annual. At 250 staff you have roughly eighteen people in coaching at any one time; when someone finishes a programme, the next person on the list starts. Nothing expires, nothing accrues, and there is no year-end scramble to use up an allowance. If demand outruns capacity we tell you, and you decide whether to add seats.
One available now. One coming in 2027.
Standby
- Programme rates locked below published pricing
- 24-hour activation, paperwork already done
- Annual redundancy readiness review
- Talent market intelligence, including undisclosed pay bands
- Internal redeployment matching against your open roles
- Named account contact
Standby + Coaching
- Everything in Standby
- Funded one-to-one coaching for roughly 7% of your workforce, continuously
- Allocated by published triggers, never by manager favour
- Aggregate engagement reporting, never individual
- Delivered by our sister coaching service — also available on its own
Not on sale yet. We will not take money for something we cannot deliver at the standard we want. Ask to be told when it opens.
When Standby is the wrong thing to buy
You are already in consultation
Then this is the wrong product, and the qualifying period would block it anyway. Buy the programme directly — see the published pricing.
You have fewer than about 40 staff
The annual deliverables are not worth the admin at that size. Come to us directly if the day arrives; there is no minimum engagement.
You want guaranteed cover
That is insurance, and we are deliberately not that. If you need genuine risk transfer, an insurance broker is the right call and we will say so.
The four questions you’ll be asked
You are almost certainly not the only person who has to say yes to this. Here are the questions the others will ask, and the honest answers — so you are not guessing on their behalf.
“What are we buying if nobody is made redundant?”
A readiness review, pay benchmarking for your roles, internal redeployment matching and a locked rate — all delivered annually regardless. Nothing accrues unused, so there is no balance to write off and no liability to carry. If the answer were “nothing”, we would not have built it this way.
“Is this insurance? Where is the DPA?”
Not insurance — there is no risk transfer and no payout on a contingent event, so it needs no FCA authorisation. It is an ordinary supply agreement. We will sign your data processing agreement or provide ours, and complete your supplier security questionnaire. The full detail is here.
“How do we describe this externally?”
“We maintain funded job-search support for anyone leaving through redundancy.” That is a concrete line for your s172 statement — the directors’ duty under the Companies Act to have regard to employee interests — and for the social section of an ESG report. Most companies have nothing specific to put there.
“Does this mean redundancies are coming?”
The question every employer worries about, and the reason to announce it at a calm moment rather than a tense one. The honest framing is the one you already use for life cover: we hope never to need it, and we would rather have it in place than not. Announced at renewal alongside your other benefits, it reads as preparation, not warning. We will give you the wording.
Twenty minutes, and a number for your benefits committee
Tell us your headcount and we will send the annual cost, the locked programme rates and a one-page summary written for a benefits renewal conversation.