Q: We are a start-up company with less than 15 employees. We need to make staff cuts due to a downturn in business. We have employees who have been employed for less than 12 months. For these employees, must we treat it as a redundancy and therefore have to consult and pay any redundancy payments? Or, because they have worked for us less than 12 months, can we just notify them of the decision to end their employment and pay them 1 week’s notice?