Checklist · Labor and Employment

Executing a Reduction in Force: A Practical Checklist

29 U.S.C. § 1140

Type: Checklist
Jurisdiction: National
Date: 2024-12-12
Topic: Labor and Employment

A project checklist for executing a workforce reduction lawfully, sequenced so that the legal work happens before the business is ready to announce. Sixteen phases cover decision governance and the litigation hold, defining decisional units, writing selection criteria before any names are collected, computing federal WARN by site with the ninety-day lookback and lookahead, building the state mini-WARN matrix that sets the announcement date, applying and calibrating criteria with written per-person justification, running the adverse impact analysis under privilege and deciding what to do when it shows impact, the protected-status screen, individual contract and equity and visa issues, severance design, drafting an OWBPA-compliant release with the group decisional-unit disclosure and post-McLaren Macomb confidentiality provisions, union effects bargaining, notice preparation and delivery to all three WARN recipients, announcement-day logistics and manager scripts, administration of the consideration and revocation windows and Section 409A payment dates, and post-reduction recall, rehire, and reference practice. A worked example follows a fictional employer through a sixty-two position reduction across two sites in two states.

Executing a Reduction in Force: A Practical Checklist

Labor and Employment > Termination and Layoffs | Published 12 December 2024 - Updated 19 April 2026 | UpLaw - uplaw.us

The most expensive mistake in a layoff is sequencing. Notice statutes run backward from the announcement date, and selection criteria have to exist in writing before any name is collected — which means most of the legal work has to be finished before the business feels ready to move. An employer that decides on Monday and announces in eleven days has already lost the two arguments that matter.

Keywords: reduction in force, WARN notice, mini-WARN matrix, 90-day aggregation, selection criteria, decisional unit, adverse impact analysis, RFOA, OWBPA disclosure, revocation period, McLaren Macomb, § 409A, COBRA, effects bargaining, final pay, recall

Work this checklist as a project plan, in order. The doctrinal treatment is in Reductions in Force and Severance: A Comprehensive Guide to WARN, OWBPA, and Separation Agreements; the narrative overview is in Anatomy of a Lawful Layoff: WARN Notice, Disparate Impact, and the OWBPA Release.

Our running example. Halvard Systems, Inc. (fictional), 1,240 employees, industrial software. Plan: eliminate 62 positions — 44 at Brightwater (310 employees) and 18 at Kestrel Point (96 employees) — sixteen weeks after a separate 9-position elimination at Brightwater.

Phase 1 — Governance and the litigation hold

[ ] Identify a small, named decision group and keep the deliberations within it.
[ ] Engage counsel at the outset, and specifically to direct the adverse impact analysis.
[ ] Decide, in writing, whether the impact analysis will be privileged and how it will be handled.
[ ] Issue a litigation hold covering the RIF planning materials, performance records, and communications in the affected units.
[ ] Instruct participants that RIF deliberations are not the place for commentary on age, tenure, cost, "energy," "digital native," "fresh perspective," or "succession."
[ ] Establish a single document repository with version control.
[ ] Set the project calendar with the announcement date as an output, not an input.

Why it matters, and the traps. The RIF file will be produced in discovery, and the sentences in it will be read aloud. The most damaging documents in age-discrimination cases are not selection spreadsheets — they are the slide that says "opportunity to refresh the team" and the email that says "he's been here 24 years, that's a big number." Say the rule out loud at the first meeting.

On the hold: metadata will establish whether the criteria document predates the name list. Preserve it deliberately, because that sequence is one of the employer's best pieces of evidence when the order is right. See Issuing a Litigation Hold and Preserving ESI: A Practical Checklist.

Phase 2 — Define the decisional units

[ ] Identify each organizational population within which selection comparisons will be made.
[ ] Match the unit to how decisions are actually being made — by department, function, location, job family, or level.
[ ] Document the definition and the rationale in writing.
[ ] Confirm the same definition will be used for the adverse impact analysis and for the OWBPA § 626(f)(1)(H) disclosure.

Why it matters, and the traps. The decisional unit is the single hardest judgment in a reduction and it does double duty: it frames the statistical analysis and it defines what must be disclosed to every employee over forty. Define it too narrowly and the OWBPA disclosure is inadequate, which under Oubre v. Entergy Operations, Inc., 522 U.S. 422 (1998), voids the age release entirely with no tender-back. Define it too broadly and the employer publishes a data set that itself suggests impact.

Use one definition throughout. Employers that use one unit for the impact study and a different one for the disclosure have created an inconsistency a plaintiff's expert will exploit.

Phase 3 — Write the selection criteria — before any names

[ ] Draft the criteria in a dated document, before collecting any names.
[ ] Prefer, in order: elimination of a function or position; objective pre-existing performance data; skills assessment against a written future-state specification; meaningful prior ratings; seniority; and only then manager discretion with written justification.
[ ] Define each criterion operationally — what counts as evidence, what the scale is, who applies it.
[ ] Prohibit criteria that are proxies for protected status: cost of compensation, benefit or pension proximity, tenure standing alone, "flexibility," "cultural fit."
[ ] Write the business rationale for the reduction and for each unit's share of it.
[ ] Circulate the criteria to managers with training and a common rubric.
[ ] Do not ask managers to "identify your lowest performers."

Why it matters, and the traps. "Identify your lowest performers by Friday" is not a criterion — it is a request for the manager's unexamined preference, recorded nowhere, and it is the most common instruction given in American layoffs. It produces a list the employer cannot explain and a record in which the only documented standard is the one written after the fact.

Two proxies deserve specific prohibition. Compensation cost correlates strongly with age and tenure, and an instruction to "reduce the highest-cost positions" is an age-impact machine. Benefit proximity is worse: selecting to prevent vesting violates ERISA § 510, 29 U.S.C. § 1140, independently of the ADEA — and it is the limit on the otherwise employer-friendly holding of Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U.S. 604 (1993).

Halvard. Criteria restated in writing before any names: (1) positions supporting the retired legacy product line are eliminated; (2) remaining selections by panel-scored competency against a written future-state specification for each role family; (3) ties broken by documented prior-year performance rating, then seniority.

Phase 4 — Compute federal WARN

[ ] Confirm covered employer status: 100+ employees excluding part-time, or 100+ working 4,000+ aggregate hours weekly exclusive of overtime. 29 U.S.C. § 2101(a)(1).
[ ] Apply the part-time definition correctly: under 20 hours weekly or employed fewer than 6 of the last 12 months.
[ ] Identify each single site of employment, including how remote and outstationed employees are assigned.
[ ] For each site, count employment losses in any 30-day period — including layoffs over six months and hour reductions over 50% for six months. § 2101(a)(6).
[ ] Test each site for plant closing (50+ losses, including shutdown of a facility or operating unit within a site) and mass layoff (500+, or 50–499 constituting 33%+).
[ ] Run the 90-day aggregation analysis both backward and forward. § 2102(d).
[ ] If relying on an exception, confirm it applies and prepare the required written statement of the basis for reduced notice.
[ ] Determine whether any sale of a business allocation applies. § 2101(b)(1).

Why it matters, and the traps. Four traps recur.

Remote workers. They are assigned to the site to which they report or from which work is assigned. 20 C.F.R. § 639.3(i). Fifty-five remote employees reporting to headquarters can be a plant closing at headquarters. Employers that treat remote workers as siteless are exposed.

The 90-day rule. Employers look backward and forget to look forward. A second reduction planned for next quarter can retroactively convert this one into a covered event.

Furloughs. A "temporary" layoff that slips past six months creates an employment loss, and notice was due 60 days before the original date.

The reduced-notice statement. Each exception requires a brief written statement of the basis. Employers invoke the exception and omit the statement, forfeiting it.

Halvard. Brightwater 44/310 = 14.2% (under). Kestrel Point 18/96 = 18.75% (under). Prior 9-position action was 16 weeks earlier — outside 90 days, no aggregation. Separate sites, so no cross-site aggregation. Federal WARN not triggered. Correct — and exactly where most companies stop, which is Phase 5's whole point.

Phase 5 — Build the state mini-WARN matrix, then set the announcement date

[ ] For each site's state, answer: employer size threshold; event threshold and whether a percentage test applies; whether measured per site or employer-wide; notice period (60, 90, other); whether relocations are covered; whether severance is mandated; which exceptions are recognized; notice recipients and prescribed content or forms; penalties and any individual officer liability.
[ ] Check local ordinances in addition to state law.
[ ] Build a matrix: one row per site, one column per requirement.
[ ] Comply with the most protective applicable rule at each site.
[ ] Set the announcement date from the longest applicable notice period.
[ ] Identify whether any state requires notice on a state-prescribed form or through a portal.

Why it matters, and the traps. This is the phase that saves companies from the most common WARN class action: the one filed after a correct federal analysis and no state analysis. Several states impose notice for a 50-person layoff with no percentage test, several use a 90-day period, at least one mandates severance by statutory formula regardless of any release, and some measure thresholds employer-wide rather than per site.

Do not attempt a single national timeline. Do not assume the state analysis mirrors the federal one. And note that state statutes change frequently — verify current text rather than relying on a prior matrix.

Phase 6 — Apply the criteria and build the list

[ ] Have each manager apply the written criteria and produce a written per-person justification referencing them.
[ ] Hold a calibration session across managers to normalize application.
[ ] Review justifications for conclusory language ("not a fit," "low energy") and send them back.
[ ] Verify that scoring is complete for everyone in the decisional unit, not just those selected.
[ ] Confirm no selected employee's justification rests on conduct that was never documented at the time.
[ ] Keep the scoring materials; do not discard intermediate versions.

Why it matters, and the traps. Calibration is what converts twelve managers' individual judgments into one employer decision. Without it, the same criterion is applied twelve different ways, and the resulting inconsistency reads as pretext even where every manager acted in good faith.

Score the whole unit, not just the departing. A record that scores only the selected employees cannot support a comparative defense, because there is nothing to compare them to.

Phase 7 — Adverse impact analysis, under privilege

[ ] Have counsel request the analysis for the purpose of legal advice.
[ ] Compute selection rates by decisional unit for: age 40+, sex, race and ethnicity, and disability status where known.
[ ] Apply the four-fifths rule of thumb (Uniform Guidelines, 29 C.F.R. Part 1607) and a test of statistical significance.
[ ] Mark and treat the analysis as privileged; do not circulate it as a business document.
[ ] Where impact appears, choose consciously: change the criteria, change the list, or document the justification and accept known risk.
[ ] For ADEA impact, build the affirmative reasonable factor other than age record now.
[ ] For Title VII impact, document job-relatedness and business necessity, and consider whether a less-impactful alternative exists.
[ ] Re-run the analysis after any change to the list.

Why it matters, and the traps. Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, 554 U.S. 84 (2008), places the burden of pleading and proving the RFOA defense on the employer. Combined with Smith v. City of Jackson, 544 U.S. 228 (2005), which permits ADEA impact claims, this means an employer facing statistically significant age impact must affirmatively prove a business rationale — which requires building the record while deciding, not reconstructing it in litigation. The EEOC's RFOA considerations at 29 C.F.R. § 1625.7 are a useful drafting template: relation to a business purpose, fair and accurate application, manager training against stereotypes, and assessment of the impact on older workers.

The privilege trap. Counsel directs the analysis, then someone puts the summary chart in the steering-committee deck, and privilege is gone. Also understand the deeper tension: relying on the analysis to prove good faith may waive privilege over it. Decide the purpose at the outset.

What is not a defense: running the analysis, finding impact, changing nothing, and having no explanation. That is worse than not running it.

Halvard. Analysis shows the selected group's mean age is 51 against a workforce mean of 38, statistically significant. Investigation shows the impact is driven almost entirely by the legacy product line wind-down, which is staffed by long-tenured engineers. That is a genuine RFOA — but Halvard must document it: which product, when the retirement decision was made, who staffed it, and that the criterion was the product line rather than tenure. With that record, the position is defensible. Without it, the numbers speak alone.

Phase 8 — Protected-status screen

[ ] Screen every selected employee for: FMLA or other protected leave, current or recent.
[ ] Pending or recent accommodation request under the ADA or PWFA.
[ ] Recent internal complaint or agency charge.
[ ] Open or recent workers' compensation claim.
[ ] Whistleblower activity under SOX, Dodd-Frank, the False Claims Act, or a state analogue.
[ ] Military service obligations (USERRA).
[ ] Employment-based visa status.
[ ] Pregnancy or recent parental leave.
[ ] Union membership or protected concerted activity.
[ ] For each hit, confirm the decision rests on the same criteria as everyone else's, with documentation predating the protected activity where possible.

Why it matters, and the traps. None of these statuses immunizes anyone from a legitimate reduction, and removing employees from a list solely because of protected status creates its own problem — reverse-discrimination exposure and, more practically, an inference that the employer believed the reduction was unlawful. The correct posture is not exemption but documented equal treatment.

The one place to be extremely careful: an employee on protected leave whose position is eliminated. The FMLA and ADA both permit it where the position would have been eliminated regardless, but the employer bears the burden and temporal proximity makes it real. Pre-leave documentation is the only persuasive evidence. See Processing an FMLA Leave Request: A Practical Checklist and Handling an Accommodation Request Under the ADA: A Practical Checklist.

Phase 9 — Individual issues

[ ] Pull individual employment agreements, offer letters, and retention agreements for severance, notice, and cause definitions.
[ ] Review equity awards: vesting acceleration, post-termination exercise window, repurchase rights, and whether the RIF triggers "good reason."
[ ] Check deferred compensation and bonus plan terms — is a pro-rated bonus owed?
[ ] Identify visa holders and their grace periods, portability options, and any employer notification obligations.
[ ] Identify anyone whose departure triggers key-person, licensing, or regulatory notification obligations.
[ ] Identify officers and directors and confirm D&O and indemnification continuity.
[ ] Check any CBA for layoff, bumping, recall, and severance provisions.

Why it matters. Equity is the most frequent source of post-layoff disputes, because employees discover the 90-day exercise window after the fact and cannot fund the exercise. Deciding whether to extend it is a real choice with tax consequences (an ISO extended past 90 days becomes an NSO), and it should be made deliberately. See Founder Equity, Vesting, and the 83(b) Election: A Practical Checklist.

Phase 10 — Design the severance package

[ ] Set the formula (weeks per year of service, minimum and maximum) and apply it consistently by level.
[ ] Decide whether severance is conditioned on a release, and note the WARN interaction: voluntary, unconditional payments not otherwise owed can offset WARN liability, while release-conditioned payments generally cannot.
[ ] Decide on COBRA subsidy duration and confirm the plan permits it.
[ ] Decide on outplacement, reference policy, and equipment retention.
[ ] Confirm accrued vacation payout per state law.
[ ] Determine whether the program constitutes an ERISA plan — and whether you want it to. Fort Halifax Packing Co. v. Coyne, 482 U.S. 1 (1987).
[ ] Structure payment for § 409A: use a fixed payment date after the revocation period, regardless of when the release is returned.
[ ] Model the total cost including employer taxes, COBRA, and administration.

Why it matters, and the traps. The § 409A trap is specific and common: conditioning payment on return of a release, where the 45-day consideration plus 7-day revocation window straddles two calendar years, lets the employee choose the tax year — a § 409A failure whose 20 percent additional tax falls on the employee. Fix it with a stated fixed payment date.

On ERISA: plan status brings SPD and claims-procedure obligations but also deferential review and preemption of state contract claims. Choose deliberately rather than by accident.

Phase 11 — Draft the separation agreement

[ ] OWBPA elements for anyone 40 or older, 29 U.S.C. § 626(f): plain language; specific ADEA reference; no waiver of post-execution claims; additional consideration; written advice to consult an attorney; 45 days to consider (group program) or 21 (individual); 7 days to revoke with delayed effectiveness.
[ ] Prepare the § 626(f)(1)(H) group disclosure: decisional unit, eligibility factors, time limits, job titles and ages of all selected or eligible, and ages of all not selected in the same job classification or organizational unit.
[ ] Read the disclosure as a plaintiff's lawyer would — it is a compelled impact exhibit.
[ ] Enumerate released statutes and include required carve-outs: right to file an agency charge, communication with and awards from the SEC/EEOC/NLRB/OSHA/DOJ, vested benefits, workers' compensation, unemployment, indemnification and D&O, and post-execution claims.
[ ] Narrow confidentiality to the financial terms — not the existence and all terms.
[ ] Narrow non-disparagement to maliciously false statements.
[ ] Add a prominent § 7 carve-out preserving protected concerted activity, coworker discussion of wages and working conditions, and Board access. McLaren Macomb, 372 NLRB No. 58 (2023).
[ ] Confirm no pre-dispute NDA or non-disparagement covering sexual assault or harassment — Speak Out Act, 42 U.S.C. § 19401 et seq.
[ ] Reaffirm confidentiality and trade-secret obligations; reconsider imposing a new non-compete on a laid-off employee.
[ ] Add § 409A language and the fixed payment date.
[ ] Attach state-specific addenda (required notices, revocation variants, wage-claim carve-outs).
[ ] Have the template reviewed against current NLRB doctrine before use.

Why it matters, and the traps. Oubre is the reason to get the OWBPA right: a defective waiver bars nothing on the age claim, and the employee keeps the money. And McLaren Macomb is the reason to rewrite the two clauses that appear in nearly every severance template in the country — remembering that § 7 applies in non-union workplaces, that the offer itself is the violation, that a savings clause alone does not cure an overbroad provision, and that genuine supervisors as defined in 29 U.S.C. § 152(11) are outside the rule while the definition is narrower than employers assume.

Imposing a fresh non-compete on someone the employer just laid off is the least sympathetic posture available. See Drafting a Restrictive Covenant That Survives: Scope, Consideration, and the Blue Pencil and Protecting Trade Secrets When Employees Leave: A Practical Checklist.

Phase 12 — Effects bargaining (represented employees)

[ ] Give the union notice and an opportunity to bargain before any announcement.
[ ] Bargain over effects: severance, recall and transfer rights, seniority, benefits continuation, and timing.
[ ] Determine whether the decision itself is a mandatory subject — compare First National Maintenance Corp. v. NLRB, 452 U.S. 666 (1981) with Fibreboard Paper Products Corp. v. NLRB, 379 U.S. 203 (1964).
[ ] Check the CBA for layoff order, bumping, recall, and notice provisions that exceed statutory requirements.
[ ] Provide requested information relevant to bargaining.
[ ] Do not implement until bargaining reaches agreement or genuine impasse.

Why it matters. Announcing before satisfying notice-and-bargaining obligations is a routine unfair labor practice that delays everything and hands the union leverage. See Labor Relations Under the NLRA: A Comprehensive Guide and Responding to a Union Organizing Campaign: A Practical Checklist.

Phase 13 — Prepare and deliver notices

[ ] Prepare employee notices with regulation-specified content: permanent or temporary; whether the whole plant is closing; expected date of the action and of the employee's separation; whether bumping rights exist; company contact. 20 C.F.R. § 639.7.
[ ] Prepare union notices with affected job titles and the names of workers holding them.
[ ] Prepare state dislocated worker unit and local chief elected official notices with the number of affected employees by job title and a separation schedule.
[ ] Add any state-prescribed form or portal submission.
[ ] Deliver by a method reasonably calculated to reach the recipient — not a bulletin board, not a paycheck insert.
[ ] Retain proof of delivery for all three recipient categories.
[ ] If invoking an exception, include the written statement of the basis for reduced notice.

Phase 14 — Announcement day

[ ] Sequence: leadership briefing → manager briefing → individual conversations → all-hands → external communication.
[ ] Give managers a script limited to the stated criteria and a list of what not to say.
[ ] Train managers not to speculate about others' selections, not to promise recall, and not to discuss anyone's protected status.
[ ] Hold individual conversations privately, with a witness for higher-risk conversations, kept short.
[ ] Hand each employee a packet: notice, separation agreement, § 626(f)(1)(H) disclosure, COBRA information, final pay statement, benefits summary, outplacement details, and a single point of contact.
[ ] Coordinate system access termination with the separation date, not before the conversation.
[ ] Have HR available for questions and log every question asked.
[ ] Prepare for the employee who says something legally significant ("this is because of my age," "I just filed a comp claim") — the script is to listen, document verbatim, and escalate, never to argue.

Why it matters, and the traps. Managers improvise, and improvisation is where admissions are made. The two sentences that cause the most damage are "we had to make room for people who can grow with us" and "you know how it is, the numbers are what they are." Give managers language they can use, and tell them plainly that anything beyond it will be quoted back.

Terminating system access before the conversation is a routine indignity that turns a manageable separation into a hostile one, and it generates no security benefit that a same-hour cutoff does not.

Phase 15 — Administration

[ ] Track the consideration period (45 or 21 days) and the 7-day revocation window per employee, individually.
[ ] Do not treat an early signature as final — the agreement is not effective until revocation expires.
[ ] Re-issue the agreement with a new consideration period if any material term changes.
[ ] Pay on the stated fixed date for § 409A compliance.
[ ] Issue COBRA notices on the statutory timeline. 29 U.S.C. §§ 1161–1169.
[ ] Pay final wages and accrued vacation per state deadlines.
[ ] Respond accurately to unemployment claims; do not contest eligibility for a no-fault reduction.
[ ] Process equity terminations and exercise-window notices.
[ ] Retain the complete file: criteria document, per-person justifications, impact analysis, WARN notices and proofs, disclosures, and executed agreements.

Why it matters, and the traps. Employers routinely botch the revocation window by paying on signature, then face an employee who revokes and keeps the payment. Pay after the window closes, on the stated date.

The material-change rule catches employers who negotiate individually: changing the severance amount for one employee restarts that employee's consideration period unless the change is one the regulations treat as immaterial.

Phase 16 — After the reduction

[ ] Define and document any recall rights and apply them consistently.
[ ] Adopt a rehire policy and apply it uniformly — rehiring into an eliminated position within months undermines the business rationale.
[ ] Set a reference policy and train managers to it.
[ ] Monitor the remaining workforce's demographics for the argument that the reduction achieved an unlawful result.
[ ] Audit whether the eliminated work is now being performed by contractors — a common pretext argument, and separately a worker-classification risk. See Worker Classification: A Comprehensive Guide to Employee and Independent Contractor Status.
[ ] Conduct a post-mortem on the process and update the templates.
[ ] Hold the litigation hold in place through the limitations periods.

Why it matters. The most damaging post-RIF fact is a job posting for the eliminated position 90 days later. If the business genuinely needs the role back, document what changed. If it was never really eliminated, the RIF rationale was never real, and every selected employee's claim improves.

Notes and Resources

Primary authority

29 U.S.C. §§ 2101–2109 — WARN Act; 20 C.F.R. Part 639 — regulations
29 U.S.C. § 626(f) — OWBPA waiver requirements; 29 C.F.R. Part 1625, Subpart B
42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(k) — Title VII disparate impact
29 C.F.R. § 1625.7 — RFOA regulations; 29 C.F.R. Part 1607 — Uniform Guidelines
29 U.S.C. § 1140 — ERISA § 510
29 U.S.C. §§ 1161–1169 — COBRA
42 U.S.C. § 19401 et seq. — Speak Out Act
29 U.S.C. § 152(11) — NLRA definition of supervisor

Key decisions

Oubre v. Entergy Operations, Inc., 522 U.S. 422 (1998) — defective OWBPA waiver; no tender-back.
Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, 554 U.S. 84 (2008) — employer bears burden of proving RFOA.
Smith v. City of Jackson, 544 U.S. 228 (2005) — ADEA disparate impact available.
Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., 557 U.S. 167 (2009) — but-for causation under the ADEA.
Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins, 507 U.S. 604 (1993) — pension status analytically distinct from age.
Watson v. Fort Worth Bank & Trust, 487 U.S. 977 (1988) — subjective criteria subject to impact analysis.
Fort Halifax Packing Co. v. Coyne, 482 U.S. 1 (1987) — one-time severance is not an ERISA plan.
First National Maintenance Corp. v. NLRB, 452 U.S. 666 (1981) — decision versus effects bargaining.
McLaren Macomb, 372 NLRB No. 58 (2023) — severance confidentiality and non-disparagement.

The seven things that most often go wrong

Announcement date set by the business rather than by the longest notice period.
No state mini-WARN analysis after a correct federal analysis.
Selection criteria written after the names were collected.
Impact analysis never run, or run and ignored, or run and circulated (destroying privilege).
OWBPA group disclosure omitted or built on a different decisional unit than the analysis.
Confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses never updated after McLaren Macomb.
Payment on signature rather than after the revocation window, on a fixed § 409A-compliant date.

Executing a Reduction in Force: A Practical Checklist

Phase 1 — Governance and the litigation hold

Phase 2 — Define the decisional units

Phase 3 — Write the selection criteria — before any names

Phase 4 — Compute federal WARN

Phase 5 — Build the state mini-WARN matrix, then set the announcement date

Phase 6 — Apply the criteria and build the list

Phase 7 — Adverse impact analysis, under privilege

Phase 8 — Protected-status screen

Phase 9 — Individual issues

Phase 10 — Design the severance package

Phase 11 — Draft the separation agreement

Phase 12 — Effects bargaining (represented employees)

Phase 13 — Prepare and deliver notices

Phase 14 — Announcement day

Phase 15 — Administration

Phase 16 — After the reduction

Notes and Resources

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