Free tool · for owners, HR leads & operations managers
RIF Single-Factor Selection Starter
A reduction in force (RIF) is the permanent elimination of roles for business reasons rather than for anyone's performance — so the whole decision rests on your selection criteria, and on whether you can show later how they were applied. It goes wrong when those criteria get invented after the names are already on the whiteboard. This free layoff selection template does the smallest honest version of the opposite: name one comparator pool (a set of genuinely interchangeable roles), name one scoring factor, set the number of roles the pool has to lose — then rate everyone 1 to 5 and let the ranking follow. It opens on a fictional worked example so you can see it happen, including what a single factor cannot do.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Step 1 — name the comparator pool: the set of roles genuinely interchangeable with each other, so everyone in it gets scored, not just the people you were already considering.
- Step 2 — name the one scoring factor, and write down what a 1 and a 5 mean before you rate anyone; the sheet ships set to skill breadth, read from the training record.
- Step 3 — set the reduction target: how many roles this pool has to lose, decided before you look at a single name.
- Step 4 — rate everyone 1–5 from records rather than memory, and the rank in pool and the recommended action fill in for you.
- Ships pre-filled with a fictional seven-person pool, so the file opens on a live ranking instead of an empty grid.
- It shows you the limit of a single factor on purpose: three of the seven tie, so the ranking marks four rows against a target of two — and says so, because a tie is exactly where a selection is weakest.
- Carries the list of things that can never be a criterion, plus a one-page guide on the four steps and their order.
- Opens in Excel and LibreOffice, and imports cleanly to Google Sheets — no macros, no signup, nothing saved anywhere but your own file.
Own it, don't rent it
Need more than one factor — and the file to go with it?
This free starter ranks one pool on one factor. The full Reduction in Force (RIF) Layoff Workbook weights eight criteria, so the ranking separates people on evidence and ties become rare — and it names any tie that remains rather than letting it pass unremarked. It ranks many pools at once against their own targets, then builds the file around the decision: an Impact Review of who the selection lands on, a severance and savings model with the year-one net and the payback, a decision log, a per-person notification checklist, a 20-document process file index, and a Dashboard that will not say “ready to notify” until the evidence and the file are complete. Eleven tabs, a one-click Google Sheets copy, and four guides.
A one-time purchase you keep: the structured layoff file between a blank spreadsheet and an HR consulting engagement you don’t get to keep.
A structured tool for sketching a consistent comparison, not legal, HR, tax, or professional advice. It cannot tell you whether a reduction is lawful, whether an advance-notice rule reaches you, or what a severance agreement should say — employment rules vary by country, state and locality, and a qualified employment lawyer should see the completed file before anyone is notified. Never score anyone on a protected characteristic or its proxies. Once you put your own people in it, treat the file as confidential — it names people who have not been told. The example people and ratings are fictional. Free to use; please don’t resell or redistribute.