Reduction-in-force planning lists

Detects reduction-in-force and redundancy selection lists, voluntary separation offers and employees-requiring-placement records that name employees, with separation dates, redundancy or severance amounts, years of service or placement status.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: Medium: the primary phrases also appear in policies, guidance, blank forms and news, so enforce tiers require a populated person field and 85 adds a record-specific populated detail plus independent corroboration. Person values are customer-defined (employee IDs, position numbers), so the field regexes use labelled loose values with a placeholder guard. 85/75 are heuristic evidence tiers, not measured accuracy.
Detection quality: Not detected
Jurisdictions: global
Regulations: Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), Fair Work Regulations 2009 (Cth), Industrial Relations Act 2016 (Qld), Public Sector Act 2022 (Qld), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), Information Privacy Act 2009 (Qld), NDB Scheme (Cth), GDPR
Frameworks: ISO 27001, ISO 27701
Data categories: pii, employment
Scope: wide
Risk rating: 8
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)\b(?:reduction\s+in\s+force|workforce\s+reduction|position\s+(?:elimination|abolition)|positions?\s+abolished|redundancy\s+(?:list|selection|pool)|voluntary\s+(?:separation|redundancy)\s+(?:program|programme|offer)|involuntary\s+separation|RIF\s+list|affected\s+employees?|employees?\s+requiring\s+placement|surplus\s+(?:employee|staff))\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

consultation, restructure, organisational change, change management plan, National Employment Standards, Directive 06/14, outplacement, EAP

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Workforce reduction - confidential selection list Employee name: Avery Teston Position number: 30012345 Years of service: 12.5 Redundancy payment: $86,420 Proposed separation date: 30/11/2026 Consultation meeting held; outplacement offered. — 85: Selection list row with employee, service, payment and separation date
RIF list v3 Employee ID: 5520117 Status: Redeployment Notice date: 2026-10-15 Organisational change plan step 4 complete. — 85: RIF list row with status and notice date
Affected employees - restructure Staff number: P0048213 Position title: Team Leader, Records Notified in the first round of meetings. — 75: Affected employee list naming staff, no separation detail

Should not match

Before any workforce reduction, employers must consult affected employees and consider redeployment. This fact sheet explains redundancy pay under the National Employment Standards. — Fact sheet - must stay below 75
Redundancy selection list Employee name: __________ Years of service: ___ Separation date: ___/___/____ — Blank list template - must stay below 75
The company announced a workforce reduction of 400 roles in a media release, citing lower demand. — News / media release - must stay below 75
unrelated generic text without domain phrases — No relevant topic phrases present
placeholder value 12345 — Random text should not match topic-specific regex
employee interview — Generic word pair from old broad template should not match

Known false positives

Policies, directives, fact sheets, guidance and training material that name the record type. Mitigation: Enforce tiers require a populated person field; guidance text has labels without values and guidance/training/media-release framing is excluded.
Blank forms, templates and HR system configuration. Mitigation: Blank lines, square- and angle-bracket placeholders, XXX and n/a/tbc values are rejected by the placeholder guard; template/fixture words are excluded.
Aggregate statistics and news reporting. Mitigation: No populated person field, so these stay at 65 discovery.
Records that identify the person only in free text (no field label) fall to 65. Mitigation: Accepted precision trade-off; extend the person-field regex with the customer employee-id format to recover recall.