Do we give senior staff the opportunity to take a demotion?

Hi

I run a small enterprise with a team of 6. Like many companies, we have struggled for the past 2 years to keep the business afloat

We have made the painful decision to let 1 of the team redundant, but need some advice.

Most of us have very specific jobs which do not cross over into other areas of the business (e.g I am responsible for generating business, we have 1 x accountant, 1 x technician, 1 x freelance graphic artist). On top of this, we have 2 salespeople but one is more senior than the other.

Our belief for the long term stability of the company is that we cannot maintain the senior sales position and will need to make him redundant

The less senior sales role has a lower salary and commission structure, but we can see the person currently in that role having great potential within the company

My question is this: when we advise the senior sales person of the decision to make him redundant are we obliged to offer him the junior sales role and pay him the lesser salary. If so, this means we would then have to interview them both for the rol that the less senior person is currently in

Any/all help would be gratefully received

Cheers,
Phil

Other than pay, how are the roles actually different? If they are different roles and you have decided that you don't need the work the senior person is doing but do still need the work the more junior person is doing, then it's probably reasonable just to include the senior person in the process.

If however they do exactly the same job and one is just paid more than the other, then that's different, that means you only need one doing that role rather than two and should include both in the process.