The answer depends on how good your manager is and how much you trust them.

Assuming your manager is a stand-up person and there is a good deal of Trust - then I would suggest that you have an informal chat with them about this.

By Informal - I mean, say at Lunch, off the company premises.

Outline your concern that you consider the work this one person does to be vital to your work etc.

See how the conversation goes - if they give you feedback of 'This is set in stone and shaking things up is just going to annoy the higher-ups' - then I would suggest leaving it alone.

If you get a more receptive 'That is important information we did not know' - then with your managers blessing - I would look at giving feedback.

Of course if you don't have a good manager or trust them that much - I would read the line of:

"We will be reviewing feedback from those affected over the next few weeks." as:

"Don't give us feedback unless you are the one being fired"

Alternatively

You could reach out to the person impacted and give them your perspective so that when they give feedback - they articulate all the critical work they do for you - which might result in you being contacted for further comment.

If you give feedback at all, my recommendation would be to limit it to your perception of negative impacts on the business. Make sure you can back up any assertions of negative impacts with evidence. Be ready to hear , and heed as appropriate, responses to the effect that you may not understand the full context of the factors leading to the need for layoffs.

An example of constructive feedback would be:

Laying off people in certain job categories would make the business run less efficiently. Show how it would make your department less productive to lose people in job X (don't make it personal). Increasing the workload on others, leading to lost productivity, is an objective argument to make, but make sure it's backed by evidence.

I would especially avoid linking your feedback to impacts on yourself personally. The risk is that this will immediately be perceived as ignoring the context as above, and possibly resulting in negative reaction on the part of management. Few managers enjoy doing layoffs and are often stressed by having to do them themselves, especially if the factors leading to them are also beyond their control. Adding to that stress is not constructive.

It's unlikely that management doesn't realise that the people they're making redundant do useful work. Of course they do. It's not news to anyone that making redundancies will increase workloads elsewhere, and that there will be things the company used to do but will not do any more.

In this case you've identified one of the many, many ways the company will be affected by the redundancies. You will have to make a choice:

• do more hours work per week,
• drop the stuff that previously you had some help with,
• drop some other stuff and take over the stuff you had some help with.

Management already knows this in general. It's distressingly common in senior management to wilfully ignore the fact that employees' time is a limited resource, but that's not because they're unaware of the fact -- it's because it's in tension with other facts.

Is it likely that knowing the exact details of your workload will affect their decisions regarding redundancies? Uncertain, but very unlikely unless you and your team are their star players. By the time they take the plan to the employees, "this person does something useful" is unlikely to affect their decision. They've already priced that in.

If you do say something, I suggest do not attempt to use the feedback route designed for those affected - that channel is part of the process of consulting with those made redundant, and not for you to wedge yourself into. You could possibly mention to the affected person, that if he's providing feedback in an attempt to keep his job, then he could include supporting you and your team in the list of things he does that the company might want to think again about eliminating. But, do you know whether he's trying to stay? If he's happy to take the offered redundancy package then there's absolutely no point you trying to argue to retain him.

You can of course talk to your immediate management about how you and your team would be impacted, just as you would if this person left their current role for any other reason (internal promotion, found a better job elsewhere, retired, whatever). Your manager could make a judgement whether to report this further up the chain of command. It might depend why the redundancies are happening. If management is axing a loss-making department, and it just so happens someone in that department spends a few days a month on work that helps your team, that might be one part of a good argument to add headcount (perhaps that very person) to your team, and your boss can try to make that case. But conversely if the company is in trouble and needs to save money, then "I want to continue spending just as much money as before" is not a productive position to take.

You can also provide feedback by any other means you would ordinarily communicate to senior management. If you have a company where you can email the CEO at any time, then you can email the CEO.

But to be clear: management is unlikely to be open to a debate as to whether the company really needs this specific person after all. Likely they've decided (subject to consultation with those affected, which very well might be purely for show to satisfy some statutory requirement) that the company can't afford to give you that help any more. But if it really is a case of "oh, we genuinely had no idea this person did anything other than make the product we've cancelled", then that could conceivably affect the decision.

The decision has already been made

So, cynically, by the time you hear about a proposal like this, the choice has happened - the layoffs are happening.

Now, what can you do? Well, commenting is unlikely to alter things, and it's very likely the position will vanish in the near term.

However, the door isn't closed. Companies frequently eliminate positions, and then recreate them. Why? Because in a few months, they realize they made a mistake.

A layoff, to me, is a test - can this position's work be absorbed by existing employees? Was it necessary? And what you, as an employee, can do is to make it clear that it was needed. Don't work extra hours to fill in the gaps. Ask your manager what should be dropped, given that you're now doing x piece of work. Do not, under any circumstances, allow "We have less people to do the same amount of work" become your problem.

If important work can't be done because there aren't enough people, that's a business case your manager can make to get more people.

You don't have feedback. You have a question.

Person X currently handles task A for me on a regular basis, freeing up my time to work on other tasks. If this proposal goes through, how will task A be handled going forward? I am concerned about the time required for me to complete A impacting my existing tasks, so would some of my duties be given to other people? If someone else is going to take over task A, then...

Off-hand, a new person might need to be given some knowledge about or even training on the task. At a bare minimum, you would need to know who the new person is to be in contact with them about it. Obviously, you would have a better sense of what getting a new person up to speed on the task would require than we do, and of course, if you're expected to take over the duties, you need to find out how they expect to manage your existing workload.

If your concern isn't just time, then obviously give your actual concerns, of course. This is just a very crude example.

Review the information you have to make sure it doesn't already contain the answer. If you can't find one, figure out the most appropriate person to ask that question to. If you have no idea who to ask, ask your direct superior or a trusted colleague if they know and for some advice on who you should ask if they don't.

Before you even consider trying to convince someone about what they should do with regard to this task, you need to first find out what they intend to do about it. If they don't even have a plan for the task, then asking what the plan is will be a good springboard for either making one or adjusting the current proposal to account for it. It's also a low risk way of bringing up the issue: you're not knocking their plan from the start, just trying to figure out how it would affect you.