What does taking redundancies mean or being redundant?

I read a bizarre article [Borderline SFW] about a company in Britain whose employes all showed up nude to improve office morale and get past inhibitions. Seems a little extreme to me.

However, this was a Britainism (British English) that I didn't understand:

David Taylor, a business psychologist, told workers at design and marketing onebestway, in Newcastle upon Tyne, that a Naked Friday idea would boost their team spirit.

He was called in to help the firm after six staff members were forced into taking redundancies at the start of the credit crunch.

"Taking redundancies" is equivalent to American "down sizing" or "being laid off".

There's an article here that talks about British fears of being "redundant."

Because I'm not cultured and no google search term came up with adequate results, I thought I'd blog about it to blatantly gain some hits off of Google with key terms since the article is pretty widely published and I can't be the only person that needed clarification.