READER REPORT:
How to prepare for redundancy
GERARD O'NEIL
Last updated 12:00 23/09/2015
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Redundancies are increasingly common among today's workforce.
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One of the realities of the modern business model is that companies are constantly changing, which often results in redundancies.
As an independent business consultant / translator I can state that although a company may talk publically about staff wellbeing, the pursuit of "the level playing field" and customer service etc, the reality is that in the boardroom these noble concepts don’t feature highly, as business is basically about conducting a war.
Boardroom meetings generally concern number crunching, with the payroll being just one more number to be crunched.
Over the years, I have worked on many projects in companies with the knowledge that the project will result in dismissals. One such project was the introduction of a new computer system.
I had been informed confidentially that once the system was implanted the whole IT department would be closed. At one point I asked the team what they expected to be doing in five years’ time. Employees talked about their goals to become chief analysts or to have graduated into management positions within the company.
Of course, I was unable to advise them that they urgently needed to develop a plan B. The employees only clicked on to the fact that the new system would make them redundant two days before the project was completed.
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* Courts can weigh in on employers' reasons for redundancies
* Poor-performance sacking isn't redundancy
* Redundancy tough on everybody
* Wrestling with angels and redundancy
* Making redundancy work
Sometimes workers are just plain stupid.
I once worked for a company which had just been taken over. The employees were given the option to move cities or take redundancy.
The redundancy package included very expensive retraining conducted in the evenings. One day, the manager supervising the "close down" told me that some workers were acting as if nothing was happening. One such worker was in my team.
She told me she had decided not to do the retraining as it was at night and as far as she was concerned she was employed for only eight hours per day. In addition, she said she would never be made redundant as she was much too important to the company.
The next week her work station was empty.
On another occasion, the new owner of a company I was working at announced that many workers would be made redundant during the next six months. One manager told me that he had employees buying new cars and houses as if the pending changes were somehow an illusion.
How can employees prepare for redundancy? Basically, every worker must see themselves as an independent supplier of services, taking responsibility for their own career paths.
This means that they must be constantly updating their skills, and widely researching the industry they work in and the global environment, trying to spot trends that may affect them.
The day an employee begins work in a company they must say to themselves that at some point in the future they will lose their job. They cannot, therefore, over commit themselves financially to private projects and must have enough savings in the bank to cover at least three months' personal expenses.
You should not define who you are by the job you do, as this means that if you are made redundant you may also lose your identity and self-esteem.
Although few will admit it, increasing age greatly increases an employee’s chances of being made redundant. By the time a person reaches the age of 45 they really need to be thinking in terms of being self-employed.
When I was 30 years old, I was made redundant. Looking back, even though it was an extremely difficult time in my life, it was the best thing professionally that ever happened to me. I was forced out of my comfort zone.
Since I took over responsibility for my own career I have had an amazing, exciting, fulfilling, varied and more productive working life.
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