Overcoming Redundancy: 52 inspiring ideas to help you bounce back from losing your job

By Gordon Adams

Most people say redundancy changes their lives for the better - make sure you are one of them!

So you’ve been made redundant (or perhaps you just think it’s coming)?

Join the crowd! Redundancy is now a very common life experience. Almost a quarter of adults will be affected by redundancy during their lifetime. But you are not a victim. What matters now is how you react to this challenge.

OVERCOMING REDUNDANCY contains advice from survivors, from people who have not only survived but turned it to their advantage. Many now look back on that redundancy experience, with hindsight, as the best thing that could ever have happened to them. You can use this book to benefit from their experiences and advice.

Redundancy is an intensely emotional experience. It affects your self-esteem and motivation. You are only human if you feel a sense of anger, betrayal or loss. This book will help you cope with these social and emotional impacts of redundancy. It will also provide valuable tips of managing the financial impacts of redundancy. Most importantly it will help you look forwards, not backwards. If you’ve been made redundant, reading this book is the first step towards bouncing back!

GORDON ADAMS is Managing Director of Alternative Futures Research Limited, a research company which specialises in helping businesses and individuals to change. He has spent over 30 years working for leading organisations like Thomas Cook, the BBC and Reed International. He overcame redundancy himself when he invested his redundancy payment to set up his own business. He has never looked back. The company which made him redundant went on to become one of his biggest clients.

www.alternativefutures.biz

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Apr 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781785076510

Book preview

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1BE POSITIVE

Good things happen to positive people. You can make the breaks as well as take them. You’ll find it easier to find a new job if you react positively to this challenge. A new employer is more likely to take you on if they can see how well you responded to this blow.

You have just been made redundant – so how do you feel? Angry, bitter, rejected, disbelieving, sad, disappointed, cynical, uncertain, anxious, fearful?

The one word that probably doesn’t sum up how you’re feeling right now is POSITIVE. Yet that’s what those who have successfully overcome redundancy say is the most important thing of all: staying positive.

So how can you make yourself think positively?

Try thinking about things in a different way. See this moment as an opportunity. You have now got a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reassess your career. Were you really enjoying it fully? Was it fulfilling? Was it using all your skills to best advantage? Did you go to work each morning with a spring in your step? If not, you’ve just been given the chance to change. Today could be the day you take your first step in a new career direction.

Think positively about yourself. What skills have you picked up in your working life? What can you do now that you couldn’t do when you first started work? Where else could that knowledge be put to use? Think about the skills that could be redeployed. Your next job you do might not be in the same industry or same job role you had before.

Being made redundant could turn out to be a big break for you. If you are fortunate enough to receive a substantial sum of money as a redundancy payment, now is the time to move your life forwards. Find a new job before that money is spent and you’ll have succeeded. Invest the money wisely to bring future gain – for instance, spending it on retraining for a new career, starting your own business or buying a franchise to run an established business – and you’ll be a winner.

Remember this: every challenge is also an opportunity. You have the opportunity to invest your time and your redundancy money to bring about the future life that you want.

Be aware how common this experience is. In the UK, approximately one person in every four will experience redundancy at some point in their working lives. After starting a relationship, divorce, the birth of children and the death of loved ones, it is the most important single life-changing experience – so says research by Alternative Futures in 2008 into Pivot Points, major moments when the whole direction of a person’s life turns around. Two out of every three people whose life is changed by redundancy see their lives changed for the better, according to research by the same company. The Redundancy Transformations Study in 2009 revealed that over half of people who experience redundancy ultimately come to view it as the best thing that ever happened to them! This experience typically prompts people to make some major changes in their lives, changes that turn out in time to have been for the best.

Don’t take this redundancy personally. Redundancy is not your fault. I often refer, in this book, to people ‘being made redundant’, but this is simply a reflection of the way we normally talk. It’s not actually the case. It was the job role that was no longer needed. It was the job that was made redundant – not you.

The rise and fall of employment in particular industry sectors is inevitable. When whole economies have difficulties, when industries experience a downturn, when items fall out of fashion, when established products are displaced by the next technological advance, then redundancies almost inevitably follow. You just have to resolve to go with the flow, wherever life takes you.

It is up to you to choose your response to this situation. You have the ability to choose how you will react to this. You can choose to be negative, cynical, disenchanted and disheartened. Or you can choose to be positive and believe in yourself. You can see this as a chance you have been given and resolve to emerge stronger as a result. Being positive is the first step to overcoming redundancy. If you’re willing to take that step, then read on.

2STAY ON GOOD TERMS WITH YOUR FORMER EMPLOYER

Stay on good terms with your former employer. You still need them for a reference in future. People still employed there might help you over the years to come. Your paths may cross again someday.

How do you feel about your former employer right now? Your answer may not be printable. But it is important for you to leave bitterness behind. You need to avoid sounding angry, cynical and disillusioned.

The way to a better life and a new job is through accepting what has happened and moving on. It will be helpful for you simply to accept that your employer was a victim of economic boom and bust, of market fluctuations, of changing patterns of consumer demand. Your employer did not want to make you redundant, it needed to. That’s just part of business life. It wasn’t personal; it was an economic decision. So don’t take it personally. Make a point of forgiving your former employer and moving on.

Redundancy has been compared by some experts to bereavement. You experience the same process of grief. Typically you move through several different phases: from a sense of loss and shock, through denial (‘This can’t be happening to me’), into anger and other emotional reactions until finally you reach the point of acceptance where you can begin rebuilding your life. You have a strong interest in moving as swiftly as you can through these different phases, reaching this end point as quickly as possible. Because it is only then that you can begin anew.

So why is it a good idea to stay on good terms with your former employer? Well, for a start, you need them to give you a good reference in the future. You have a vested interest in biting your tongue and staying on good terms with them. But there is more. Unless the company you worked for is closing down completely, your former employer (and the people who still work there) may be part of your future in some way. Many of your friends may still be working there now. Some will probably move on in the next year or two. If you react well and in future they are in a position to help you, they might be disposed to do so. You may still be working in the same industry in your next job and your paths may cross again. Here’s the worst case: imagine how you’d feel if your next job was working for a supplier that suddenly wants to sell its products or services to your former employer? If you’ve spoken out of turn to your previous employer, this could become a very uncomfortable situation for you. If you’ve stayed on good terms and conducted yourself with dignity, it’s easier. So bite your tongue and overcome your negativity. Stay above the fray. Be as pleasant as you can possibly be to your former employer and any former colleagues who still work there. It is not easy coping with redundancy: you need to deal with feelings of rejection and bitterness. But nor is it easy being one of those who stay behind whilst those around them are made redundant. They need to deal with their ‘survivor guilt’, the loss of good friends and colleagues and (quite probably) an increase in workload. Make it easier for them by showing yourself to be big enough to conquer your own negativity and move on.

3CONSIDER YOUR OPTIONS

Redundancy is an opportunity to take stock of where you are and where you want to go. Take time to consider your options and don’t rush to judgement.

Redundancy is a big challenge but it is also an opportunity. If this is happening to you mid-career, you now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take stock of where you are in your life and compare it to where you really want to be.

Don’t rush to judgement here. Too many people return unthinkingly to ‘more of the same’. If you hated your previous job, if it wasn’t motivating you, or if it wasn’t using your full range of skills and abilities, maybe now is the time for a change?

You have a wide range of options at this point.

Perhaps it is time to switch from full-time to part-time work, and get a better work-life balance?

Perhaps a variety of temporary or contract work would be more stimulating and allow you to try out different sectors of employment to find what’s right for you?

Perhaps it is time to break free and be your own boss by setting up your own business, going into partnership with someone else, working as a freelancer or buying a business franchise?

Perhaps you should invest your time and redundancy money into retraining for a new career?

Perhaps it is time to return to school or university in order to acquire new knowledge?

Perhaps it is time to move to another part of the country to improve your employment prospects?

Perhaps it is time to downshift your life by moving move to a smaller or cheaper home and making do with less?

Or perhaps it is simply time to take a break- to travel the world, write a book, or achieve some other life goal that you’ve never had time for before?

The options are many and varied. But how can you choose between them? How can you know which is the right course of action for you?