Redundancy – 2 common responses and how to deal with them.

“I’m sorry but your team is being relocated!” – these were the words I heard – and I knew then that meant for me leaving the organisation I‘d worked for for 20+ years.

I’ve heard different expressions “your role is being deleted”, “you’re redundant” being amongst the worst.  It’s a fact of life.  With a struggling economy and worse happening in Europe, companies are being forced to make cutbacks and there is rarely anything personal when managers make such decisions as to who stays and who goes.

Its very easy to sit here writing a blog post and making that statement. Its quite different when you find yourself in that situation.

Two common responses are:

“Why Me?”.  This is a natural response to any kind of change.  The Reflections Coaching Change Curve © demonstrates the responses we go through when we face a change and is useful in understanding the range of emotions that go with it.

 “I’m redundant”.  Frankly this statement stems from what we choose to say, or what others have wrongly phrased it.  Redundancy is not about you or me its about a financial decision being made about the role that you currently do.  The individual (you) are not redundant – in fact quite the opposite.  You have a huge range of transferable skills and knowledge .

But here’s the real conundrum – right at the very moment you need every ounce of confidence, someone has possibly dealt you one of the biggest confidence knocks of your life.  And right at the time when you should be investing in YOU – someone has removed your financial safety net.

Coinage (Photo credit: Simon Greig (xrrr))

If you’re looking for another job, getting some help with CV writing and interview skills is a must.  Times have changed and as I’ve discovered recently CVs need to be much better and good networking skills a real must in finding work.

Whether you’re looking for work or thinking of starting a business then networking and confidence skills are paramount too.

I’ll be covering more of both networking and interview stuff in  future blog posts, however if this has sparked your interest then coaching could help too.  Why not visit Reflections for more information.

Related articles

• Career Advice On Changing Your Career After Redundancy (ruralstops.blogspot.com)
• Make the most of your transferable skills (myjobscotland.wordpress.com)
• How to find your transferable skills (leadingfortransformation.com)
• The Reflections Coaching Change Curve (c)
• More about the Reflections Change Curve (C)