Managing and leading people through their outplacement

Are you a manager, Head of department, having to make people redundant? It can be a difficult role to play.

I was managing a team of people that were based in the UK and in America. The UK team were to be made redundant while the US team were keeping their jobs. It was a difficult time. The UK team were angry; worried about what was going to happen to they; questioned their ability; would they get another job. The US team were uncomfortable that their valued colleagues were being put in this difficult situation, that they were losing good hard-working colleagues.

Being made redundant

I am hearing a lot of people talking about being made redundant.

I was twice made redundant. The first time was after 9/11 and the American company I was working for slashed the department budget from $60mil to $10mil. This meant that most of the UK project was closed down.

The second time was when a company had not invested in its people, services, or client relationships. As a result, the company collapsed and we were all made redundant.

People react differently to being outplaced. The first-time people felt as though they were losing their family. They had worked in the company for 10 – 15 years and had got to know each other really well; understood the company business; believed in their work; what they were doing; and in themselves. There was a great feeling of “we are in this together”. Most people got a really good redundancy package.

How Conquering Mud Can Help Achieve Challenges At Work

I love this time of year. The colour of the leaves in autumn are stunning, rich, vibrate, warming, full of variety. The air is crisp and refreshing. I love to go for walks and take in the beauty.

However, there is 1 little problem – MUD! I don’t know about you, but I am not a fan of mud. It’s sticky, dirty, slippy, gets everywhere, and seems to be everywhere!
We have had a lot of rain this year. Someone told me, the most rain in October for 20 years. I was out walking last week, along a coastal path. All kitted out wearing walking boots with good grips, when I turned a corner and there is was. MUD! All over the footpath. I had a couple of options:

Tips For Handling Year End In The Project Office And In Project Management

I have been through a few calendar year ends at work. I find no-two-year ends are the same but they all have common elements. So, my tips for handling year-end at work are to ask the following well in advance:

  • What new information is going to be required?
  • What deadlines will be changing?
  • What is the policy for working over the Christmas holiday period?
  • Is there a time when no projects are allowed into production?
  • Are extra resources required to be on stand-by to support production?
  • How much budget is available for the rest of the year?
  • How much budget is required for the rest of the year?
  • Who in the team is planning to take holiday and get this confirmed?

Consider:

Under Pressure To Complete Everything By End-Of Year

I don’t know about you, but I always find November and December very busy months. At work there is the daily job to get on with like writing report, meets sales criteria, dealing with issues, updating plans etc. At home there are the normal activities to perform like the school run, making the school lunch, going to swimming lessons, parties, etc.

Then 1st November (latest) an email arrives in your inbox at work, setting up extra meetings to discuss what has to be completed by the end of the calendar year. For a Project Office this can include gathering information on:

Careers Zig-Zag or Ladder

There is so much choice and many different factors to consider when considering what career to follow, that it can be difficult to decide. The end-goal can appear to be so far away. This is where the zig-zag career is so helpful as it enables you to move along a path, reinventing yourself, gain lots of experience and develop new skills, keep your self-interested and motivated to move forward with your career.

I often have people saying to me they don’t know:

Careers Ladder or Zig-Zag

Discussions about careers start at an early age. One day, out of the blue, a 4-year-old informed me she was going to be a Mummy on a farm. It took me by surprise. She is only 4 and already she has her career mapped out. We all know that this may very well change.

But it got me thinking about my own career and how I got in to it. I went to university because that is what people did. I studied mathematics, geography (both my favourite subjects at school) and computer science because I saw it as the future.

My Key Learnings On Making A Big Change To My Life

In a previous blog, I wrote about “wakening up” and taking a large jump and changing my career. It did not happen overnight. IT has been a journey involving my work, private life, family and friends.

For me the steps to changing my career have included:

  • Realising I needed to change my career
  • Working out what it was I wanted to do
  • Looking at my values, both at work and home and identifying what is important to me
  • Understanding what skills and experience I needed to have a new career
  • Performing a gap analysis between what skills and experiences I had an what I needed
  • Creating a journey plan to get there
  • Creating a support group around me who were positive and shared my goal while being the sounding boards for ideas
  • Moving through the journey plan, keeping focused on the end goal.

How I Made A Career Change

After 30 years doing the same type of work over and over again, I decided to leave a well-paying job as a manager, leading an amazing team, for an organization I wanted to support. Why?

Something was missing. I was struggling to get up in the morning and go to work. It all felt so repetitive. I kept going back into the same type of work, different clients, but same work. I felt as though all I did was work for others. My fitness suffered, as did my family and friends.