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.

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.