What To Do When Your Company Makes People Redundant

I can't really complain about how my career as an employee worked out, but I did manage to work for several companies who went through cycles of redundancies.  In every case the redundancies were done in a piecemeal fashion, at least at first.  In no case did they turn the company around and save the remaining jobs.  I was never senior enough to be privy to the whole story, but in every case it seemed to me at the time that they contributed to rather than ameliorated any problems.  In one case I am reasonably sure that they were a major factor in destabilising the company and making recovery impossible.


Redundancy and insecurity are a feature of the modern jobs market and it as well to be aware that there is no such thing as a safe job or a job for life.  I don't think this is going to change and have come to a conclusion about what that means for a worker. But first let's have a look at it from the company viewpoint.

Commercial companies are like sharks in the sense that they have to continually suck money in if they are to continue to exist.  If the flow of cash slows down any company has a problem.  One solution to this problem is to cut costs to match.  Some of these cost cutting measures can be harmless, and some even benign.  Cuts to training and travel budgets are not likely to do the company much harm in the long run.  Freezes on pay and promotion don't do any harm either.

But getting rid of people is another matter altogether.  Nothing happens without people and so by losing people you are losing your ability to change to meet the challenge that is hitting sales.  This might seem a logical response, but eating your arm when you are dying of hunger is a logical response too.

One justification I have heard is that it is important to match the people that they have to the skills that are required.  The trouble is that the decisions about redundancies are made by the senior managers, exactly the ones that created the situation in the first place.  If they were so far sighted that they could tell what people they needed why weren't they able to anticipate the problem in the first place?

I think the reality is that redundancy is never a solution.  If the company is not in a position to use the people it employs productively then it has a real problem, and getting rid of some of them won't enable it to somehow miraculously solve the situation that it could before.  Face reality.  They are letting people go because they don't know what to do with them.  They almost certainly don't know what to do with the people they are keeping either.

Making redundancies is as a big a red flag as is available.  The company is admitting it doesn't have any real solutions.  If you find yourself working for such an organisation, start working on your exit strategy immediately.  Start networking.  Polish your CV.  Look into the possibilities of an alternative career or business.  Empty the stationary cupboard.  You might still be drawing your wages, but from now on you are on your own.

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