Coping with redundancy

3 times.

It's not a record for number of times that someone's been made redundant, but it's my record. And I have some thoughts on how to cope. Below is a personal view on how to manage redundancy, which I've shared with a few people and tweaked over several years.

People have told me that they've found it useful so I'm sharing it here. Hope it helps you or others.

Coping with redundancy

Everyone is different and everyone’s experience of redundancy is different depending on their personality, their circumstances and many other things. Here are a few things that it might be useful to know, to remember and to do:

1.    It’s your job that been made redundant, not you. That may seem irrelevant but it’s true, and is an important difference. You are not redundant.

2.    It’s not personal. Businesses have to take some tough, financially based, decisions in difficult circumstances. Unfortunately they impact people, but it’s not personal.

3.    You remain in control of you. Your employer might have got rid of your job but you’re still in control of your career, your next job, how you feel about it, and what you do next. You’re in control of you.

4.    Your feelings and emotions will probably be many and varied. Probably from shock and anger, to denial, to sadness, depression and back again before you eventually move on. Expect to go back and forwards through these emotions, but overall forwards.

5.    For some people it’s hard to think straight when you’re really emotional. You might be best dealing with the emotions first in order to be more productive in your thinking.

6.    You may go through a month, two, three, six, a year or two before getting another job. Who knows, but eventually you certainly will get another one. And however many or few jobs are around, you only need one.

7.    Many, many people whose job is made redundant look back and, with hindsight, say it wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened, and even that it was a good thing, because it prompted a positive change.

8.    Keep busy and active. Your new job is to find a job so get looking and keep busy. Get up and out the house each day, go walking, exercising, job hunting, decorating, anything, but keep active.

9.    Set yourself some short term targets, like doing two or three things each day towards getting a job. This is the bit that requires hard work and graft.

10. Get on top of your finances. Work out where you stand, what loans you have, what money and income, and how long you could manage.

11. Don’t let your thoughts run away with you where you start imagining that you’ll never work again, that you’ll get kicked out your house and worse. Keep your thoughts based on reality.

12. Do what you can to keep perspective, and keep emotions and irrational thinking in some sort of check. Talking to others can help a lot with this and help you to keep perspective.

13. Remember that before your job got made redundant you were competent, skillful, and confident. Just because what’s happened has happened, doesn’t change those things. It’s really important to remember that.

14. Start spreading the word that you’re looking for work. Tell your family, friends, old work colleagues and anyone else you know.

15. When looking for jobs, rather than asking people if they know of any jobs, ask them if they know anyone you should be talking to. That way you ask that person and widen the net at the same time.

16. In talking to others you’ll probably also discover just how many other people have found their jobs redundant at some point.

17. If you are receiving redundancy money remember its primary aim is to provide income to you and any family whilst looking for a new job. And if you do well enough to get a new job with some redundancy money left keep it safe in case the new job doesn't work out.