Why companies think you are redundant?

About one year ago my ex-boss flew thousands of miles from Toronto to Sao Paulo to give me a notice: according to him I was redundant.

Redundancy is a form of dismissal. It's where you are dismissed because the work you did is no longer needed, for example, if your employer goes out of business.

An employer may tell you you've been laid off, meaning you've been made redundant. But technically a lay-off is something different.

Situations where you can be made redundant include:

• your employer’s business, or part of the business, has stopped operating or has gone bust (become insolvent)
• your employer’s business is failing
• your employer is moving into a new line of business which no longer needs your skills
• a new system or technology is being introduced which means your job is no longer necessary
• your job no longer exists because the work is being done by other people, following a reorganisation of the workplace
• your employer’s business, or the work you are doing, moves to another area
• your employer's business is taken over
• your employer was the sole owner of the business and they die.

You can be made redundant if your employer is moving into a new line of business which no longer needs your skills.

I was expecting to have my job terminated since I was not committed to some sales targets for the new fiscal year and (more important) due to continuos re-organizations made in the company I worked for more than 6 years in four different executive roles.

What really bothered me was the usage of this word "redundant".

I know English vocabalary is extense and some words have many different meanings - this particular word "redundant" has many definitions according to the most important dictionaries.

After some time thinking about the meaning of redundant as "superflous" I realized that the actual meaning for me in this particular job situation was "exceeding".

On the following months after my termination, I saw many other executives from my former company being terminated around the globe - most of then not replaced, their positions just disapeared.

Of course the company earned millions of dollars eliminating all those executive positions but the key question is, how much revenue and customer confidence will cost in medium to long terms?

When we see companies focusing 100% of their energy on the short term (quarter, month, week, etc) it is obvious that key elements like customer relationship and product development are left behind.

Shareholders are looking for quarter dividends but strong strategies for the long term will bring them dividends forever.