Podcast 20: How to transform your mindset during a redundancy

Changes to your career can sometimes be disruptive. Perhaps you have been made redundant recently, leaving you unsettled and unsure what to do next. In this podcast, we are joined by Sylvia Kelly, Senior Career Transition Consultant Coach at Hays Career Transition Services, who offers her expert insight into managing these challenges successfully.

1. Career change and transition can cover an array of topics. Please could you clarify for our listeners what we mean by “career change” and “career transition”?

Career change is usually when an individual is considering changing career pathways, sectors or industries and completely changing their career direction. Career transition is the process of that change, and all the different stages involved in that, and how to manage that change successfully.

2. And what are the most common types of career change that can cause the most stress and upheaval?

There are a few different types. I think the most common one is redundancy and my job involves career coaching people who have been made redundant. So, someone who has been in a role for twenty, thirty years and suddenly, they’re being advised that they are being made redundant, that is quite confronting, quite stressful and can have lots of different impacts on that individual.

Also, if someone has found out they have an illness, that’s very confronting and they may need to re-look at their job, their career pathway, and how they are going to manage everything.

If someone has been unfortunately let go from their position, that’s also quite confronting and if someone, moves to a different country, they may need to start over and look for a job, or even if they have moved to a country and they have a job offer, just that whole transitional piece, they might find that quite challenging and confronting as well.

3. When you are unexpectedly made redundant, what emotions are you likely to feel? And how can these be managed over those initial few days?

So naturally, that can be quite a confronting and stressful situation and you will go through several different emotions. It’s only natural for a human to feel several different emotions and the Kubler-Ross Change Curve outlines those emotions quite clearly and effectively. You can experience these in the first few days, weeks or months after being made redundant.

Stage one is usually shock and denial, Stage two is anger and depression and stage three is integration and acceptance. That may look different for different individuals, but they are the range of emotions that most people will feel, in those first few days, because when someone’s made redundant, it is like a grieving process it’s a loss.

It can be a loss of identity, so it’s quite natural to feel those emotions, and it’s about understanding those emotions, working with a coach, and/or a counsellor, and getting the support to manage those emotions and then accepting what’s happening and move forward.

Work is such a big part of our lives, that obviously, it is understandable to feel like that when you go through that process, you find out that you’re about to lose that from your life.

4. And I suppose some people might have to work a certain period after finding out that they’re being made redundant.

If they must stay in that role for few extra weeks or even months, how would you recommend that they manage their stress during that period and how can they remain motivated?

That’s a great question. It is really important that the individual seeks out support, because you need support during this transition. Firstly, you can speak to your employer and ask, “Is there coaching support?”.

Most organisations are very good at giving someone the option of having coaching, that could be one-to-one coaching, or it could be the opportunity to attend job searching workshops. So, clarify with the employer, “Is there coaching available?”, which is usually paid for by the organisation as there may be counselling support available.

Most organisations have an Employee Assistance Program, so if you’re finding the change in transition particularly challenging, you can also speak to a counsellor. A coach can work with you on managing stress as well.

It’s important to have a plan in place and take a holistic approach, so the coaching and the counselling, speaking to your manager, speaking to friends and family -it’s really important to tell people how you’re feeling.

There’s some practical things that you can do such as exercising, maintaining a good diet and having a plan, so working with your coach, having a job search plan, being proactive, taking action, putting things into place, applying for jobs, going for interviews and  also just choosing to have a certain mindset is really important. This is quite challenging, but there’s a lot of exciting research around neuroscience and neuroplasticity now, where you can retrain your brain to create more positive thought patterns. So, you can choose how you’re going to react to a stressful situation. It’s not easy, but you can rewire your brain and create more positive thought patterns.

We all naturally default to stress when we’re confronted by something like redundancy. But, we can work with a coach or a counsellor, and we can be mindful of our negative thoughts that we’re reacting  emotionally, understanding our triggers. But then we can decide, “Okay, I can choose to look at this as a stressful event, or actually this might provide me with an opportunity to retrain and pursue that job or career that I’ve always wanted to.”

So, there’s lots of proactive strategies and things that you can do, so you can feel empowered during a very difficult time and take control over the situation rather than the situation controlling you.

Thank you. That’s extremely helpful, and a really positive way of dealing with it, and even improving yourself on the way.

5. You mentioned there about seeking advice from your employer. Are there any other support networks, perhaps outside the workplace, which could help? I know you mentioned counselling as well. But are there any other support networks?

You can always tap into your local community services, so there might be a job search network. Most local services will provide government support around free career advice, and so you can make an appointment to see a career adviser to get free advice on job searching and tap into different job search networking groups.

The other thing I would recommend is to tap into your professional association and your network. Speak to your peers and colleagues that you’ve worked with before because probably someone else has gone through a similar experience in the past.

You can seek out mentors and colleagues and different people which is also really good networking as well in terms of letting people know that you’re looking for your next opportunity. So, there is a range of different things that you can tap into.

6. Obviously, being made redundant is nothing to feel ashamed of. But when applying for a new role, some people might worry about how to address their redundancy that they have experienced, whether that be on their CV or whether it be at the interview stage.

What is the best way of dealing with that?

That’s a great question and is one that I get asked every day when I’m coaching my clients.

The best way is to frame it in a positive light. In most cases, it is the companies that’s making redundancies right across the organisation and it’s not the individual that’s been singled out and being made redundant. It’s due to financial reasons, or restructure, it could be the economy, it could be a range of different factors impacting the financial status of that company.

So, the best way to frame it, even though it feels like such a personal thing when it happens to you individually, is that it is decisions that are being made at a very strategic, high levels that are about things like saving money or making changes internally.

The best way to frame it is that the organisation is making those changes. It’s not about saying “I’ve been made redundant”, it’s about saying, “The organisation has made these changes” and then you can focus in on the positive things that you’ve done at that organisation.

7. Now, some of our listeners might even manage teams and they might have to support their employees through times of redundancy as well.

What would your advice be to our listeners and how can they help support their employees?

Firstly, I would say that managers need the support themselves by seeking out coaching support.

At Hays Career Transition Services, we provide coaching to managers, senior managers and above. One of our coaches will work with them individually, because they need that support, as it is also happening to them.

So, once they’re getting support and coaching, then they can be guided our by coaches in terms of, “Okay, how can you support your teams effectively?”. I think, one of the key things is open and transparent communication.

I also think the managers do need to also speak to their managers about, “How are we going to communicate this change? What’s our strategy? What’s our approach?”.

In my experience, I come across the good and bad approaches and the examples of how companies deal with redundancy and managing change. And one of the key things is that people want to be kept informed. They want open and transparent communication at all the different stages. They need to know what’s happening and when it’s happening, especially if it’s a long drawn out process. I think, just being upfront and transparent with employees. Not knowing, or miscommunication can have such a negative impact on morale and productivity and so on, so I think that’s really, really important.

Also, as part of what we do at Hays Career Transition Services, we deliver workshops on how to manage change and transition effectively, and we do that for managers and employees. This supports managers in implementing that change effectively with their employees.

So, there’s the management level and then also giving that support at the employee level.

8. Finally, we have this question that we ask all our guests. If you could give one piece of careers advice to our listeners, what would that be?

One of the key things is to embrace change and invest in yourself. So be prepared to continue investing in yourself, whether that’s a course or training, developing your skills, and maintaining your contacts.

Fantastic, lifelong learning, that’s great. Thank you so much for your time. It has been really interesting, and I’m sure our listeners will find it really helpful as well to help them through the potential redundancies. Thank you very much.

Did you find this advice useful?  You may enjoy some of the related content below:

• Flourish in times of career change and transition
• Middle managers – Are you neglecting your career progression
• Podcast 6: How can you create a more mentally healthy workplace?
• Podcast 15: How to be more open about your mental health at work?
• Rethinking your response to redundancy
• The multi-stage career journey – Are employers ready?