Outplacement
Redundancy and Your Employer Brand
Every organisation has an employer brand.
Many organisations spend time and money trying to persuade candidates to join them and showcase how great it would be to work there: careers website pages, company brochures, culture videos and glossy signage for the core values on the wall in reception.
When they make people redundant, if that process is handled poorly, they can potentially undo a year’s worth of effort in an hour.
Redundancy is often treated by organisations as a cost reduction exercise and legal process.
While clearly both, it can also be one of the most culturally impactful activities an organisation undertakes.
When an organisation goes through a planned managing redundancy process, its typical priorities are managing the process, the financial cost or saving, and any legal requirements and fees.
A few more enlightened organisations also consider and care about the impact on employees who remain.
All good, but the picture is incomplete.
What about the people you let go?
Unless they are heading directly into retirement when they leave, they may well move on to become employees elsewhere. And potentially employees of your competitors, customers or suppliers.
How many times does a redundant employee end up as decision maker or possible point of contact at a client or supplier organisation you might want to work with?
In a smaller city in particular, especially in more niche or specialised sectors, the person you unceremoniously showed the door might now be making a critical decision about your latest proposal or tender submission.
The old line often attributed to Wilson Mizner resonates for me:
“Be nice to people on your way up, because you’ll meet them on your way down.”
A similar principle comes into play here for people who are leaving the organisation.
You may be unable to keep them employed for commercial or other valid reasons, but what you can always do is treat them with respect, dignity and empathy, and give them at least some support as they exit.
Why?
Because people talk. Not necessarily in a vindictive or critical way. But they do talk about how they felt and about how their ex-employer treated them.
And word can spread.
Ask someone about a previous redundancy they experienced years ago, and they rarely talk about the payout they got.
The first thing they normally speak about is what it felt like. They remember how and when they were told, who told them, and what happened in the following days. They remember whether their manager looked them in the eye, read from a script or even worse, sent them an email. They recall if they were given a moment to take it all in or escorted abruptly out the door as they hastily gathered their belongings.
One recent example I heard about was a senior manager who was made redundant after decades of long and loyal service.
No notice. No empathy. No time for a goodbye to the team. Just locked out of their computer, told to gather up their belongings, hand in the staff pass and escorted off the premises.
Appalling.
How does that fit with a company that might describe itself as caring or empathetic?
People immediately see through it. And not just the person walking out in tears with their belongings to the car park.
Colleagues see it.
Suppliers see it.
Clients see it.
Competitors see it.
Word spreads.
Reputation declines.
Core values are eroded.
What is disappointing is that none of this costs much in time or money, and it could be handled so much better.
Often, somebody in the Leadership Team will have taken legal advice and decided that the “lowest risk approach” is to march the once highly valued, long serving, trusted employee of 20+ years’ service off site. Sometimes removing system access on the day is genuinely necessary. But it can still be done with dignity: agreed timing, a chance to say goodbye, and without being escorted to the car park.
It feels like a walk of shame.
And yet they may have done nothing wrong.
Can you imagine how that would make you feel?
It is seldom deliberately malicious.
More often, the process is designed to “legally protect the organisation” but neglects the human factors in play. It focuses on the task in hand, and much less on the people affected, directly or indirectly: the stress, the embarrassment or the concern.
Consultation or redundancy meetings are stacked back-to-back to enable managers to “get through” them quickly and efficiently. The script gets tightened until it removes any semblance of empathy, because the legal department wants a tight, consistent, legal approach.
Perhaps most damaging of all is the immediate aftermath.
Things in the office go quiet. Trust is fractured. People are scared to speak up or challenge anything sometimes for months afterwards, just in case they are next for the chop.
The organisation may think things have moved by the following Monday because the task has been delivered and all employees have exited stage left.
Then the ripples start:
The people who leave form opinions, and share them with competitors, clients and suppliers.
The people who remain saw it all. They quickly shift mindset. No longer “I have a stable career”, but “I’m just a number” and “I’d better start looking at the job market myself”.
Nobody is ever reassured by a redundancy process. More likely they start thinking, “It might be me next.”
Handle this badly and your best talent, the people with the most options, quietly update their CVs and become a flight risk.
You may have reduced headcount by ten, but you could end up losing thirty…
It is not complicated, time consuming or necessarily expensive. And none of it replaces a proper, legally compliant consultation process. It sits alongside it.
Most organisations see treating leavers well as a matter of compassion. A nice-to-have, if time and budget allow.
I’d argue it is also a hard-headed commercial decision.
Most reasonable, sensible employees (once the initial shock passes) will accept the reasoning behind a redundancy when it’s valid and pragmatic. Nobody likes to hear the news that their role is going, but most people will accept it in time if it is done fairly, with transparency and open communication. And most importantly, handled in a human way.
People who leave will say things about the organisation. Even with a signed settlement agreement or non-disclosure agreement in place. They may not be allowed to share any company secrets, but they may well talk about their feelings and how the company treated them as they left.
Getting this right not only makes it easier for those departing, but it also makes it easier for those who remain. And also for any new recruits, should you need to hire again soon after.
The simple message here is that people talk and the market can be a very good listener.
Get the process right and you are more likely to protect and retain your remaining team and your ability to recruit in the future. It can also help keep the door open to rehiring good people if work picks up, which it hopefully does.
It can also reduce the risk of a claim brought by an angry employee who felt humiliated rather than cared for and supported. And it should help keep the people who stay more engaged at the point you may need them most.
There is a straightforward way to check how effective your current process is.
Ask yourself whether you would be comfortable if the person on the receiving end of redundancy accurately described their experience openly in public.
Because that is exactly what they may do.
Not always loudly, and not always immediately.
But they will.
And people will believe them. Because it’s true.
If you are planning a restructure or downsizing and would like the process to be legally compliant but also considerate, our free How To guides on managing redundancy and outplacement support set out some practical steps.
We also provide outplacement and career transition support directly, and recently supported more than 100 staff through a restructure with webinars, practical workshops and confidential one-to-one career transition support.
For more direct, practical support, email us at hello@whitecubeconsulting.com for a no obligation chat.
Yes, and often more than the recruitment marketing that sits alongside it. People who leave talk about how they were treated, and so do the colleagues who watched it happen. In a smaller city or a specialised sector those people frequently turn up again as clients, suppliers or decision makers on a tender. A process handled without dignity can undo a great deal of employer brand work very quickly, and it costs almost nothing to handle it better.
Rarely the money. Ask someone years later and they talk about how it felt: how and when they were told, who told them, whether that person looked them in the eye or read from a script, and what happened in the days afterwards. They remember whether they were given a moment to take it in or hurried out of the building. That is what gets repeated to other people, so it is worth getting right.
Sometimes removing system access on the day is genuinely necessary, and that is a legitimate commercial judgement. But it can still be handled with dignity. Agree the timing with the person, allow them to say goodbye to colleagues, and avoid walking them out in front of everyone. Being marched to the car park feels like a walk of shame to someone who has done nothing wrong, and everyone watching draws their own conclusion about the organisation.