work/life fusion: layoff

The motto for today is, "Do something funny for money!" If the following career anecdote makes you laugh, help the two of us meet this Comic Relief request and donate a pound to this excellent cause!

"Jonathan, worked in a team who were all very unhappy. Things hadn't gone well for the whole team for a while. Their much respected boss had recently left. Gone with him were his beliefs in hard work, personal responsibility and mutual respect.

The boss who took his place had his own ideas. Hard work was one of them but personal responsibility and mutual respect were replaced by suspicion and self-interest (and wheedling and favouritism and political subterfuge).

This change of team leadership coincided with the company hitting hard times. Redundancies had begun and Jonathan and his team were all under threat as the next round of cuts approached. To boost morale, the new boss collected Jonathan and the team together to give them a pep talk. The whole team were of the same mind before the meeting: afraid, de-motivated, disgruntled, looking for answers. You could cut the solidarity in the air with a knife!

At the end of the pep talk (which included motivational management messages to the team including, "Team well-being is not my responsibility!") the new boss asked for a show of hands to the question, "Is anyone still unhappy about this situation?"

If they were being honest, everyone's hand would have been in the air. As it was, only Jonathan's hand went up."

Maybe you had to be there for the full comic effect. Maybe you had to see with your own eyes, a management performance that Ricky Gervais would have been proud to have written. Maybe you had to see Jonathan blush. Or maybe you need to know that Jonathan's honesty, bravery, selflessness and professionalism have helped his career blossom ever since.

Maybe you just won't think this telling of the story is funny but, even if you don't laugh, see if you can still find it in your heart/wallet/purse to donate that pound, euro or dollar to Comic Relief.

Have a great weekend wherever you are!

All my best,

Paul

Monday, 3 November 2008

More about redundancy and layoff

Redundancies - or layoffs as they are called in the US - are becoming a more popular topic. In the US and the UK, Google searches for "Redundancies" and "Layoffs" have tripled in the last 12 months alone. This recent post on the BBC News website - Employers predict redundancy rise - is another example of what the UK employment market expects.

Redundancies/Layoffs have been the subject of a number of posts on this blog since it began. These posts have focused on individual experiences [Alex's story], personal opinion [Redundancy - A personal view] and traditional versus innovative business responses [Challenging the outplacement response to redundancy].

Posts on this blog have highlighted the positive outcomes of redundancy/layoff and the opportunities individuals have created in such situations. They have also tried to highlight the potential that is still resident for employers when redundancy/layoff situations are managed well and approached from a broader perspective. The aim here was not to ignore the hardship that can surround redundancy/layoff when it happens. Recovering from layoff or redundancy can be difficult and support in one form or another is often required. But, despite the difficulties redundancy has traditionally created, there are still opportunities and the individual stories of career development and job satisfaction that began with a layoff are testimony to that.

In the coming months the aim is to add more redundancy success stories - both individual and organisational - for you to read here. Where possible these stories will be told by people in their own words and there will be the opportunity for Q&A via comment too.

If you have a comment, a story or a question on the subject of redundancies/layoffs, please email it to worklifefusion[at]googlemail[dot]com. No story will be used without prior consent and any published posts guarantee the anonymity of all involved.