Redundancy

The Ultimate People Process

In 2006 I was made redundant for the first (and last) time. At the time, I was devastated, not least because I was completely blindsided by the decision. Just a few weeks previously, I had my annual performance review at which I “Far exceeded expectations” and received a 5% bonus along with a 10% pay rise. At that time, bonuses were far rarer than rocking horse droppings, and pay increases were 0% to 1.5%, with the former being the standard. Needless to say, I felt that my star was on the ascendant.

A month later, I was called into a meeting and given the news that my services were no longer required. A settlement package was on the table as part of a compromise agreement which I was expected to contest under the advice of a solicitor. There was no appeal; it was a done deal other than the extent of the final remuneration.

It turned out that I was in good company — a large number of my colleagues in the European leadership team were attending similar meetings during the course of that week. That didn’t make it any easier, but at least for all of us, the axe was sharp, the executions swift, and the journey to the next world was short. In hindsight, this was a fantastic opportunity. I sprinted through the psychological change curve, which I had lectured about on so many occasions and started building my new life, and decided that no one was ever going to get the chance to put me through that process again. (As an aside, it turned out that the architect of the executions lasted only a few weeks before signing out himself, apparently stressed out and sick from wielding such a heavy axe!)

The process of redundancy continues in unparalleled numbers in the organisation to this day (although it now exists as a division in a larger business). 34,000 people would go on to lose their jobs when I originally wrote this piece back in 2014. Nowadays, mass lay-offs are more the norm than the exception, especially in the tech world. And every time a bank sends out a dubious statement, investors go into panic mode, and more staff find themselves packing their cardboard boxes and leaving through the tradesmen's entrance.

Back in 2014, those people were not as lucky as I was. They were toyed with by managers who seemed to have little idea of the torment they were causing the individuals and little understanding of how much damage they were doing to their business, their bottom lines and ultimately, their clients.

Whenever there are mass layoffs or even a hint of them, there is a massive hiatus in productivity as groups of people meet to discuss their fates. People often receive “at risk” letters months before decisions are made about where actual jobs are being lost. Staff are placed into pools of potential redundancies and told that they have a 100% chance of losing their jobs, only to be reprieved at the last moment because there is too much work on the books for a reduced workforce to cope with. Experienced domain experts are expected to hand over to new graduates, who are then expected to continue to provide the same level of support. And in an attempt to “invert the management pyramid”, the real outcome has been to take out fewer managers than ever at the expense of genuine value add staff.

The mechanisms for informing people about their fate have become even less humane. A text message if you’re lucky. Or maybe you simply find you no longer have access to your e-mail account and are obliged to put two and two together. In the worst cases, the unluckiest individuals may even find that their fate is being played out in real-time, in a public forum like Twitter.

Another new trick is quiet firing, one I’ve experienced in a few organisations since I started working as a freelancer. To a certain extent, they have succeeded. I quickly learned that there is no point in hanging around where you’re not wanted, so for many years I looked for contracts which would only last for 6–8 months and would quit before I got pushed. But as a freelancer, you don’t usually build up the emotional bonds with colleagues that you do as a permie, so the experience is not as damaging. These cases were always about my costs (usually quite modest compared to many consultants!) but never about my performance. The last time it happened, once again, I decided enough was enough. So I retired!

I’ve long been a believer that cutting jobs is about the daftest way to try and cut costs and that a pure focus on cutting costs is the daftest way to try and improve performance, efficiency and effectiveness. To run a redundancy programme that is so devoid of common business sense that it is reducing output and productivity without actually adding any value whatsoever is the daftest thing of all.

If you must make people redundant, do it with respect, sensitivity and empathy for your staff. They are not human resources; they are the people who helped put you where you are. If you can’t recognise that, then you don’t deserve to share the same space or air as them. And don’t be surprised if they take their loyalty elsewhere — or is that what you were really trying to do? Make them so unhappy that they’ll leave without you having to pay them off? Just remember, what goes around, comes around…

I am a semi-retired independent management consultant specialising in organisational change management and better Ways of Working. I’m from the UK but based in Prague in the Czech Republic. I mainly write about developing better ways of working, working in the Apple ecosystem, and my adopted home in Prague. I’m still fairly new to Medium (so please be gentle with me!), but if you’ve enjoyed this, please check out some of my other articles or even follow me if you’d like to be notified when I publish new material

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