| Career Development And Change Advice Blog |
| Career Advice, Job Search, Redundancy and Career Change |
My colleague Justin Culver and I spent time with some contacts from another company yesterday. We had never met before, it was an exploratory meeting. They offer employee benefits to companies, we provide outplacement services to a similar market and we were all interested in discussing ways that we could work together. (more…)
We face two economic, career-impacting possibilities as the second half of the working year begins. On the face of it the most benign appears to be the most likely. But we live in a world of uncertainties and it would be prudent to ensure that we have a Plan B in case the worse occurs. (more…)
One initiative being touted in influential circles is known as Alternatives to Redundancy, or ATR. Under this scheme, rather than making staff redundant, employers will pay them them the equivalent of Job Seekers Allowance, in addition to the benefits they receive from the government, for up to six months. After six months they will get their job back. (more…)
There are grumblings from certain quarters about BT’s plans to offer staff time off work in return for big pay cuts. The argument is: If they can afford to be without so many staff for so long they can afford to be without them permanently; why don’t they go the whole way and announce redundancies? This is both an illogical and a retrograde argument.
I was horrified yesterday to receive an e-mail from an American supplier of (pretty poor) online tools to Outplacement companies. Their marketing is obviously as weak as their products because they clearly thought that Career Energy was a recruitment consultancy. But it was the content of the e-mail and the damage that it could do to the career profession that really concerned me. (more…)
There are several possible ways for a company to approach a round of redundancies. They can ask for people to step forward for voluntary redundancy. They can implement a policy of last in first out, or concentrate the cuts on one particular department or team which has become surplus to requirements. They do have legal constraints on what does and what does not constitute redundancy. But at the end of the day, irrespective of the law, many companies will use personal, subjective methods to determine who to let go and who to keep. Put bluntly they will try to get rid of those who are underperforming or who do not fit it. So how do you guard against possible redundancy yourself? (more…)
Nearly 30 per cent of City finance professionals are so worried about the future that they are planning to leave London. This is according to a survey by the City website eFinancialCareers. The report has given rise to fears that the the loss of talent will lead to a downward spiral in the number of jobs available after the recession and that the City of London will lose its status as a major world financial centre.
Fiat’s talks to take over the Vauxhall and Opel brands from GM, may result in the loss the loss of many British car workers’ jobs. There is no reason to assume that the take over will go ahead, the unions are opposed and Fiat itself is not as financially secure as it would like to be, particularly after agreeing to buy 20% of Chrysler. But whether the takeover proceeds or not, it represents one of the most high profile of many potential mergers, takeovers and restructurings under consideration at present. The numbers of which will increase over the coming months as the economy realigns. Takeovers threaten jobs, both in the acquired and and the acquiring company. Yours could be amongst them. (more…)
We had a Career Energy away day yesterday, an opportunity for senior management in the company to put our heads together and think about where we are going as a company, and where we want to go. We decided to look at our mission statement again, it is something we have never really finalised. Although there are good reasons for this, it is time that we did produce the definitive statement that says what we aspire to as a company and what we believe our role and purpose is. But it is not easy.
How much should a company spend on outplacement? What is the value to the organisation of assisting a colleague who has been made redundant to find new work? The question was driven home to me this week when I met a senior director of a well known company in the transport sector who had been offered the equivalent of three days pay to spend on his job search support.