How You can Help those You Make Redundant
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What you can do to help those you are making redundant:
As an employer with contacts and resources you are in a good position to help your departing employees find jobs. Doing so helps boost the atmosphere and morale when it needs it most. And this is all part of treating people fairly.
So what can you do to help them?
Use your Network
You're the line manager/managing director/human resources professional who has built up a good professional network during your career. Now it's time to put it to use.
Think about who you could put your employee in touch with. People you know who may be recruiting at the moment or who can perhaps refer them to someone else. Very often people will secure their next position through a contact.
Employers should recommend a good recruitment company to the departing employee that they have successfully used themselves to hire staff. A personal recommendation from an employer will ensure the recruitment consultant puts the new candidate at the top of their priority list.
Be Flexible with Time
Your employees are looking for, and hopefully, interviewing for new jobs. Allow them some flexibility with their hours. If this means them leaving the office early for an interview make sure they know you're happy with this so they can make plans. By law, you are obliged to give them reasonable time off to look for another job.
Allow Access to Job Boards
If you've blocked access to job boards and recruitment agency sites, perhaps unblock them during certain times of the days so that people can search for jobs. Allow them to make calls to follow up on their CVs for half an hour a day?
Offer Advice - Ask another employee to act as Job Coach
It may be quite some time since some of your employees have been on the job market. You've interviewed people over the years and know what's expected. Perhaps offering them advice on their CV or on interviews would be useful to them.
Outplacement Services
Many companies offer to pay for outplacement services for their employees. Such services can include:
- Strategic Job Searching Skills
- Career Guidance
- CV Advice & Design
- Interview Training
- Office and internet facilities
Our consultants would be delighted to provide these services to your staff on an individual or group basis. Please click here for further details.
Use of your Office Space
For employees that have already finished up in your company perhaps you could offer them an hour or two per week to use any extra computers you have in your office? This would be really helpful for job searching since some people will have to use internet cafes if they don't have internet access at home.
References
Ensure to reiterate to the departing employee that will receive a very strong reference and recommendation. This helps reduce their anxiety somewhat as a good reference is essential to securing a new role and will provide added comfort to them.
Managing Employees Exit from the Business
The weeks between being made redundant and actually leaving their job are very testing ones for departing employees. It is important that they are not marginalised during this time. Management should encourage an open door policy to allow for questions and queries on redundancy. Moreover the management team should make a conscious effort to interact with departing employees during their final weeks to ease their transition out of the firm.
