Downsizing with Dignity - The Manager's Guide to Redundancy and Restructuring

With the conversation around redundancy and restructuring fast becoming a national pastime in many coffee shops and board rooms across the country, I have created a new Report to help business navigate this sensitive and complex issue - Downsizing with Dignity – The Manager’s Guide to Redundancy and Restructuring.

To save you time and ensure that the key points are in a digestible format, I have divided the Report into mini-reports which will be delivered progressively into your inbox over the course of five separate emails. As subscribers to this newsletter, you will receive these emails automatically, so you don’t need to do anything.

In the series, you will discover:

1. Questions to ask that will make sure you know if and when downsizing is the right strategy for your business

There is little doubt that businesses around the world both big and small are feeling the impact of the current economic climate. When times get tough and profits are under threat, the spectre of corporate “cutbacks” raises its head and in no time, smaller businesses feel the bruises of its flow-on effect. Unfortunately, the short term benefits of restructuring and downsizing through corporate cutbacks like employee redundancy, mask the longer term impacts which can be much harder to recover from.

2. How to avoid costly unfair dismissal claims for redundancies gone wrong

You are just getting the productivity and morale of the workforce back to some semblance of normality and the HR department calls you to let you know that one of your separated employees has lodged a claim for unfair dismissal. It’s the last thing you want. Not only is it a distraction to the challenge of managing a workforce through a period of disruption (and a potentially costly one at that), it’s an event you could have avoided if only you had stopped to take the right advice.

3. Tips for communicating the difficult message of redundancy effectively

If only business could channel their communication on important issues around the organization as effectively and as fast as the good old rumour mill. Nothing undermines morale and stops productivity in its tracks more than the threat of job loss, but that’s exactly what’s going to happen when word gets out that employee redundancy is on the agenda in your organization. It’s vitally important to manage the void between rumour and the facts about the potential threat of downsizing and redundancy.

4. How to engage remaining employees and rebuild your organisation post-redundancy

While the techniques of communicating with people who are laid off tends to receive a lot of attention, often neglected during a redundancy program is the impact of the upheaval on those who remain after redundancy – the survivors. Effective leaders anticipate the impact of redundancy on those employees who remain in the organization, how that impact can adversely affect business and take steps to contain the damage.

5. How to construct an outplacement program for employees and achieve a healthy return on investment at the same time

Times aren't like they used to be. Once upon a time, when a person was laid off from his or her job due to downsizing or other reasons, their next step to finding a new job was get in line at the local unemployment office or start circling ads in the classified ads in the newspaper. Essentially, that employee was left on their own to seek new employment. Nowadays, organisational restructuring can lead to the financial benefits of employee redundancy, and access to outplacement programs which offer a far more palatable means of separating from an organization – for employees and employers.

Don’t forget, as subscribers to this newsletter, you will receive the series automatically, so you don’t need to do anything, except keep an eye out for your first email in the next few days.