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Providing Effective Redundancy & Redeployment Career Transition Support to Staff in 2007

A Much Changed World in 2007

In today's world of self-sufficiency, alternative careers, portfolio careers, virtual careers, E-Bay entrepreneurs, perpetual gap-yearers seeking something more from their lives and, in cases early twenty-somethings who have experienced redundancy and have moved on two or three times by the age of twenty four, it seems naïve these days to even mention a special closeness of bond between employers and their employees.

This being the case, whilst closely supporting those re-deploying internally clearly makes sense; why do organisations across the UK and the rest of the developed world continue to provide career transition (outplacement) support to those people whose roles have been made redundant? It may be argued that providing organisational support to those leaving the organisation is increasingly anachronistic.

Supporting Career Transition for Risk Mitigation, Reputation and ‘Employer Brand’

As professional career consultants, we would always argue that investment in outplacement (or in-placement) support delivers value to organisations we work with in a number of areas:

• Providing outplacement support helps organisations to mitigate the risk of unfair dismissal claims (or constructive dismissal claims in the case of unwanted and contestable redeployment);
• By providing outplacement or in-placement support, organisations create the opportunity for ‘optimal retention’ – retaining skills currently required in the short-term, but expected to disappear at a pre-determined point in the future;
• Providing career transition support for leavers arguably improves levels of trust and motivation for ‘survivors’ ;
• Employers gain a moral position likely of be of benefit in expediting the success of the consultation process;
• Often, career transition support helps those required to actively compete for new roles within the organisation; often competing against external applicants – a sensible levelling of the playing field;
• Providing support is likely to enhance the reputation or ‘employer brand’ of the organisation for future key talent attraction;
• Similarly, the employer brand argument holds from a corporate-social responsibility (CSR) perspective as well;
• Finally, there are provisions which provide a tax exemption, subject to certain conditions, for the costs of outplacement counselling and retraining met by employers for full and part-time employees.

Conclusion

There are no simple benchmark reasons for the provision of support which apply across most situations, and organisations would do well to consider their reasons for spending in this area before they spend. Spending unwisely may at best be wasteful, and at worst both wasteful and further damaging to corporate reputation.

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