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Outplacement Support – Measuring the Return on Investment

 

The trend for providing outplacement support is growing; with nearly 85% of organisations indicating that they now provide outplacement support (HDA Outplacement Survey, 2008) – but why?

When choosing to offer outplacement support to employees, the benefits to the individual are often clear but what is known of the real benefit to the organisation – in other words, why offer outplacement support? What return on investment can your organisation expect?

 

Over the last 30 years, HDA has supported many organisations, across various industries, to restructure their teams – ranging from large scale to small team changes.  Through our experience we have gained valuable insights into the potential benefits that organisations providing outplacement support can expect to realize. This short article summarises some of our main findings.

The Benefits

As professional career consultants, HDA would always argue that investment in outplacement delivers a return in a number of ways:-

Providing outplacement support enhances the ease with which changes are implemented and accepted – through the provision of outplacement support organisations believe they manage the change more effectively; employees appear to accept the changes more readily and the organisation can move forward with minimum disruption.  This also supports findings which indicate that the ‘survivors’ within the organisation, or those indirectly affected, adapt better to major organisational changes when outplacement support is provided.  Reed Consulting (2007) found that 'the provision of outplacement support helped the employer to retain and motivate those not directly affected'. 

Post restructuring, where outplacement support has been provided, organisations regularly observe enhanced levels of employee engagement and improved morale. Engaged employees tend to show a greater commitment to the organisation and committed employees are 87% less likely to leave the organisation and perform 20% better (The corporate Leadership Council).   

In a recent HDA Survey over 70% of organisations maintained that providing outplacement support should be a consideration for organisations wishing to create a successful employer brand. Providing outplacement support fosters positive post-employment relations, which in turn enhances the employer reputation in the wider community.  Arguably, the more positive the perception of your organisation is to the external world the wider your pool of potential recruits becomes; thereby minimizing future recruitment costs. 

How HDA supports ‘Return on Investment’

HDA partners with our client organisations to ensure that we provide the most appropriate level of support, based on the requirements of the impacted employees and budgetary constraints.  This results in varying size of programmes where ultimate settlement can never be guaranteed.  However, what HDA can guarantee is that with whatever level of support, the ‘client’ will be given the opportunity to maximize on their ‘settlement potential’ be that within new employment, self employment, or early retirement.

End of programme surveys allowing measurement of individual satisfaction are a key source of success measurement and the results of analysis performed on surveys completed from Jan – Sept 2008 reflected that 93% of respondents had achieved settlement.

In addition to end of programme surveys HDA utilizes the following methods to measure success, all reporting being available to the ‘sponsor’ when required:

• Regular monitoring and reporting on programme activity
• ‘Mid- programme’ survey
• Workshop/seminar evaluation forms
• End of project reviews with HR partners

This final point allows for feedback such as the two examples below to be collated:

“…..just wanted to say thank you very much for your time and support throughout my dealings with HDA, you have been flexible and responsive when ever we've needed it and it makes the whole experience of redundancies easier for us, HR and the people affected”

Senior HR Manager of an Investment Bank

“The ultimate measure of whether outplacement has worked or not is if people get jobs in a timely manner.  This has certainly been the case with the closure of Credence’s UK office and I attribute a lot of this success to the way outplacement was managed.  The programme we devised with HDA was flexible enough to cope with individual needs and timely so that people got thinking about their future quickly enabling them to make clear decisions.  The team at HDA have always been responsive, flexible and professional; it has been a pleasure working with them in this difficult time” 

Andrew Palmer, European HR Manager

Summary

During these challenging economic times where there are increased financial constraints, it can be all too easy to see those employees whose roles have been made redundant as outside the remit of your organisation’s corporate responsibility once they have moved on.  Whilst it could be argued that the ‘return on investment’ for outplacement provision is subjective to the investor, and lacks any true bench-marking, feedback from both Human Resource managers and clients being supported by an outplacement provider favors the benefits outlined above.

Ultimately, the investment in outplacement support plays a key role in ensuring that employer brand is maintained, the ‘surviving’ workforce remain engaged and motivated, and those experiencing a career transition are able to move forwards, thanks to comprehensive support provided by their employer.

The case for providing Outplacement support is strong in the area of risk mitigation and reputation.

 

HDA outplacement support programmes typically include:

• Access to a dedicated career coach on a one-to-one basis
• Access to a range of specialist coaches and candidate marketers, as required
• Access to a broad range of specialist HDA workshops. See more at: www.hda.co.uk/HDA%20Workshops
• Access to a range of well developed online tools and knowledge resources to support career transition needs at all levels, including a dedicated Helpline team, personal tracking tools, job search databases, psychometric assessment tools, and industry / organisation/ headhunter research tools.

 

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For further information: call 08452 60 95 40 or email info@hda.co.uk

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