Bouncing Back After Redundancy: How To Regroup
How to regroup and bounce back from the emotional fallout of redundancy
Many resources are available to support you in dealing with the practical fallout of redundancy. Dealing with finances, making sure you know your rights, and how to improve your CV, for instance.
Yet bouncing back from redundancy requires more than practical knowledge and actions.
It’s well-known that redundancy often means financial worries. This article explores the other, less obvious reasons why redundancy is such a majorly stressful event. And suggests ways you can tackle them.
Alongside the practical, you also need the emotional support and personal resources to respond to this kind of major, unlooked-for change to your working life.
However, there are ways to work through the emotional upheaval that can help you regroup and adjust. As well as regain confidence, and enhance resilience.
Read on for suggestions for how to deal with the emotional fallout. How to “regroup” and bounce back after redundancy. And create a new stable base from which to move forward with your life and career.
Redundancy – a shock to the system
Many of us are reeling from 18 months of lockdowns, furlough, and working from home. Losing your job may feel like the last straw. And you might be struggling with the very idea of “bouncing back from redundancy”.
For professional women, work-life, with its rhythms, requirements, and rewards, is an important part of life. Job loss, therefore, impacts you at multiple levels. It affects many aspects of your life. So bouncing back from redundancy means meeting many different kinds of challenge.
Appreciating the role that work takes in your life can be helpful in understanding your reactions to job loss. And understanding is the first step to getting the support you need in the areas you need it.
The good news is that research suggests that most people do “bounce back” after job loss (see here, for example).
Let’s begin by reviewing the types of challenges you’re faced with…
The rewards of work are more than financial
For many professional women, work is more than a way of paying the bills. It’s a way of getting validation, of experiencing ourselves as useful, capable, and part of something larger.
So you might experience redundancy at best as an upheaval, and at worst as a kind of bereavement. The extent to which people feel bereaved through job loss seems to depend on a lot of factors. For example, personal attitudes and resilience resources. Also the circumstances in which redundancy occurs, including how well or badly the employer handles it.1
Redundancy is an uprooting
For most people redundancy uproots many of the anchors of life, for example:
- Community structures: Professional friendships, work alliances, colleagues with whom you share a joke. Even the minor disagreements that develop at work create a sense of belonging to a community. There’s a sense of working together towards similar goals
- Personal routines: Getting up at a certain time, travelling to work. The coffee shop you frequent, the bus you come home on. All these, and even the clothes you wear for work create rhythm, familiarity, and structure. (Clothes help frame the shift from personal time to professional time and back again)
- Self-structures: The extent to which our identities are tied up in who we are at work. And often linked to titles and status. (E.g. lead software engineer, teacher, HR manager, Head of Compliance, project manager, senior lecturer).
In many ways redundancy and job loss strike at the basis of successful “adulting”
For example:
- providing for yourself and your family
- having a sense of capability and achievement in our chosen field
- contributing to and being valued in systems beyond family and immediate friends
Several human needs are met through work. Needs such as autonomy, trust, achievement, contribution, and community (for a full discussion of psychological needs at work, see this paper by Deci and Ryan).
To help mitigate grief and frustration, try to name and acknowledge any feelings of loss. And identify alternative ways to get needs met.
Working through grief doesn’t have to be a long-winded process. Yet it is often a significant step in regrouping after redundancy. And learning to deal with your difficult feelings also increases your resilience.
One client’s experience: she felt left behind
One client shared a dream in which she watched her ex-colleagues, who were on a huge cruise ship. The ship was brightly lit and buzzing with people. In the dream the ship sailed away leaving her standing at the dock on her own in the darkness.
This powerful image captured her sense of being on the outside and left behind by her corporate colleagues.
For this client it was important to:
- Ensure regular social contacts. This included with her support network of family and friends, and also maintaining contact with ex-colleagues.
- Get out and do things “in the world”. Make a contribution, use skills. For example, volunteering at her daughter’s school.
- Keep herself up to date with what was happening in her industry. In particular attending a conference she’d previously planned to go to, even though she was nervous about what to say to anyone who asked about “what she did”. (We prepared a few sentences in advance.)
- Connect to her sense of purpose so she could walk away from her metaphorical “quayside” with more confidence to rebuild her career
Redundancy changes the rhythm of your life
As we’ve already seen, redundancy means losing an outlet for your skills and talents. And, losing a conduit for getting many of your needs met.
Additionally, it is an uprooting of the life structures that promote a sense of safety.
We all develop mental models/maps of how the world works. These are closely related to habits of thinking and behaving. And even muscle memory around the tasks and sequences of tasks we undertake regularly.
We spend around a third of our lives at work travelling to work, or thinking about it. No surprise then that we construct many of our internal models around work/sleep/play routines.
Work (like family rituals, faith activities, education, sport, etc.,) provides the macro structures and rhythms that shape and support our lives. These create a feeling of safety and familiarity. (For many of us the last 18 months of restrictions have already caused disruptions. Meaning you may already be dealing with too much change and uncertainty.)
Of course too much structure and regularity can be stifling and just as stressful as too little. Changes to our routine can work to energise and free us up. But these tend to be changes we’ve chosen for ourselves, rather than those that are imposed upon us.
Re-establishing/maintaining some routine and rhythm in your day/week is important in regrouping and bouncing back after redundancy. It helps you navigate the transition period between jobs (or between careers). And gives you back some sense of having control over your life.
Bouncing back from redundancy: re-building self-belief and confidence
Managing a project, teaching students, mentoring staff, directing a department, cutting code.
Whatever your thing involves, work gives you the opportunity to practice it. You can get feedback, positive strokes, and kudos for your abilities.
Losing your job (or having to reapply for your job) even when you tell yourself it’s not personal, is a challenge to your self belief. And to your sense of yourself as a valued member of the team.
So it’s very common for confidence to take a dive after redundancy. Reviewing your experience, skills, and strengths with a trusted listener like a coach is often very helpful. That’s because it’s all too easy for us to dismiss our accomplishments and under-value what we have achieved.
To help clients with this, I’ve designed an exercise called “The Treasure Hunt“. This involves a thought experiment where they imagine playing the part of a super supportive friend. This person loves and values them for who they are, as well as what they do. They talk and write about their key work experiences from the point of view of this friend. With support, this can be developed into a profound, embodied experience of their own value, competence, and skill.
I recommend combining this kind of embodied coaching with work around “signature strengths“*, purpose and meaning at work, and resource development. These support turning redundancy into a catalyst of more confidence and fulfilment at work.
*(Signature/character strengths is an approach to self development that comes from from positive psychology. What I love about the VIA signature strengths system is that it doesn’t put people into categories, or “types”. Unlike so many other psychological assessment tools. Everyone has the potential for any of the character strengths. Your signature strengths are the ones you use most easily and often. More information and the free assessment tool is here…)
Bouncing Back from Redundancy: A Case Study
In late 2019, Stella learned her whole department was being shut down just 4 months after receiving a big promotion. She’d worked hard to get the promotion and had been excited about the difference she could make. She felt let down and betrayed by senior management. On top of this she was distressed at having to tell her team that they were losing their jobs, while still trying to process her own situation.
Afterwards Stella found it hard to bounce back: “I started to doubt myself more. I hadn’t really got my feet under me in my new role. So my confidence in working at that level plummeted. Even though I couldn’t have known, I felt I’d been stupid to get so excited about my new role. It triggered a lot of self-criticism. And without my regular routine of work, meetings, etc I felt disorientated and left out of things.”
The work
Before Stella was able to work on confidence and self belief, it was vital for her to work through her feelings of grief and anger. These feelings were partly showing up as self-criticism. We worked on naming the grief at the loss of her hopes for the new role, for her loss of trust in herself and her managers, and also for the losses suffered by her team. As a result, Stella felt more at peace, both with herself and with what had happened.
In coaching we also looked at establishing new routines, and practising ways of feeling more resourced. This helped to re-establish her trust in life and belief in herself, even before we looked at transferable skills and character strengths.
Bouncing back after redundancy
You’re dealing with a lot
In trying to regroup following redundancy, you’re dealing with issues in a number of different areas:
- financial uncertainty and the need to review lifestyle and budgets
- uprooting of habits and routines
- changes to plans and expectations
- loss of an arena where you can get many of your needs met (like autonomy, relatedness, achievement)
- grief felt as a result of these losses and upheavals
- knocks to confidence and self-belief
Given all of the above it’s no wonder if you’re feeling upset, thrown off balance, tired, scared, or frustrated. EVEN if you don’t/didn’t particularly like your job.
It’s common in stressful situations for feelings to be all over the place. Whatever your feelings, one of the hardest things is how overwhelming they can be. And you might need help to learn how to manage these and to befriend yourself in troubled times.
Are you depleted?
We all need some challenge to keep our interest and give a sense of achievement/competence. However this must be balanced with suitable resources over time. High challenge with low resources, means depletion. (And over the long term leads to burnout.)
Dealing with all the above is almost certainly depleting you. Using up your resources.
While self-care is important, sometimes what’s needed is care from others. This is a time to get support from:
- friends and family: I recommend telling them what’s happened and asking for support
- the right professionals: sometimes you need a more expert level of support, coaching, or advice
Bouncing Back: Redundancy as a catalyst
Redundancy pitches people into a state of uncertainty. This uncertainty in itself is extremely stressful.
This is true even when they didn’t particularly like their jobs, and were already thinking about moving on, changing careers or changing industry altogether.
Does this sound like you? You may be wrestling with the question of whether it’s time for a career change. This is probably adding another layer of complexity and stress. That’s probably because redundancy is bringing to a head a decision you’ve been putting off?
This can put extra pressure on at a time when you’re already feeling in shock, under-resourced, and uprooted.
If redundancy is to be your catalyst for change, you need to find ways of taking advantage of it, even though you don’t feel ready.
However, redundancy also brings potential and opportunity (and perhaps permission) for a change of direction or career.
Rebooting after redundancy is a balancing act
Even if you don’t want to change your career and you just want to get back to work as quickly as possible, redundancy can be a catalyst for positive change.
Redundancy can be an opportunity to become more resourceful. To ground your self-belief and self-worth in who you are rather than what you do.
To set up better self-care routines. And decode your skills and strengths.
These all help in setting yourself up for more success in whatever you go on to do next.
However, they require that you center yourself, your needs, and your future flourishing. This is sometimes a tall order for women who are more used to centering their jobs, bosses, family, projects, deadlines, and staff.
Of course, successfully rebooting your career is top priority for most people. Regardless of whether you go for similar roles, change careers, or decide to retrain.
I believe HOW you make that transition is vitally important. Redundancy is an upheaval. Yet it is possible to approach it as a learning opportunity (albeit an uncomfortable one).
This means treating your feelings with respect and compassion. Balancing pragmatism with hope. And action with self-care and receiving of care from others.
A key question to explore with your coach or other trusted listener
How do you let go of what you can’t control, while showing up for what you can, as you navigate this “between-place”?
Of course, this is a problem of living not just redundancy. Yet job loss can bring this much more into focus than it might have been for you previously.
This is not an easy balancing act. I certainly don’t pretend that all you need to bounce back after redundancy is positive thinking. Or “working on your mindset”.
Rebooting your career is a creative act.
Whatever happens next, you will have been changed by this experience. Hopefully you will take self-discoveries and new skills forward from this “between-place” as well as from your previous roles.
Summing up – 3 areas of focus for dealing with the many challenges you’re likely to experience on this journey…
3 Areas of Focus for Bouncing Back after Redundancy
From my research with women who’ve experienced redundancy, and from my many clients who’ve made successful work-life transitions, I’ve identified 3 key areas of focus, that support regrouping and growing forwards from redundancy:
Bouncing Back after Redundancy: 1.Resourcing
Gathering and leaning in to your resources. This is in order to replenish yourself, and so you feel supported on your journey.
Resources can be physical, intellectual, environmental, community, or spiritual. What is key is in how you experience them, i.e. mindfully and in an embodied way, not just cognitively. (And that you experience them as resources at all of course.)
This is a resilience practice (which can be learned), not a one-time task.
Practical aspects include how and who you ask for help.
Bouncing Back after Redundancy: 2.Re-orienting
Exploring both the practical and emotional aspects of grounding yourself in the now and accepting what is.
An element of this is grief work as mentioned above. Setting new routines and small-stretch life goals are great practical ways of orienting yourself to where you are now. As well as restoring a sense of control.
And thinking about ways to mindfully get needs met outside of work helps develop resilience. You are creating a new map for your life and your work-life.
Bouncing Back after Redundancy: 3.Re-purposing
Reconnecting to a sense of purpose and potential, through understanding your strengths, skills, assets, and possibilities.
If appropriate, developing a sense of life purpose and how that might relate to your career. And exploring how and why you want to contribute going forward.
Of course these are not all the things you need to do to rebirth your career. But they are the first moves towards regrouping, and growing past the distress and upheaval of redundancy. If you’d like help with any of the above, or just to talk over your options, please do get in touch…
References
- Vickers, Margaret. (2009). Journeys Into Grief: Exploring Redundancy for a New Understanding of Workplace Grief. Journal of Loss & Trauma – J LOSS TRAUMA. 14. 401-419. 10.1080/15325020902724198.