The best of Morning Musely: You're not redundant. Your job is.
Why the narrative around redundancies needs to change.
I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve never been made redundant from a job.
I’ve certainly dodged a forthcoming redundancy by reading the play in the C-Suite, but that was more luck than strategy. I played a card before one was dealt for me. The high risk stakes of insecure employment poker.
In the industry I’ve spent most of my life working in (media); not being made redundant is a rarity. I’ve dodged many-a-bullet - not by working harder or being more talented - but by simply not being the unlucky name highlighted by a faceless CFO on a spreadsheet.
I have been on the other side of the meeting room table when making others redundant. It’s never a great feeling, even when you understand the reasons why. But it’s a required task of Management. Hey, I’m the one still with a job, what have I got to complain about?
Sometimes I was told who precisely I had to make redundant, other times given a number of ‘headcount’ to reduce.
Weirdly, despite being a quite a good problem solver I’ve never actually been given the problem to solve. Instead of “We need to find X in savings, can you help us?”, it was “we don’t care who but it has to be X number of people”. Saving on the cost of printer paper and stationery wouldn’t cover it.
On one occasion I would have gladly put myself up for the redundancy as I was jack of that place but it turned out that wasn’t an option. I was ordered to do it to someone else.
The percentage of people who have experienced redundancy at some point in their lives varies. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data, in Australia 15-20% of the workforce has experienced redundancy or retrenchment at least once in their careers.
On average, about 2-3% of employees in Australia experience redundancy in any given year.
Middle-aged workers (35–54) are more likely to experience redundancy compared to younger workers, as they are often in roles targeted during organizational restructures.
Men are slightly more likely to face redundancy, reflecting their higher representation in industries with cyclical employment patterns.
It’s a fact of life redundancies happen, but we don’t need to make it such a shit experience do we?
Words like ‘headcount’, and ‘redundancy’ are turd-like because they are part of economic or business language.
The reality is it’s not you are not being made redundant, your job is.
I’m sure there are shifty organisations where someone who was deemed to not be a ‘cultural fit’ skated past their probationary period only to find them suspiciously made redundant soon after. Arseholes will be arseholes!
But don’t people who find themselves on the receiving end of a cost base reduction program deserve words that are more reverent to their humanity?
In many companies Legal has overtaken responsibility for the people & culture department and now every conversation where “you can bring a support person if you choose”, is tightly scripted legalese designed to guarantee them a safe exit. Them, not you.
I’ve heard too many stories of friends who after loyal years (sometimes decades) of service were summarily catapulted out of the building like an Elon Musk rocket without even the chance to say goodbye. What were they going to do? Wreck the joint? Go postal? Rarely.
So if today’s the day you find yourself attending a meeting that just suddenly appeared in your diary, ushered into a meeting room in some unused part of the office, with a friendly-but-not-really corporate assassin with a piece of paper turned upside down on the table as you walk in, I wish you good luck.
Just remember it’s not you. It’s them. And I hope you receive humanity as part of your package.
Wade