Outplacement can be better

In today's fast-paced and rapidly changing economy, job losses are unfortunately a reality that many employees face. Whether due to redundancy, restructure, or other reasons, losing a job can be a stressful and uncertain time for individuals and their families. However, there are programmes available to help ease the transition and provide support to those who have been impacted by job loss.

Outplacement support has been around for as long as I can remember. Organisations soften the blow of a redundancy or restructure by offering the departing employee some help in finding the next role; CV writing, LinkedIn profile updating, reviewing key achievements. The list goes on.

In normal times, this is usually of great value and enough to help a candidate score their next role. The merry-go-round of employees continues, and things tend to work out for the best for all parties concerned in the long-run. Organisations also feel better about letting people go, as they’ve provided a little help on the way out of the door so that their departing employees don’t suffer undue hardship.

Now, it’s different. Consider the organisations who are cutting hundreds - or thousands - of jobs. A little bit of CV prep and interview practice isn’t going to cut it for those people leaving… there simply aren’t thousands of jobs available for people to move on to.  

Something else is needed.

“It’s like houses. If there is a shortage, we need to build more. In much the same way, if there aren’t enough jobs to go around, then we need to create some”.

Recession creates new challenges,  yet it also provides now opportunities for entrepreneurship, for creativity, and a little bit of kiwi ingenuity that we’re accustomed to here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Setting up a business in NZ is super easy and inexpensive.

MBIE’s stats are incredibly important here : 97% (487,602) of all enterprises in NZ are small businesses with less that 20 employees and they account for an estimated 26% of New Zealand's Gross Domestic Product.  That’s around 29% (599,880) of all employees in the country.  

Kiwis seem to be hard-wired for entrepreneurship.  So, instead of keeping on with the same offering and equipping candidates with nicely formatted CVs for jobs that don’t exist, now is the time to deliver something more valuable to us all.  The outplacement small business startup programme.  It’s additive to everything that typically gets covered in outplacement as those things are still super useful - they just aren’t likely to be enough on their own anymore.

All the usual stuff that typically gets covered in an outplacement arrangement:

- Making sense and coming to terms with the change

- Identification of key successes, values and motivators

- Reframing and refocusing on future opportunities

- Exploring future-proofing with new skills

- CV review and updates

- LinkedIn profile enhancements

- Effective use of social media

- Interview preparation and practice

- Networking support and leveraging recruitment services

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All the additional stuff that will give your ex-employees the best chance of success:

- Identifying the value in a skill or experience or knowledge they have

- Identifying an audience for that value who would be willing to pay for it

- Support with setting up their own business

- Support with creating websites and email accounts

- Support with creating a social media presence for their business

- Guidance on basic strategy, finance, accounting, legislation

- Basic support with marketing channels and means

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The value to this approach is appealing:

Businesses who are forced to downsize and let their employees go will have:

- Higher chances of departing employees remaining advocates for your business and brand

- Greater confidence that their IP and talent isn’t going to walk straight out of the door into their biggest competitor’s business

- Opportunities to retain the use of the skills and experiences of these departing employees by engaging with their new business in a supplier/vendor relationship- Warm fuzzies for caring about their fellow kiwis

Departing employees will have:

- Essential help with establishing a small business

- Freedom to fit work around other commitments

- A chance to continue to work with your organisation as a vendor

- Opportunities to continue to utilise their skills and experience  

- Opportunities to continue to feel valuable to society and earn money

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Fortunately, Five NZ has carefully designed a highly cost-effective, and totally inidivdualised outplacement offering to equip your departing employees with something that gives them the best chance of success after leaving your organisation.  What’s more, is that it will help to give NZ inc the best possible chance of a faster economic and social recovery in these deeply uncertain and volatile times.

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash