to be worried about an external person coming in to help the office restructure

[lexiepix]

He said yesterday to me "don't worry I'm just observing ATM" and this really worried me. I wasn't really before. Am I being paranoid?

Not in my experience. Re-structure always seems to mean redundancies doesn't it? Or perhaps just where I've worked.

Well, restructure almost always means redundancies and other winners and losers. So it's probably not great, but no worse because there's an external consultant involved.

No, you are not being paranoid. Having worked in a large company who brought in external consultants on a regular basis with similar remits, it was never a good sign. Having said that, I survived multiple redundancy programmes before deciding to take a very much VR.

The fact that there's an external person helping doesn't make it worse, in fact often better (especially if it's me )

There might be redundancies involved, but similarly it can be beneficial at least for some.

If your employer is investing in an external expert that's a good sign imo as it means they are committed to doing it properly and fairly.

I'm in the same situation. Ironically we are an HR department so know the signs as we do this ourselves. They've brought in two externals. There's a lot of secret meetings and then surprise when people say they're worried about redundancies. I give it 3 months at our place before it kicks off. Good luck. As my mum pointed out last night 'they can't make everyone redundant'.

Its just scary, who knows what will happen and people like me who won't have been here for two years get nothing. So time to really look for a new job, before im unprepared and get my months notice I guess.

judgemental

I worked in a hr dept too and they subcontracted the work to an agency. We were all TUPE to the agency who offered us work if we would move home 300 miles to their location otherwise we were redundant.

How big is your organisation? Where are you in the hierarchy and how much value do you add to the business?

Large organisations do tend to get a bit of middle-aged spread and accrue a layer of non-productive bureaucracy that can be trimmed - an observant external person will be looking to see where bottlenecks are, how much value is being added by each function and what could change, but that doesn't mean that your job is in danger unless you genuinely think you're a waste of space!

Quite common to bring in externals for a redundancy programme. Much easier to make a stranger redundant rather than someone who you've been working with for ten years/are friends with their wife etc.

mum sounds awful, hope you found something new OK. I wish they'd be straight with us, knowing what's likely to happen makes the waiting and sitting through false platitudes and feigned innocence feel so patronising. I'm policy so probably fall into 'nice to have but not essential' territory