Under what circumstances were you being made redundant?

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My partner is being made redundant after nearly 10 years in the company (Amazon). 30 people in his department are losing their HR job as it’s being shifted to India (cheaper). It feels horrible they’re being disposed as such but I guess that’s work life for you.

*were you made redundant

Brexit.

My employer had to lose a lot of staff because of the Brexit hit to their bottom line.

It was horrible at the time but I understood it so at least it didn't feel personal. And with hindsight, it actually worked out very well for me.

I hope that things will work out similarly well for your partner.

Lost mine due to outsourcing too. Spent years at the company. It happens more often than it should do and seems very unfair. I’m expecting it to happen again in my career due to the industry I work in

Outsourcing for me too. A knock-on effect of privatisation earlier in my career.
The consequential extra years of retirement have been amazing, but the bottom line is that political decisions were made to remove middle-class jobs and employment opportunities.

Takeover by a larger company for me, half of my department were let go and the rest a year later. it worked out ok for me but it is a very stressful process.

Restructuring. Horrible experience.

Takeover and duplicate roles. Horrible

I didn’t get on with my boss, it was disguised as a restructure.

Didn’t seem like it at the time, but it was a blessing at the end. It was a very toxic environment and I was very stressed. I found a new job in a completely new sector right away and have been absolutely loving my new career, it paid much better as well.

Worth reading ‘Why losing your job could be the best thing that ever happened to you’. Really reframed my mindset.

My L&D role from multinational corporate was outsourced to India last year as cost saving exercise.

Not much consolation that I’ve heard from the few remaining that it’s all gone horribly! (Ha!).

However, I’ve found a local job that while it doesn’t pay as well is much more interesting. Everyone in my extended team has found something. Job market is tough but there is work out there.

Didn't end up going, but was at risk and went through the whole process then eventually someone in the redundancy pool opted to volunteer for redundancy.

Reason was restructuring... which was BS as no work really changed. As a company, our functional departments (HR, Legal, Ops) looked too big on our financial reporting and so they got rid of 20% across the board to ensure investors weren't put off by our operating costs. Hilariously, we not outsource that work and the costs are still present (more so in fact) but just hidden away elsewhere in the financial reports.

This was at a time when the company was exceeding revenue targets quarter after quarter and had never been so successful, so it all felt really nasty!

I worked in tech at a civil engineering company. After the 2008 crash there was a big reduction in contracts coming in which led to several rounds of redundancies. It was brutal, absolutely brutal. It took a while to find another job but I did manage to get one where the work/life balance was much better.

The entire company kept restructuring and every few months, more people were culled. I'd been there 8yrs, worked my way up, on a good wage, 10min walk from home and was gutted to be let go. The alternative roles in other departments weren't suitable.

I took along my union rep for discussions about taking annual leave vs being paid out etc. The company provided a consultancy agency for support to help looking for job roles, updating CV, interview coaching etc. The woman appointment to me was rude and condescending though. In the end, it was the best thing. Hopefully your DH finds something else soon.

Covid. We were put on furlough then made redundant.

I'm currently going through this, I work in Local Government and our department is being restructured. A number of jobs have been cut in a money saving exercise.

I'm 59 and don't rate my chances of getting another job easily. I can't afford to take my pension early so I don't know what I'll do.

6 remote workers were replaced by cheaper Chinese ones.

AI

R and D sector. Work done by the team was shifted to the US. This was back in the early 2000s

I was an accountant at in an engineering firm and was also made redundant during the GFC. Luckily I got a job fairly quickly but had to take a pay cut as I was desperate given we had a young child and dh business was losing money (self employed in the tourism industry). We got into debt, so the late 2000s is not a period in my life I look back fondly on.

I remember my dad being made redundant in the early 1980s, which was a real shocker because back then you had a job for life.

Not me (yet!) but there have been a lot of redundancies at my large corporate due to a restructure. Within this, a number of tech and data jobs have been outsourced and a lot of assistant and admin roles have been moved to Poland.

My employers sold to a larger company. 2 years later they shut our office as it wasn't financially viable. The general feeling amongst the staff was that there was a clash of work cultures as new owner's style was very much micro-managing. They had done it before with another firm. We're still wondering why they bought the smaller company.

Restructuring, which they do most years. I had survived about 6 redundancies at the company prior to this. My whole team went. I found out a while later they had to start recruiting for the team again as they were failing audits, which we told them would happen.

It actually worked out very well for me.

They offered me an internal interview for another role, but I declined as I was easily able to find an external role with higher pay and take 10 years of redundancy money.

They took advantage of covid. They'd been employing people in an unstructured way since the new leadership came in a couple of years before and the company couldn't cope so covid gave them a reason to restructure and cull posts. Unfortunately I was a casualty.

They messed up my redundancy calculation, but I had already done the maths and corrected them. They also sent out the letters two business days after the board meeting meaning I'd been in post 10 years and a day on my leaving date rather than just under 10 years so I qualified for slightly more money, so don't assume the calculations are correct.

It was a huge blow and in many ways I was really crushed. It meant a lot of changes, but I've come through them. I hadn't appreciated quite what redundancy felt like and ended up apologising to a friend who had gone through it a few years before because I hadn't been more thoughtful at the time.

Takeover of the company by a larger one. New owners seemed to despise everyone from the old company and got rid of us all over time. I have never come across such unpleasant people in my life and only stayed to get my redundancy pay as I had worked there for many years.

The business folded a few months after I left, which made me smile! I found a much better, less pressured job for much the same salary where I was very happy for the next few years. I now work for a friend and am about to retire, so all worked out well for me.

Restructure into my 5th month of going through the redundancy process it’s horrid. A big project I worked on had come to and end, and technology advancement (AI) and they have rendered my job redundant. There are various other reasons for the 100+ other redundancies as well. But all born from a restructure.

Last day at work today due to redundancy. My UK role is being transferred to another country. It's cheaper to employ someone there.