I was made redundant three times in five years: here's what I learnt.
By Kim Rowell.
It was early 2019 and I was trying to find a reason to get myself up off the sofa. As most people found themselves heralding in the New Year, making resolutions about their ambitions for the last year of the decade, I found myself redundant, for the third time in just five years.
The first time it happened I was in my early 20s and, working at one of the biggest independent production companies in the country, had befallen the ‘re-structural vision’ of its new CEO. I thought it was the end of the world. The very word ‘redundant’ insinuates there is no purpose for you, and it’s taken me a long time to realise that it is in fact the role that is redundant, not the person.
Media is one of the industries in particular when you can often find yourself out of work – as a freelancer you need to build up your network and connections, otherwise you’ll find yourself with an empty diary. But even as a staffer, these days it’s become an awful lot easier for companies and businesses to restructure rather than fire people, leading to roles, teams and the individuals behind them becoming redundant. It's become a ‘necessary evil’ of our working culture, and we need to find a way to arm employees with the tools and apparatus to help steer themselves out of it.
Let’s face it, the process itself is a pretty unpleasant one, and you will no doubt be torn as to whether to stay your professional self, wallow in self-pity or tell them all to go swivel. There are, however, clearly a few things to remember. Firstly: that this is not a reflection of you, this is a business matter. Try to keep it professional, no matter what available office stationery you quite fancy stapling to parts of your bosses’ anatomy. Chances are, you’re still going to want a semblance of a career after this, and your actions now will pay dividends further down the line.
Ask for references that you can use online; build connections with people that might be willing to extend and open up their own networks to you; try and stay engaged and motivated, if not with your own role, then see what training courses might still be available to you while you’re still an employee.
After the most recent redundancy, still hoping that three times is the charm and no more, a close friend asked if I was going to take some time to consider my options. I could have done this, but seeing as I was just about to embark on the most amount of ‘free time’ I’d had in a long time, the idea of considering pretty much everything in my life was a bit too much of a leap. At this point everything whirled in my head: whether now was a good time to de-clutter the shed, did I have a long enough ladder and the desire to clean the guttering, what my next career move might be… Instead, I decided to stay at work, tried to keep myself busy and distracted, and fired out as many arrows into the jobs market as I could, to see which targets I might hit during this period of redundancy consultation.
Finding the motivation.
There will be days when you feel lethargic, days when you have to pull yourself up out of bed and reason with the voices in your head what it is you’re going to do, and just what the overall purpose will be to your day. My advice? Try and visualise the actions you want to fulfil and achieve – whether it’s simply a long walk into town, around the woods, through a park, along a beach... ahh the beach. Try giving yourself some tangible goals, starting with the very un-exciting things that always go to the bottom of your list. It isn’t always the easiest approach, but chances are you’ll get an immense sense of satisfaction from them.
The second time I was made redundant, after a couple of months out of work and with seemingly nothing working in my favour, I was going stir-crazy and starting to panic about when I might next get paid. To make matters worse, it was the run-up to Christmas, one of the most expensive times of the year. I started a Christmas job at a well-known card company. Somewhat ambitiously they asked me to become a ‘shift supervisor’ within weeks, but it soon became clear that their faith in my retail abilities was indeed misplaced. On one occasion it had taken me so long to cash up that I left the store to find that the rest of the shopping centre had closed for the day, and I needed to ask the lady still tidying up in the adjacent Primark store to let me out round the back of the bins. It was remarkably tough at the time but thinking of it now, in retrospect the learnings were immeasurable; not least the definition of my own strength, resilience and ultimately my determination that this was not where I wanted the final chapter of my career to end.
As hard as it may seem, you need to endeavour to appreciate the flexibility around your redundancy and make the most of it. You don’t have to be rushing to make a certain train, to catch a bus, to get to your desk by 9am. It’s good to try and maintain a sense of structure and organisation to your day, but make the most of this ‘freedom’. Don’t be afraid – as hard as it is when your confidence has taken one of the biggest knocks, what’s the worst that can happen? You’ve taken rejection on the chin already, literally the only way is up - call in favours, people you used to work with, friends of friends, reach out to people and companies you’ve always admired.
As monotonous as the job search can be, get into a routine of looking through relevant platforms that cater to your industry. Acknowledge when the best times to search are - in my experience Monday is never a good day for new opportunities to surface, if companies have posted a job at the beginning of the week it’s more likely to be discoverable on either a Tuesday or Wednesday. Save Mondays for life admin, it’ll be a much better use of your time.
Get to know your industry sector, who the movers and shakers are, who are reporting successes, expansions, querying as to areas of interest or regularly updating their own news boards or blogs? These are all very healthy and proactive places for you to start, and if nothing else, they might bring you into communities that you’re going to want to start engaging with in this ever-evolving space.
As mentally challenging as it will undoubtedly be for you, you NEED to find the positives. They are there. You may come out of this whole period a little battle-scarred, but I assure you will come out of it stronger, more resilient and focused than ever before.
Kim Rowell is the Executive Producer & News Editor, BBC Three & BBC News. Her book, ‘You Are So Much More Than Your Job: Resilience, Reframing, Redundancy and Everything In between’ is currently crowdfunding through Unbound Publishing.