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This should go without saying but disclaimer: The information provided below is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or other professional advice. You should consult with a qualified professional for specific advice tailored to your circumstances.

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First, a disclaimer. There is a fine line between helping people process the bad news, and manipulating them. This article tries to help you do the former, not the latter.

No one wants to be made redundant (well almost no one), no wants to do it either. But it happens, and when it happens, it needs to happen. Losing your job is awful, and downsizing is an awful thing to do to someone. But it has to be done, and often it’s the necessary thing to; we can’t hide, pretend, or deny that there are severe negative consequences of our actions when we downsize, but there are a few things we can do to minimise the pain the process is causing.

It's not their fault, it’s the organisation’s

This is the fundamental difference between dismissing someone for their conduct or performance, and dismissing them because their job is superfluous to requirements; it’s not their fault, it the company’s. Organisations comprise of many people specializing in one part of the process; we do our small part with expectation that everyone else does theirs.

When an organisation makes a person redundant, it’s not because they weren’t doing their job well, it’s because other things haven’t worked out. The employee has grounds to feel aggrieved- they’ve been doing their bit to make this work, but someone else hasn’t done their bit. This doesn’t mean downsizing shouldn’t happen, but if you get accusatory stares and cold shoulders, these are valid feelings.

It's all about preserving dignity

Everyone has a sense of dignity; their personal sense of respect, composure and self-esteem. Organisational psychologists have clearly established that work plays a big part in our sense of self-worth, so losing one’s job (even if it’s not your fault) can be a real hammer below to someone’s dignity. Not only does losing your job put other aspects of your life at risk (how are you going to pay your mortgage, your kid’s school fees, will you be able to go on that planned trip etc), but for most people it impacts their confidence and self-perception as being good at their job. For most people, going home to tell their partner they’ve been made redundant is a blow to their sense of self-worth.

We are already inflicting harm when we making people redundant, it’s not just closing a business deal. Therefore all actions we take should seek to preserve dignity wherever possible; this includes not telling people in private, consulting with them about how their departure is communicated, allowing them to leave on their terms. I’ve seen employees who’s legal action against their redundancy not because of what they company did, but how disrespectful they were in the process.

Fight or flight response

In your brain stem, the hypothalamus regulates the 4 Fs of human’s animal behaviour; fighting, fleeing and feeding. Under pressure or stress, human’s instinctive response to difficulty is to fight or flee, and we can see these when suddenly confronted with the bad news of potentially losing their job due to redundancy. Some people can’t wait to get out of the meeting, and don’t want to talk about it again- they shut down, close themselves, and mentally leave the organisation with immediate effect. Others will argue, debate, vent, criticize.

Both of these responses are valid, both a reason, and while we can still expect and require professional decorum, allowing them to preserve their dignity means letting them feel these feelings without judgement by you or management.

Don’t insult their intelligence

This is a bit of a byproduct of consultation obligations, and/or inclinations to spin bad news. Either due to legal requirements, trying to keep people engaged, or minimise the impact of bad press, it’s common for organisations to sugarcoat bad news or pretend its not what it is. Some people engage with this, but some people reject this.

Let people reject the narrative if they wish. People like to control their lives as best they can, and for many this is not buying the sales pitch. Whether this is a fair assessment by them or not, letting them preserve their dignity can involve allowing them to disregard the story you’re telling them and believing their own interpretation of what is going on.

The chair not the person

This is my personal explanation I like to use in these meetings; ‘It’s not you, it’s the chair you’re sitting in’. This is a process of disestablishing roles in the company, not the dismissing the people. It’s human nature for people to take dismissal personally, even if it’s due to redundancy, but like a game of musical chairs, unfortunately this organisation needs to reduce the chairs to less than current, and unfortunately your chair has been chosen-based on the properties of the chair not the attributes of the person sitting in it, to be removed for the future.

Let the grieving happen

There is a significant amount of research into the effects of downsizing on organisational culture. The loss of people is akin to a mourning process, and those remaining suffer sense of loss, survivor guilt to name a few impacts. It is important to allow this process to happen; the temptation again is to attempt to control the narrative, to push people back to feel engaged with the company. But this won’t happen quickly, nor will it happen on your terms. Those who remain will take their own time to grieve, and will re-engage (or not) with the company on their own terms.

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Helping the medicine go down when making someone redundant