C2 Recruitment, Shane Hawkins, training...
As the furlough scheme comes to an end, and despite positivity and growth in some areas of the retail and hospitality sectors, for some businesses, redundancies will be inevitable.
No employer ever wants to make redundancies, and it will be a difficult time for all involved. But there are some practical strategies you can use to help your team and your organisation get through a period of redundancy.
Today, we share practical strategies to help managers support their entire teams through the redundancy process.
Reducing Uncertainty
An essential part of the redundancy process is how you communicate the decision with your team.
Employees will often hear rumours of redundancy before their manager confirms it. Letting this happen will only cause friction and ultimately, create a sense of distrust among your whole team.
If employees ask about job losses – be honest with them that we are in challenging market conditions. The more transparent you are, the more respect you will get from your employees, and the smoother your redundancy process will be.
How to Help Employees Through Redundancy
Having to announce redundancies is something that all businesses wish they could avoid. But sadly, it is an unfortunate reality of the ongoing Covid situation.
Remember to reinforce the point that individual team members are not being made redundant – it is the roles which are being removed.
Redundancy can feel personal for those on the receiving end, so as a manager, you must support affected staff to help lessen the blow.
It is possible for staff to be made redundant and to come out of the process, understanding that their role couldn’t be saved.
Keep to the facts – remind those impacted that redundancy is a financial decision, not a personal one.
From here, you can support the employees who are selected for redundancy with their next move.
The following are some proactive strategies you can provide for employees who are selected for redundancy -
Providing financial advice – Stress over finances is a major part of redundancy worries, so if you can support your employees in any way, this will be a help for them. Monesysavingexpert has a redundancy help guide, which you can find here. There is also a Government guide to redundancy here.
Offering mentoring and career support in-house. There are areas of hospitality and retail which are expanding rapidly right now – for example, ASOS just announced that since the lockdown their profits have quadrupled. You can provide careers assistance or even an impartial talk with employees about their next move – encouraging them to work with a dedicated retail and hospitality recruiter will be an excellent step to helping them find their next role.
Working with a recruiter to offer outplacement for affected employees. Outplacement is becoming increasingly common in our post-Covid world – if you would like to find out about our outplacement services, get in touch with us today by calling us on 01743 770280 or contact us via email here.
Supporting Your Remaining Team
Supporting your team who are left after redundancies have occurred should then be the final part of your redundancy process.
Encourage employees to come to you with any questions or queries they have about the process and reassure them wherever you can.
There might need to be a change of roles in your post-redundancy team, and if this is the case, you will need to focus on training your remaining team.
Leaving a team with skills gaps is not an ideal situation. And so if you have had to make necessary redundancies which have left skills gaps – you must reassure your team that adequate training for them to pick up the shortfall. Retail and hospitality organisations must ensure now that they do not have critical skills gaps.
After making redundancies, it can be a common occurrence that you experience an increase in turnover as a result, which you must also be prepared for. This can be due to the emotional turmoil that employees go through when being so close to the redundancy process, even if they are not personally affected.
To minimise employee turnover after redundancy -
Make sure you have a formal redundancy process in place which are mindful of employee wellbeing
Have one-to-ones with all remaining employees afterwards to help satisfy any concerns they might have
Provide training afterwards for remaining employees to learn new skills and focus on their development.
Finally
Have you recently made redundancies to your retail, hospitality or leisure team? Or are you planning to make redundancies and are wondering about the process afterwards?
We hope that this guide has helped you, and we can also help you with your next steps. Get in touch with us today to find out more about the outplacement services we offer – call us on 01743 770280 or send us an email here.
About C2 Recruitment
Originally established in 2008, C2 Recruitment specialises within the Retail, Fashion, Hospitality and Leisure sectors.
Our consultants come from the industries they specialise in and are renowned for giving the very best possible recruitment service to our clients and candidates' chosen fields.
The C2 team recruits on a national scale across all specialist areas of Retail, Fashion and Hospitality.
To find out how we can help you with a recruitment or career query in these fields, call us on 01743 770280 or contact us here.