The announcement of a UK vaccine rollout is excellent news, but will come too late for many businesses. So what help is there for those employees whose careers are hanging in the balance?
While the announcement of December’s UK-wide COVID vaccine roll-out is a massively positive step, it will be months before it can be administered to the wider population and, for many businesses, this will be too long. Already, notable big names on the high street including Bonmarche, the Arcadia Group (owners of Top Shop) and even Debenhams have gone into administration and many thriving organisations will be reluctantly forced to shed staff they would not normally need to lose.
That’s where Career Connect can help. Our Outplacement Service provides support to help businesses and staff through the redundancy process.
What is Outplacement?
Outplacement is a service that provides careers, employability and general support to staff who are leaving a company, whether voluntarily or involuntarily (e.g. redundancy). It can be tailored to the needs of the individual and include key components such as choosing your next career step, improving job search and CV writing skills or considering a career change. Outplacement aims to provide staff with the knowledge and skills to take confident control of their future.
Highly qualified and experienced Career Coaches help staff in a variety of ways – identifying career strengths and ambitions, updating job search skills and interview techniques and creating outstanding online profiles to grab the attention of prospective employers. All this is backed by an online platform that gives long term access to video guides, podcasts, news articles and more, to help find a new job as quickly as possible.
The advantages of outplacement
Outplacement gives practical support to staff who need to find new employment due to organisational change. It provides advantages, both for the staff involved and for the employer.
Staff Benefits
For staff, an outplacement service helps change their psychological focus away from the distress of redundancy to moving forward with their career. In these times of COVID-19 related redundancies, it is easy to feel frustrated and angry at an employers for ‘letting you go’. Through its practical help and support, an outplacement service helps staff understand why the change is happening which can help reduce frustration and anger. Instead of being reactive, it helps people to regain control over their career.
Business Benefits
For employers, outplacement helps protect organisational reputation – something hard won and of genuine commercial value but, inevitably, damaged by redundancies. Employers who offer support packages that, in addition to redundancy payments, offer help finding a new job are showing they care enough to take action to help their staff. Departing employees see the organisation is living up to its ‘duty of care’ and are less likely to criticise when they move on, which helps reduce reputational harm.
