How to avoid REDUNDANCY!


There are just too many scenarios today where many people are caught in a redundancy situation. You may know of someone who is waiting for a mutual separation scheme, someone who is being displaced or transferred into a pool of resources, or someone being cold storaged. Most of the times, it is sadly happening to people who are not prepared for it, and they may be in a shock state and not taking the right recovery action fast enough.

I have been in such situations before, and have been preparing my teams wherever I go. But we can never be prepared adequately, and sometimes you just cannot avoid being made redundant at some point in your career. Top revenue lines are declining, costs are escalating and hence profit margins need to be defended. Businesses are transforming at a fast pace to stay relevant. It needs a lean, preferably digital native team with innovative ideas and ready to explore new things. Here are my 7 thoughts in order to get onboard the right train, and how best to steer away from a redundancy trap.


  1. Having the right work attitude– Ready to learn new things, take up a new role or project, value add and contribute to the team and business. People who are just existing, doing minimal clock work, and as per job description, will now be at the lower part of the ladder and the first to be made redundant. 
  2. Be that enabler, a leader, a team player, a participant. Not the spectator. - Get rid of the toxic attitude, don’t be a back bencher, with folded arms and making remarks without value. Employers are not obligated to pay salary to employees who complain continuously, blame everything, make excuses, run a gossip mill and list out all the things why something cannot be done. People are hired to find solutions and make things work.  
  3. Get onboard the right train. – Stay open, embrace change, and get onboard the right train towards the right direction. If you do not agree or subscribe to the change, attempt to seek understanding or change the usual perspective of things. Many times, there are corporate agendas or vision which may not be fully understood by everyone. But it is a direction which the company has decided to pursue. Either you head along the same direction, or time to get off the train or risk getting ousted. 
  4. Be agile. – Corporate strategic directions change more frequently than before. Some companies only plan out quarterly business plans, and 5 year projections are just too far fetch in today’s fast moving world. Learn to adapt, embrace, change and just keep learning, evolving and progressing. 
  5. Upskilling– These days, digital related skills set are the expected skills set in recruitment, such as data analytics, mobility, social media, digital marketing, and smart embedded devices (IoT) to drive change in customer relationships, internal processes, and value propositions. Hence, rather than resigned to the fact that current skills are becoming irrelevant with automation, take charge of your own self development plan. It is time to go back to school and pick up whatever that is relevant today, if you wish to avoid the redundancy trap. 
  6. Soft Skills for today’s digital work  - new soft skills such as critical thinking, complex communication, creativity, collaboration, flexibility and adaptability, productivity and accountability, and building a team that thrives are skills required to lead today’s team. Managing teams today is way more complicated. Traditional leadership and management traits do not work anymore, resulting in high staff turnover rate, and the inability for the business to transform fast enough. Hence, changing our mindset and perspectives are key before we can upgrade ourselves. 
  7. F.I.R.E.– Ultimately, one will reach a point that it is too much effort to stay relevant, and corporate is no longer your cup of tea. I know many who have demanded a golden handshake so that they can then look for another job. But seriously, what’s next for sustainability? To leave the corporate world, planning for Financial Independence Retirement Early is key to long term sustainability not only financially but to be mentally prepared in one’s life journey. 
  8. An opportunity or threat in a crisis– The Chinese character of “crisis” consist of two words which means danger and opportunity. The natural reaction when faced with a redundancy situation is the initial shock and denial, and followed by anger and depressions. It is normal to feel victimized and immediately take a defensive position. With this, there is a short window where the management is observing if there can be hope for a person to accept, change and adapt. Basically, there are just 3 options when caught between a rock and a hard place;(a) give up and leave, (b) fight to retain employment, (c) quickly figure out a strategy to change the perspective of the situation, adapt, change and catch the wave. Sometimes, it is about how fast we can turn a crisis into an opportunity. This phase is sometimes referred to as Acceptance and Integration


Personally, I have encountered many redundancy situations in the last 10 years of my career, from an employee as well as an employer’s perspective. 


As an employee being made redundant (and I had a team to think about), I was caught in situation where a new management and its own team took over control of my unit to transform the business. My focus was the fate of my team members. I had to quickly change their perspectives, mindset, and focus on new strategies to stay relevant. In parallel, I had to move through my personal initial phases of shock, denial, anger, depression quickly, and took action after assessing my options in parallel.


As an employer in another situation, I had a business to transform fast before it lost relevance in the marketplace. There were urgent and imperative business transformation that had to happen within short span of time. I had to get the current team to change their mindset, skillsets, attitude, and eventually the right culture. I had to also accept that not everyone can come onboard within the tight timeframe, and hence a new set of resources had to be brought in to form a new transformed team. While people needs to change, as a leader, we need to also create the right environment for transformation. 


Whether you are a formal leader or not, transformation impacts everyone. To survive today’s fast pace of change, we need to start our personal transformation first, in order to stay as far away from a redundancy trap. 

I challenge you to Disrupt yourself now! 


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