Career Management Planning and Outplacement
By Michiel Van Kets
When meeting someone for the first time, one of the most frequent asked question is “what do you do’? Our work often gives us our sense of personal identity, providing us with self-respect and social status. Even though most of us say they don’t like their job, usually work is seen as a positive thing by others around us and if we didn’t have work to keep us busy us our lives would kind of lose a lot of its meaning. Good examples are the women and man that are a stay at home parents after they have worked their whole lives. They often say that they feel like they don’t belong to society any more. There are also people who see work as a feed of fulfillment in life, finding it a deeply rewarding experience and important for a successful society.
A few decades ago it was the norm to get a job at 18 or so and stayed with the same company for 45 years. Times have changed since then and with today’s technology and ever changing environment, this is no longer the case. Some people even choose to not go to University but start to work as soon as they are done with school at the age of 16. They work for about 2 years and then change employer or job to get as much experience as possible. Connecting jobs and people can be a highly challenging assignment and in any work situation there are people who are misplaced whereby their jobs don’t make use of their skills and talents, and employees who are doing jobs they are no longer qualified to do because of reasons as new technology. If a company needs to restructure it has to deal with these employees, either by finding them alternative positions inside the company, or make unfortunate redundancies.
When it comes down to termination, redundancy, downsizing or outplacement, whatever you want to call it, it is extremely important that it is dealt with using tact, sensitivity and especially understanding. The effects, on such individual, of a job loss, will be of huge impact as all of a sudden life has to be looked at and planned without the habituate such as a regular paycheck, health insurance, company car, overtime and other benefits. Although the financial/material effects are a big factor to deal with, there are more important effects such as psychological factors to be taken into consideration, like stress, self confidence and the worry of their place in society. Companies also need to be concerned about the other employees not facing the same thing as they might feel guilty, fear for the foreseeable future and de-motivated.
Downsizing, terminations and other outplacement consulting has gone from being dealt with by the company’s HR department into a specialized profession. Career transition specialists work with businesses that are facing change either because of closure, restructure or integration and help them with the decision on the best plan of dealing with their employees. There are several services available for the employees facing the loss of their job and also to the rest of the staff who are not affected by the changes as the change to the working atmosphere will affect everyone in the company.
In order to keep up with competition and survive in the ruthless world we live in every company has to restructure at times. There are going to be decisions that some individuals will not like, but if you can make these people see that the company supports their staff through transition programs, it will reassure them and give a sense of security.
A career change can be stress-full and if the employee has had no choice or thought in the matter this can make it even harder. We all know that sometimes if you are a little stuck, all we need is a little push to get us motivated in making the decision on a new challenge, a new job or a new career that will offer satisfaction and happiness. Some people think that everything happens for a reason and that change is good.
The people who can definitely help you if you do find yourself in this position are Career Management Planning and Outplacement consultants. They can absolutely maximize your chances of finding the perfect and exciting new career; involving planning, preparing and they’ll even retrain you to learn new skills.
If you are an organization or an individual, career management and outplacement specialists can offer an abundance of experience in a range of business environments to you. Experts in how to support a diverse variety of needs and they are the perfect specialists to consult if your organization is heading towards a change.