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How I avoided being cut: designing my way out of redundancy
What you can do to look after yourself mentally and financially.
Redundancy is a difficult process for everyone involved, but there’s a way to navigate it and keep your dignity intact. It might be tempting to rely on your red hat thinking and give in to your emotional reaction, but it’s not usually the best way forward. Here’s how I applied a design thinking approach to my brush with redundancy, and hopefully provides you the comfort and tools knowing it’s not personal—it’s just business.
You may want to read up on your country’s rights during redundancy. The UK information is available below, and your country should have something similar.
Divergent and Convergent thinking
Even though I apply the Design Thinking approach, there’s one principle I followed throughout from the Double Diamond process. Specifically, the idea of applying divergent thinking first, then reigning it in with convergent thinking. At each stage I want to be open-minded and consider as many possibilities as I can before honing in on what I believe is the best decision for me.
This allows me to “vent” my emotionally-driven thoughts and tap into my calm and conscious thinking.
Empathise: remember the human
The most important thing to remember is that you are human, and your boss and employer are human too. Whilst they may not reveal how they’re truly feeling, whether that’s a personal choice or a matter of professionalism, I implore you to do your best to be objective and put emotions to one side where you can.
At this stage we may not know how or why your role has been proposed for redundancy, nor what choices others may make whilst the redundancy process is…
