Redundancy

In the current climate, rumors regarding "down-sizing" and layoffs are bound to spread. But what are the signs that the layoffs may really be coming?

Supporting redundant workers through outplacement services is not just morally right, its a highly effective way of retaining and motivating those left behind.

Job losses are starting to accelerate as the credit crunch, soaring prices and economic downturn move off the financial pages and start to become a reality.

First the good news – senior British managers have seen their earning power increase dramatically this year. The bad news is they are also more likely to be out of a job.

Fewer than a fifth of American chief financial officers are optimistic the U.S will escape a recession, and the deepening downturn is prompting them to cut back on spending and hiring and start laying workers off.

As Indian workers are toasting record pay rises, their counterparts in America are bracing themselves for a wave of job cuts.

Workers who choose to take voluntary redundancy from their jobs are less depressed and are more motivated to find a new job than those who loose their job involuntarily.

Staff who survive a round of corporate downsizing run a significantly increased risk of suffering mental health problems because of the increase workload they face once colleagues have left.

Americans who have been unfortunate enough to lose their jobs during the first half of the year can are likely to have have found new jobs more quickly than in each of the past two years.

Losing a job later in life more than doubles the risk of having a heart attack or stroke, according to research from Yale University.

Americans have accepted corporate layoffs as the norm, in the process creating a society of unstable, temporary workers, a new book has argued.

Workers within some of the world's key economic powerhouses are the most worried about losing their jobs, according to new research.

The 2,300 British workers being made redundant by car maker Peugeot Citroen are getting conflicting signals on what the future will hold for them in terms of employment.

Sacking an employee can be a hugely stressful experience for the boss doing the firing as much as for the employee, with managers often suffering sleepless nights as a result, a survey has found.

Business life is full of stresses and none carries a bigger whammy than being laid off. Downsized. Rightsized. Restructured. It doesn't matter what it's called - it's all the same sting if you are on the receiving end of the pink slip.

It will be anything but a happy New Year for many U.S workers, with more than a quarter of businesses saying they plan to lay workers off and even more intending to do so without providing any severance pay, a new study has said.

Two-thirds of employers get workers to sign compromise agreements when they leave to prevent them from taking the organisation to an employment tribunal at a later date.

Workers in the U.S. and UK are among the most nervous in the world about their job prospects over the coming year, with almost a quarter worrying that they could face the axe as confidence levels plunge.

British workers are some of the most pessimistic in the world about the future of their jobs, at the same time as employers are reporting a recruitment slowdown, according to latest research.

Men who fail to progress up the career ladder are far more likely to suffer psychological distress than women, according to new British research published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Getting laid off is becoming a more painful for many American executives as employers ease back on the amount of severance pay they award departing employees.

The same week that HP announced it would be laying off approximately 15,000 employees, it also announced it would be taking on one new employee who will be getting a compensation package with an estimated worth of $15.3 million per year

Workers who see colleagues being treated badly or made redundant are move likely to leave their jobs, even if they are not personally affected, a study has suggested.

Fear of redundancy is on the increase amongst UK workers. But their fears are nothing compared with the deep pessimism felt by their German colleagues.

Optimistic predictions that the workers laid off at Longbridge will be snapped up by other industries in short order may be wide of the mark, a study has suggested.

The Australian Visa Bureau has suggested that workers from Rover's Longbridge plant consider moving Down Under if – as looks likely - the car firm collapses.

Rover's problem over the past 20 years has been a succession of bad decisions delivered by bad managers who seemed to learn nothing from its various partners and acquirers. Maybe the old dog is better off dead, says Max Mckeown.

The "bowler hats and bureaucrats" image of the public sector – and the view that job cuts can be made without having a negative impact on services – is a myth, unions have argued.

British businesses simply do not get it when it comes to managing change effectively, creating stress, harassment and conflict at work, according to a new report.

Up to 100 top City lawyers could lose their jobs as a slowdown in corporate deal activity finally catches up with London's legal profession.

A future Conservative government would slash the size of the Department of Trade and Industry by more than three quarters in a bid to reduce red tape.

Next year is likely to be a tough one for employers, who will be under pressure on pay and prices while at the same time finding it harder than ever to recruit the right people into vacant jobs.

New research examining the way companies manage staff redundancies has found that skills and competencies are more important than the job someone does in selection for redundancy, while the line managers’ verdict is crucial.

Norway is home to the world's most confident workers, global research has found, with workers in Hong Kong and Switzerland the most worried about their futures.

Cutting staff can cause serious – even fatal - health problems for the employees who are left behind, according to a Finnish study published in the British Medical Journal.

A new survey has found that workers are "haunted" by the fear of redundancy as uncertainty continues to dog British industry.

Some 700,000 jobs in the UK’s manufacturing sector have disappeared over the past five years according to official figures.

A couple of months ago, research by totaljobs.com found that organisations which treat candidates badly during the recruitment process have been warned that they could face a backlash affecting their business and their brands.

The same is true - if not more so - for companies making staff redundant. As Human Resource Executive magazine says:

"The biggest mistake to be made when laying off people is to act as if there will be no consequences once an employee exits."

Over 1,000 former staff of the Coventry tractor manufacturer Massey Ferguson are to appeal to the House of Lords over a court decision that allowed US parent company Agco to reduce their retirement payments as if they'd retired early - even though the factory was shut down by its owners.

The Court of Appeal had previously ruled that the firm could reduce the pensions of workers.

That ruling overturned a High Court decision in December last year which said the workers should get a full pension because they were effectively being made redundant.

In the latest blow for service and IT jobs in the UK, Reuters, the news and financial information provider, has announced that it is moving its core operation to India. Just days ago, both Abbey National and Soldman Sachs announced similar plans. This move will certainly involve redundancies at Reuters, and the BBC reports that the announcement is already hitting morale as some staff plan to jump before they are pushed.

The economic downturn and fear of redundancy has contributed to a ten per cent fall in the UK’s average rate of employee absence over the past year.

The UK’s bosses might want to start looking over their shoulders. Over half of their employees would take revenge if they felt that they had lost their job unfairly . . .

Insurance giant Norwich Union is cutting nearly 900 jobs across the UK, with around half the losses being compulsory.

Earlier this month, HSBC announced 1,400 job losses. This latest news comes just a week after the CBI warned in a report that the UK financial sector could loose a further 10,000 workers this sumnmer as firms sought to cut costs, a predicition that seems to be depressingly accurate.

Although confidence is rising in the City, the financial services sector faces a further round of blood-letting over the summer with firms planning to lay off up to 10,000 workers.

When you are faced with the prospect of redundancy, the stress and feelingof rejection can be overwhelming. There are, however, some ways to keep it under control, as these useful case studies show.

Buried in the UK Government's consultation document on ageism published yesterday was a section advocating the end of a higher rate of redundancy for older employees.

According to today's Independent, this would lead to people aged between 41 and 65 seeing their redundancy cut from one and a half week's pay to one week's pay for each year of service - effectively making it cheaper for employers to make older people redundant.

Not everyone working in London's financial sector wants to escape the rat race. The BBC reports a boom in independent trading floors, known as "arcades", that rent spaces to redundant ex-bankers trading their own money.

"We expand as the city contracts," says the boss of one such operation, "so lay offs are good for business."

Banking giant HSBC - the UK's largest - has announced 1,400 job losses. The company has blaimed the recent increase in employer National Insurance contributions and the government’s decision to force banks to pay interest on accounts for small businesses for the move.

Minimum redundancy pay in the UK is less than half the European average and amongst the lowest in the European Union, a survey has found.

Employers are botching downsizing programmes by failing to train their managers to handle the fallout of job cuts and not putting strategies in place for managing the staff who remain

The majority of HR professionals appear to feel 'very confident' that they will not be made redundant in the next six months. But almost a quarter are not confident at all, claims a new survey.

The UK’s working population feels more insecure about their jobs than staff in any other developed economy. Nearly a third of UK workers believe they could lose their job in the next 12 months, compared to only four per cent in Italy.

A combination of economic forces and government policy are fundamentally altering the economic balance of the UK economy, according to new research. And it is those in higher income groups who are bearing the brunt of change and insecurity.

Nearly half of organisations that have carried out redundancies in the past 18 months plan to make further cuts this year according to a major new CIPD report.

Despite daily announcements of job cuts across the UK, only 36% of Britons are worried about their own job security, with just 10% of them very concerned about it, according to a new survey of 1915 UK adults.

the latest Recruitment Confidence Index reveals that UK employers’ predicted increases in recruitment activity in the service sector are at their lowest in two years whilst figures for manufacturing are even worse.

Downsizing and redundancies are a fact of life, particularly in times of recession. But research from Cranfield School of Management shows that for the employees that remain in the organisation this does not necessarily have to be a bad experience.