Our company will soon (next week) enter a 90 day consultation period as 57 jobs are to be axed.

How do you motivate yourself to get on when it seems like an exercise in futility? Nobody wants to work and the atmosphere is dreadful.

Any tips on getting through this life-changing period?

TiA

Jobsites?

smuggling stationery?

have you tried posting on singletrackworld…. oh – never mind.

I assume you don’t know if you’re one of the 57 (yet), in which case consider that there might be a further round of redundancies and they’ll always be wanting to let go the least effective/productive employees.

You’re actually looking a bit peaky mate. Difficult to put my finger on what it might be though. Some things can be hellishly difficult to diagnose.

Anyway… whatever this mystery illness is…. I prescribe plenty of rest, and lots of fresh air 😉

I assume you don’t know if you’re one of the 57 (yet), in which case consider that there might be a further round of redundancies and they’ll always be wanting to let go the least effective/productive employees.

As Druidh says, if you don’t know you’re for the chop, try at keep working (as daft as that sounds). We had the same thing, half the people that were under threat basically switched off – they all seemed to be the people that got the bullet.

It’s hard, from personal experience, but a bit of effort might save the day.

You might want to start implicating your co-workers in minor crimes like internet abuse and stationary theft. They’ll all be doing it anyway, all you’ll be doing is helping your company decide who to get rid of.

Just to clarify. I am one of the 57 that are going.

Oh, as an aside. if the company looks like it will go under anyway, it’s best to be in the first round of redundancies. People stood around congratulating themselves on surviving the first round when the company enters administration, often find themselves stood in a dole queue with no redundancy cheque in their back pocket.

That one is from experience.

Who gives a rat’s arse then!

Tell them you’re only posting on STW.
Request gardening leave.
Go out on bike.

Why try to stay motivated?
Get together with the others and have a competition; who can get their bodily fluid into the strangest place?
It’s surprising how time can fly when you’re trying to get urine into a directors handbag.

I’m with Samuri on this one…. there’s few things worse than the atmosphere of being one of the few left while everyone else gets binned.

Its absolutely awful

Can you get payment in lieu of notice (PILON), then go and ride your bike or job hunt?

Talk to your boss about your motivation issues.

He or she is unlikely to be too harsh on you, try to agree what the top priority tasks are and make sure you do them.

You might wish to ask for time off to look for work, go to interviews, attend training etc. This has been agreed for employees when I’ve been involved (as union rep) in redundancy negotiations.

Ultimately it depends on your personal work ethic really though. Some people plug on like troopers, others suddenly develop lots of minor illnesses.

You definitely being made redundant? as I went through this 3 times in the last 5 years where my job was to be made redundant and managed to salvage a post each time…..until last summer when they had finally had enough of me. If other positions are available then be careful of being seen to be doing nothing with work still to be done. If not then the following:

CV’s, portfolio’s and general touching up of your prospectus is always a good one as its a chore to do at home with the kids running around.
Just a note on job sites….they’re a bit of a wind up IMO. They promise all kinds of jobs that look right up your street and give you all the right noises but when it comes down to it they’re either chasing the same job with every other agency or don’t even have the job to offer as I found out several times. Its well worth trying to find out who the job is actually for and then check their web site as they often have “agencies will not be entertained” or such like written at the bottom of the advertisement. Go in to speak with the agencies and don’t just post CV’s on their sites as these tend just to get sorted through by search programs looking for key words.
I found the best solution was to call up people I had worked with or even for me over the years and the offers came in. In the end I had three decent enough offers from people I knew and the interviews consisted of lunch in a pub or just a when can you start phone call.

I guess its best to fill your time constructively just to keep a work focus.

Good luck pal.

They can’t sack you for poor performance during an official consultation / notification period.

Just enjoy being a slacker for a while and concentrate your energy on finding a new job.

Walking away from a failing company straight into a better job is great. Doing it with a nice cheque in hand is even better.

Good luck.

Why do you need to be motivated? IMO, they don’t care about you, why should you care? I went through this myself a few years ago, a combination of lots of job interviews (which they have to allow & still pay you for) & a sudden knee injury was all the motivation I needed. Spent 2 weeks in the Canaries recovering 😀

SOD THEM!!!!

Get all the people together who are being made redundant, line up on the imaginary start line and run around the office making motorbike noises. 😀

How is it a consultation period if they’ve identified the redundant roles?

Cheers for the responses.

Harry the Spider is in the same situation as we both work at the same company. He tried to crease **** YOU into his shirt with the iron this morning!

You’re generally making sense – why should I give a shit. They’re finising ME!

Check the voluntary package.

Stay positive.

Redo your CV and start applying for jobs. Don’t know what your line of work is, but be open to sub-contracting if it’s an option.

Stay positive.

Keep working and being seen to be working an keen.

Stay positive.

Get someone legal on your case to make sure the company doesn’t pull a fast one. Have someone independent minute every consultation meeting, verbatim if necessary.

Stay positive.

Best case – you might find alternative work and get a payoff to go with new job.

Middle case – you might be made redundant, but at least you’ll get some from it and have started steps to a new career.

Worst case – they might keep you on only to do this year after year.

I went through that annually for five years, and finally saying enough was enough and taking voluntary was the best thing I ever did. It is only when you’re no longer havnig to go through it that you realise how stressful it has been. I got myself a job to walk into the Monday after I finished. ’twas 200 miles away mind, but it was a job. Those who had no positive outlook were the ones who got laid off and then struggled to find alternative work.

How is it a consultation period if they’ve identified the redundant roles?

The key is roles not individuals. They might have 300 widget wranglers but only need 200. All managers will, of course, be essential.

I assume you don’t know if you’re one of the 57 (yet)

He is. So am I. 😐

How is it a consultation period if they’ve identified the redundant roles?

Legalese innit. Working out all the detail before they press the button.

The site isn’t making a loss but our customers are in the far east and it makes sense to Corporate to build the kit there.

Unfortunatley we are a victim of a lack of investment by our eurpoean customers. The Chinese will be running the World within the not too distant future.

He tried to crease **** YOU into his shirt with the iron this morning!

If I knew I was definitely going it would be jeans and t-shirt o’clock.

sobriety – I considered that but I’ve done the shirt/tie/trousers combo for 21 years. Sartorial standards shall be maintained. I even shaved this morning!

All this talk of “consultation period” is utter tosh. The 57 have been identified. All we can do now is try to enhance our pay offs through negotiation betwixt management and the trade union.

Put your efforts into what you want to do next, be that another job, new career, whatever.

Get yourself down to the job centre and get yourself on one of the courses they offer for ‘unemployed professionals’

The job centres basically don’t know what to do with highly qualified, experienced and skilled job seekers. As the only jobs they deal with are minmum wage unqualified stuff. But they’ve had an influx , over the past few years of people considerably higher up the food chain. And they don’t know what to do with them. So they’ve contracted out the service.

I went on a 2 day course with a city head hunting firm. It was fantastic!
Well worth it. Invaluable in fact. Basically they point out to you how recruitment firms really work. The devious, underhand and borderline illegal practices they employ. To say that recruitment consultants are low-life scum-buckets would be massively understating things. They make estate agents and tabloid journalists look like bastions of principled, honest respectability! They’re pond life!

Good luck you two. Been there, done that. Its shit!

Derek – if you get a decent package, we could open that donkey sanctuary we always talked about 😀

All this talk of “consultation period” is utter tosh. The 57 have been identified. All we can do now is try to enhance our pay offs through negotiation betwixt management and the trade union.

Amen. I got done 12 months ago. Felt sick when I got told. Felt really ill for the next week or so in fact. Sat down at the “consultation” meeting and the package they were offering was actually pretty generous, and I was lucky enough to be offered a two month extension with completion bonus if I stayed on to train up the guy from India who’d be replacing me – sorry, who’d be performing the new offshore role that was created to replace the uk-based role that was no longer available for me, and which I’d turned down. I snapped up the chance, and spent the first two weeks redrafting my CV and getting the HR department to look at it. It was mid april when this happened (I actually got the news on my birthday), and I uploaded my CV on May Day Bank Holiday Monday. On Tuesday my phone battery had run out by 3pm with the amount of recruiters calling me to discuss “opportunities”. By the end of the following week I had 2 firm offers and had turned down 2 more. That left me with 10 weeks to go (notice period plus the two month extension), but I just viewed it as time at work since I knew I had another job to go to at the end. I turned up on time, looked smart, did all the work required of me and kept myself busy. The Production Director actually took me aside on my last day to thank me for being displaying the most professional attitude of any of the people affected by redundancy he’d ever seen, which is small consolation until you consider that he’s offered to give me any references I need either personally or on LinkedIn etc

so, to practical purposes – most of it’s been covered above, but the key is that the company is obliged to make reasonable help available to you to find employment. That might mean another role elsewhere in the company, or as for me, help in preparing the CV and reasonable time off work for interviews and so on – I left work at 2pm most days when I was interviewing, then I could see someone around 3.30 to 4pm. Get your CV updated and polished, upload it to a couple of job sites and make it searchable. Get yourself on LinkedIn with a fully fleshed out profile and as many connections and recommendations as you can. It’s up to you if you connect with recruiters, I personally don’t, but it’s your connections that make you visible in searches. You might also want to create a specific email account for the process, I didn’t do that and 10 months on and still receiving up to half a dozen emails a week from recruiters

Remember, the role you perform is being made redundant, it’s not personal against you

but having said that, at the moment they say “roles at risk” they know how’s going, the only question is how much it will cost them. Accept it, hold out for as much as you can, find a new job and use it to pay off a chunk of the mortgage

Best revenge is to open your own business.

You are in the fortunate position of knowing where to get qualified staff who are looking for work, maybe even a co-operative. Got to be funds somewhere for an innovative startup.

The bonus is you already know who the deadheads are, so you won’t be using them.

epicyclo – I like your style 😛

nbt – thanks for your advice. Taken onboard.

Binners – I’ve gone right off donkies. Think it’s the teeth.