voluntary redundancy – mad?

so my post is “priority 2” for voluntary redundancy; there is no chat about non voluntary redundancy yet……my senior management put it in veiled language that they dont want me to apply. Im in the public sector so who knows what will happen after the scottish cuts are announced in full.

package is a years salary which as a lump sum is reasonable but not when you have a mortgage etc in this market.

there must be some examples of “wins” from voluntary redunancy, anyone?

there must be some examples of “wins” from voluntary redunancy, anyone?

Taking control of the situation, opportunity to do something else.

a years salary will buy you a lot of time. If you budget, maybe more than a year, you can plan and execute a lot in a year.

What are your skills? What is the going rate for those skills? How many people are suddenly available with those skills? What do you want to do? What are you willing to do?

What are you earning now? How much do you need to live? No, how much do you NEED to live?

Fiddle with those answers and numbers and decide for your self if you want to do it.

If you do nothing now you may find yourself next year being made redundant. You may then not get a years money, you may get less. How long will it take to find work again – well, you have a year to find work basically.

If you really like your job, stay and wait till they make you redundant. If your not bothered, take the money and find a new job. If you hate it, take the money and find a new job.

However reasonable or not the package sounds, try to imagine having no job with no redundancy. Right now you have the opportunity of no job with a years money.

How good is your CV going to look to the private sector – they are the only ones likely to be hireing next year – and thats not very likely, but more likely than the public sector.

I’d love to be offered VR.

First £30K is tax free too

Is that a years salary tax free? If so that’ll easily last 18 months to 2 years with minor budgeting. If you get a job in less time then you are quids in. You’d need to really love the job to stay IMHO (which is possibly about to go downhill anyway)

woa –

tbh ive made the decision not to take the package. Love the job = no, its pretty gd stressful at the moment. I would be employable as the cv is not bad but I doubt the jobs market in my sector at present. retraining is an option but tbh i’m a big risk adverse kinda guy.

interested if anyone has managed to take the package and completely changed careers successfully.

if you don’t like your job the sense of relief when they finally accept your request is overwhelming!

EDIT: just seen your latest post:

me from 22 years in engineering to self employed property refurbishment leading to new-build for the last 6 years.

mrs mcgroo from 15 years in IT to adult social care private and public sector for last 7 years.

I’m pretty sure that your management don’t have to accept your voluntary redundancy request. I may well be wrong though.

From your second post you’d be mad not to take it IMHO. I know lots of people who have taken the money, changed jobs and are loving it; its not rare at all.

Perhaps it is mad, i don’t know… I do know I’ve grabbed my offer with both hands though. Could be I’ll regret it but it’ll have to go pretty sour before that happens.

I am appreciating the irony of going from financially secure but short of time, to being financially insecure but with time to kill- I’d love to spunk the cash on a campervan and just take off, have that “gap year” that I never had, but then what? So instead I’m going to save every penny and cut back and make the cash last until I do get a job, and then… I’ll have no time! Damn you prudence!

Still I’m looking forward to being a parasite on society. I might even become a single parent.

Do note the 30k tax free bit… Is your proposed payout enough to set up as self employed doing something else you may also love???

My payout changed my life 2 years back – went from job I hated to doing what I want – and riding lots 😆

Mate of mine did this two years ago. He’d always wanted to set himself up as a professional photographer (was an IT project manager). It took him a year to get established, build up contacts etc. but now he is well sorted.

Jesus, a whole years salary, that’s a lot of breathing space to decide what to do next.

I previously worked for a large American owned engineering firm. When they made folks redundant it was statutory only. I didn’t get made redundant but, if I had, I would have received just over £2k for 6 years service.

If you are risk averse then consider the fact that you will have at least a year on the same income to do something else. What’s your current notice period ? This is theost solid, guaranteed income you will ever have. That, quite frankly, is a once in a lifetime opportunity. If in 12 months you are turfed out on minimum redundancy the risk will seem negligible.
Do it, look forwards not backwards, you control your destiny.
Of course it’s acceptable to spunk a load on a bike and have some whopping nights out 😉

I bet your pension SHOULD be the main consideration. If you are on final salary – sit tight.

If not,consider something new. Start applying for jobs. You are only here once.

I did the sums on a similar deal for me last year [it was withdrawn in the end when we were bought out]

My conclusions were ……..
A years tax free salary is worth a good 18 months [as said above] in the real world
It’ll only last 18 months if you do nothing else though, [if needed] I would have got a low paid job I liked doing, until such time that another one come along – stretching that lump of cash much further as you only need to use it to make up the difference, depending on your circumstances, you’d also get extra benefits for a while.
I reckoned that – worst case scenario – I could have stretched my redundancy payment to around 4 years

As you said, you really don’t know what will happen when the mandatory cuts bite, TBH – I’ve generally found mandatory redundancy payments within the same firm to be a similar deal to the voluntary ones so for me the possibility of getting less if I didn’t jump early wasn’t a great concern.
One thing that will happen though when the cuts come is that an awful lot of people will be chasing each job vacancy

bet your pension SHOULD be the main consideration. If you are on final salary – sit tight.

One life, live it.

[Reminder to self: Must practice what I preach 😳 ]

Tough one.

A years salary can last a lot longer than a year, you spend a lot less when you aren’t working !

These sound like good terms that can only get worse in future, realistically.

And please don’t trust any of this hint hint BS from the managers or HR, they have hearts of stone when it comes to this kind of thing and will not honor any implied agreement, only what they legally absolutely have to. Will turn on you in a blink.

Also – if you take VR there are different terms when it comes to claiming the (paucity of) benefits to which you will be entitled.

I took redundancy 5 years ago, but they put it through as compulsory, which was nice. I had a years contract lined up anyway and have no dependents (well OK one cat) so for me at was the chance of a lifetime, took the following year out and rode my bike in Spain. But those were different times.

Also worth considering the benefits of being one of the first out. The company I worked for made loads of IT folk redundant in waves, the first lot out got all the jobs…

Good luck !

Also – if you take VR there are different terms when it comes to claiming the (paucity of) benefits to which you will be entitled.

You sure about that ? All the info I can find states that it doesn’t matter if you leave due to voluntary or compulsory redundancy re: benefits. If you leave a job voluntarily e.g resign then yes, different story re: benefits but redundancy is redundancy as far as I can see.

package is a years salary which as a lump sum is reasonable but not when you have a mortgage etc in this market.

‘reasonable’, yeh right…

I’ve been laid off 6 times and the best I got was 6 months gross salary – very rare in the private sector to get much more, unless very, very senior with a ‘Directors’ contract.

A years’ gross should last you 2 years IME, but really depends on your family/financial position. For example, mortgage can be moved to interest-free while you are not working, if you’ve young children its nice to have time with them, sign on and get JSA for 6 months irrelevent of savings/partner income.

Pension rights are probably more interesting for you than most of us, what is a final-salary pension worth – more than most realise.

And only retrain if its something you really want to do as there are thousands of others with the skill/experience in your ‘new’ role also looking for work.

They might have changed the rules mrpies – this was 5/6 years ago. I was reeling from the shock at the time that in spite of paying tax for 10 years in this country all I got was £62 a week job seekers allowance. I said No Thanks and left the country for a while. Having seen all those skivers in the bike club getting their rent paid for years I figured there would be some kind of accommodation allowance. No. “Sell your flat” they said…

If the redundancy word has been remotely mentioned I assume your looking at alternate jobs already?

I would be seeking alternate employment already, you have nothing to loose and security to gain where as where you are now you may well be up for the chop whatever. Don’t let cash swade you to hold out as its not guranteed, and IMO better to be in a job than out of one.

If you take VR just be careful of being out of work, the longer you are out of work the harder it becomes to find a job. Hence why you should be looking now !

Gotta echo b r. That’s a pretty good deal. I’ve been made redundant 3 times and it’s been my payment in lieu of notice that’s kept me going (tax free provided your contracts worded correctly). The actual tax free redundancy element has been pretty much statutory. As many of the others have said that chunk of cash can be made to last quite a long time if you’re careful and hopefully you’d still have some left at the end of the period.

That all said I’d personally be pretty unlikely to volunteer unless there were exceptional circumstances like knowing the company was likely to go down the toilet in the near future anyway.

if you don’t like your job the sense of relief when they finally accept your request is overwhelming!

That’s pretty much what I was going to say.

Loads of us took VR. I started my own business and have done very well out of it. Others are in similar jobs to their old ones elsewhere. Nobody is living on the street.

If you actively like your job (weirdo) then you;re going to stay put though. And it’s probably for the best.

Off the top of my head (and from experience) “wins” from VR

a) Tax free lump sum waaaaaay over what you’d get next week when they tell you it’s compulsory redundancy. Don’t forget a “year” of tax free will get you much more than 12 months of taxed wages.

b) If it’s big numbers of compulsory redundancies everyone will be queing up for the same limited jobs in the area. We got rid of a lot of IT people pretty much in one go. All other job adverts were swamped.

c) Obviously the older of us could look at early retirement even

d) Getting another job back in the same company that gave you VR 3 months ago. Seen that happen too.

Downsides:
All the people with any nous take the VR and suddenly you’ve a) not got any decent people left in the company b) the ones left suddenly need to “step up to the plate” (which is management speak for doing the work of two people, or above your grade).

Apart from the final salary pension potential complication you’d be mad not to take VR that gave you a 12 month gross salary (assuming mostly tax-free) pay off..

… plus you should get some tax back for this year if you are PAYE.

b r – Member

“I’ve been laid off 6 times and the best I got was 6 months gross salary – very rare in the private sector to get much more, unless very, very senior with a ‘Directors’ contract.”

Depends on service though. I’m walking away with 10 months pay, one for each year. Wouldn’t be so keen to leave if I’d only been there 2 or 3. I’m guessing if you’ve been laid off 6 times you didn’t work for 10 years in all those jobs 😉

I’m walking away with 10 months pay, one for each year

You’re pretty lucky then, many people will only get statutory which is usually way below that, something like £ 350 per year of service (age also comes into it). Now that doesn’t go very far.

Depends on your industry, etc… We’re generally slightly lowly paid but good benefits frinstance. Enhanced redundancy packages aren’t uncommon though (ironically because lots of companies thought it looked good in a contract and they’d hardly ever have to pay them out…)

that’s a lot of breathing space to decide what to do next.

rest on your laurels at your peril…

A mate was made redundant over a year ago, been trying to find a job since (some kinda IT stuff he does) without success.

that’s a lot of breathing space to decide what to do next.

rest on your laurels at your peril…

A mate was made redundant over a year ago, been trying to find a job since (some kinda IT stuff he does) without success.

I wasn’t advocating anyone sitting on their backside doing nothing 🙂 Just remarking that a proper redundancy payout could be viewed like a big lottery win whereas statutory is like finding a tenner on the pavement.