How to avoid redundancy ft. Faith Timbs
It’s an unfortunate fact of life that, sometimes, good people are made redundant.
There are always unseen forces at play in organisations – particularly in turbulent economic times – which means even a major restructure can seem to come entirely out of the blue. But there are absolutely things we can all do to avoid being made redundant.
If your organisation needs to downsize or restructure, you probably won’t keep your job by simply turning up to work on time.
In this podcast, Elise Stevens speaks to change expert Faith Timbs about how to make sure you’re seen as a skilled, valuable and well-liked member of the team if the wolves are at the door.
Points raised in this podcast:
- Good people are made redundant all the time. It is often not a reflection of your skills or value or within your control, however there are several things to work on if you are trying to avoid redundancy.
- It is important to understand yourself, your strengths and weaknesses and what you offer the organisation.
- Develop a radar for what is happening in the organisation and how you are perceived. Seek out people who can offer a different view of the organisation and your place in it.
- Do not wait until you are made redundant to invest in your skills and work on your self-development.
- Know how to show up – consider how you give back to others and work within the team. Do you have the right organisational fit and live the company’s values? It will be quickly apparent to your leader and team if you are not putting in 100%.
- ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. Connections are important. People want to do business with people they know, like and trust.
- Stay curious and engaged with your work and team and you will make connections that can help protect your current role and create future job prospects.
- Starting a conversation can be as simple as asking a question you know the other person knows the answer to and feels passionately about.
- Positivity and resilience in times of volatility is becoming increasingly important.
About Faith:
Faith Timbs has spent 15 years helping clients capture the benefits of their change, while balancing the needs and responses of their teams. She’s about finding creative, forward-thinking, human-centred solutions and taking an adaptable, agnostic and agile approach to any challenge – because change is complex, but our responses need to be human.
Faith partners with organisations to solve their change management challenges with plain English neuroscience, and she coaches their leaders to build practical change skills. Most importantly, she challenges every team she works with to use the best, most affordable and most accessible change tool she believes exists – curiosity.
In life, she’s most proud of her beautiful daughter, her thriving organic veggie patch and the trust her clients place in her every day. Her true loves are a fine cheese, a great gin and an amazing book. Serious, strange, or silly, she shares her thoughts – she’d love to hear from you too.
You can connect with Faith on LinkedIn.
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