Our top tips on building and maintaining employee engagement during a redundancy programme by h2h Lead Consultant, Caroline Forman
Times of transition, such as organisational change or redundancy, can be particularly challenging for maintaining employee engagement. During transitions, the uncertainty can lead to increased stress and anxiety among all employees, not only those directly affected. Here are our top tips on both building and maintaining employee engagement during these challenging times.
- The more you can communicate with everyone the better they feel.
- Hold frequent meetings to update employees on the transition process and what it means for them and their teams.
- Create opportunities for employees to ask questions and express their concerns.
- Ensure that all communications are clear, honest, and consistent to avoid misinformation and rumours.
- Give lots of opportunity for everyone to give feedback & tell you how they honestly feel.
- Create formal and informal support networks for all employees, not just those at risk of redundancy
- Provide either career transition support, including CV writing, job search assistance, and interview preparation.
- Encourage the formation of peer-to-peer mentoring and buddy groups where employees can share experiences and advice.
- Ensure regular check ins and signpost employees to qualified support (counsellors, mental health first aiders) if needed.
- Consider the impact of high workloads on those processing job change (as well as those processing team change). To avoid burn out it may be necessary to reallocate work for a while or renegotiate deliverables.
- Start lots of conversations about career development
- Offer career coaching sessions to help employees develop new skills relevant to the changing organisational needs or to help them understand their strengths as they leave the organisation.
- Encourage those affected to focus on internal networking to explore all internal job opportunities and alternative career pathways.
- Provide access to a career planning tool such as Passport2Progress to empower impacted employees to take ownership of their future career.
Investing in these initiatives can help retain talent and ensure that those leaving do so in a healthy way as well as strengthening the overall resilience and productivity of the organisation.
If you would like to speak to a member of the h2h team about navigating the redundancy process, outplacement or coaching, you can call us on 01347 879056 or email us at enquiries@h2h.uk.com
