Michael Sinclair must be one of the busiest professionals in the City right
now. He's not a banker, but a psychologist. He deals with people who have
been made redundant and are having some difficulty coping. People like me.
As once mighty banks such as Lehman Brothers fall and organisations such as
the British Chambers of Commerce predict up to 300,000 job losses across the
UK, a sense of palpable fear has replaced the overweening confidence of the
bubble years. Who's next? Could it be you?
After ten years working at the heart of the BBC, a small panic gripped me as I
realised that, yes, my time was up. I wondered briefly, if melodramatically,
whether this sense of being evicted foreshadowed the feelings I might have
at the end of life itself.
I'm not alone in experiencing such deeply disturbing emotions. Sinclair, who
works for London's City Psychology Group, says that they will be common
among the countless thousands who face receiving their final salary cheques:
“A change of environment like this has a profound psychological effect. You
obviously feel rejected. You are bound to take it personally.” And he
cautions that the ramifications can be much wider. “Developments like these
can easily cause a reactive depression. It's an environmental situation that
might trigger an underlying uncertainty that you might have.” A slow and
tortuous demise
My own demise at the BBC was much slower and arguably more tortuous than the
sudden collapse now affecting many City workers. I first turned down
redundancy two years ago, cheered by my line manager describing me as
“business critical”. However, the harsh fact was that even though others
left, there was still insufficient work for those who remained. People had
stopped buying what we made.
The management took to sending e-mails about job cuts, headlined “creative
futures”, and launched a programme called “managing change”. The dreaded “R”
word - “redundancy” - was never used. The longer the process went on, the
more euphemistic the language became and the more alienated I felt. I took
to growling at the missives. It was time to go.
There were many gloomy water-cooler exchanges with colleagues keen to
ascertain that I felt just as bad as they did. I certainly didn't feel good.
I am 48, I have a wife, four children and a very large mortgage.
Ever since I left university, somebody, somewhere, has been sending me a
cheque on or around the 15th of the month. I have always worked in big
buildings, used free photocopiers and printers, eaten food in the canteen or
on expenses. But losing all this was not the real hurt. Working for a large
and well-known organisation had become part of my psyche. It had given me
easy answers to polite questions about what I do. And what I do had become
intrinsically bound up with who I am.
Now there is no “what I do” other than what I used to do. Don Serratt, a
former manager in the City who runs Life Works, a counselling service for
people like me, says: “Some people can really go off the rails. I could not
get over the fact that I no longer had a business card with my name
alongside that of a big company.”
I did not have to renounce my business card as I had never carried one, but I
did have to arrange my own leaving party, a slightly maudlin mish-mash of
badly timed jokes and the odd side-swipe. The DIY party was a reminder of
how, from now on, I was on my own. I signed up to BBC-funded exit courses,
with titles such as: Testing The Water: The Future Landscape. A small circle
of soon-to-be ex-colleagues also sampled these courses. Twenty years ago
they were all Bright Young Things from university; now all seemed as
confused as me. Their plans ranged from the unlikely and brave to the
non-existent.
No one was going to miss the bureaucracy
But what would we miss most about our old roles? The answers were a measure of
how institutionalised everybody had become: free stationery, sick pay and
friends. A smarter answer would have been “presenteeism”, labour-market
speak for always being somewhere because somebody wants you to be there. The
ultimate example is the employee who hangs his jacket across his chair last
thing in the day, so that the next day it appears he got in early for work.
And what were people not going to miss? “Bureaucracy,” they all chimed.
For those who were completely perplexed by redundancy, the corporation even
offered five free sessions from a Harley Street shrink. A month after I left
the building and, more from curiosity than need, I signed up. I talked a lot
for an hour in front of a rather silent individual before deciding that this
was not going to equip me for life beyond the BBC.
I have to remind myself that I wished this life-changing uncertainty on
myself. Admittedly there was a huge carrot: nobody had ever before offered
me a large amount of cash just to go away. Equally, I was offered a healthy
amount of gardening leave, a euphemism for watching the world go by while
annoying your wife and doing no gardening. I feel unable to work out how I
feel about my new status. I have a classically predict-able depressive
cycle: on a good day my non-existent new business is taking on allcomers in
the world of television. On a bad day, I'm a washed-up fortysomething,
bankrupt, with nowhere to live.
David Thomas, a business consultant who runs reskilling courses, knows this
emotional curve pretty well. “I have met some people who say they want to be
like Richard Branson every day,” he says. “However, most of the time you
will be like the character from Dad's Army who says ‘don't panic, don't
panic'.” Thomas says leaving a big organisation is tantamount to suffering a
bereavement. Thus an antidote to this is to stick closer to friends and
family. “Remember that you will still see your friends and you don't stop
making friends because you no longer work for a big organisation. Life out
there is not as bad as you think. However, you might have to put into your
new office diary: ‘Go to the pub once a month'.”
There are days when I stare at the ages of chief executives of public
companies and realise they were born five years after me. There are other
days when I recall that Tony Blair was already in Downing Street before he
was 50. And days when my wife tells me to get a grip and get on with
whatever it is I want to do next.
Being 48 is often not the best time for the change, Michael Sinclair
acknowledges. “At a certain age this can hit hard. That's the age when we
are already questioning our existence and future. A younger person might
feel that they have more to fall back on.” While I'm not too bothered about
the legions of younger people who might quite soon nobble the last best jobs
in my industry, I have taken to describing myself as “forty-something” even
though I'm getting dangerously closer to fiftysomething.
At least I haven't got to the point of subtracting ten years from my age, a
somewhat misguided tip given to me by an older colleague. And I'm relieved
that this redundancy has not happened to me ten years further down the line.
As Don Serratt warned me: “People in their fifties and sixties can hit the
floor. A lot have been workaholics all their life. They get the sack, they
go home, they pick up a drink. That's that.”
www.davidthomasmedia.com ; www.lifeworkscommunity.com
, helpline 0800 0810700
How to cope with redundancy
Don't panic Work out what to say when people ask what you do. Don't
fret if you don't have a business card.
Plan your spending If you are worried about money, draw up lists of
what you spend. Live on cash. Make sure you have at least three months'
living costs easily to hand. Don't waste money in coffee shops, and log on
to money-saving websites such as www.moneysavingsexpert.com
Get financial advice If you are self-employed, get financial advice and
find a good accountant. Don't forget to tell the taxman you are
self-employed and pay the correct National Insurance Contributions. Register
for VAT if you are earning more than £67,000 in any 12-month period.
Build up your support network. If you are starting up by yourself, try
to speak to one new person every day. Take care of yourself If you are
unemployed, make sure that you have good self care. Get up at regular times.
Ensure you have good nutrition and lots of exercise. Plan a schedule for
each day. If it all gets too much for you, don't be ashamed to reach out for
therapy or life coaching.
Be proactive If you don't know what you want to do next, be proactive
in finding out what you want to do. Look back at the most positive aspects
of your life, listing which jobs you liked the most and why.
Redundancy in numbers
2 million Predicted number of unemployed by the end of 2009
One in four Number of people who think they are at risk of redundancy
6,600 Financial problems handled by Citizens Advice staff every day
Six in ten Employers say they are considering making redundancies
One fifth Of UK business entrepreneurs began their enterprises after
redundancy
Source: Times database
