How to tell when you are about to get made redundant

9 February, 2009 by trevor. Average Reading Time: less than a minute.

I was reading an article the other day about how to tell if you are going to be made redundant. This is a field on which I am something of an authority so here are my golden tips

Firstly, not having anything to do is a real danger signal. This is a difficult situation to get out of as to find meaningful employment within a company involves pointing out that you have nothing to do, which only serves to remind your colleagues how redundant you already are.

Secondly, be wary when your boss invites you to a surprise ‘catch-up’ meeting. I have always left these P45 in hand!

Thirdly, trust your instincts. The one thing which working for several companies which have gone down the toilet has left me with is a finely tuned bullshit detector. If something sounds bollocks, it probably is bollocks, no matter what other people might tell you.

If you found this post useful, why not buy me a coffee!

http://none Will

I thought Cambridge gave you a finely tuned bullshit detector! Are you claiming yours has got better!?
http://ozdunstan.blogspot.com/ Dunstan

Thanks Trevor, I enjoyed that!

Do you have any strategies to suggest when this situation comes up?

D
Trevor Ginn

Will – Unfortunately no academic education could prepare me for the amount of shit I have listed to over the last 10 years.

The thing that really sticks in my mind is when I listened to the CEO of iXL (a now defunct internet consultancy) tell us that we were going to be the greatest consultancy in business history. I came out of the meeting wondering if I was wrong in thinking that he was talking a load of shit. It turned out that I was right as he was sacked a week later, and the company went bust about a year later.

Dunstan, my advice would therefore be to leave immediately you start to wonder if the company you are working for is going to down the tubes. The last company I worked for I learned from my experiences and left when I thought things looked terminal. I was right, the company went bust 6 months later.
http://www.kidsontalks.com Liz

That is exactly what happened the only time I have been made redundant. I wish I had trusted my instincts and jumped ship. Thing is, they asked me if I could create my own wage and they would keep me on, so I left.

OK it took 12 months but now I am fully self employed.

The company had its second round of redundancies recently, so I think I made the correct decision.