Facing the redundancy ogre

By ESTELLE SARNEY

Nick Barton has been doing a lot of rebuilding lately. Since being made redundant five months ago, fixing up his house has taken much of his time.

But while he has been wielding a paintbrush, Barton has been reassessing which career path he wants to follow next, and maintaining the self-confidence he'll need to start down it.

A 46-year-old former senior product manager at Clear Communications, Barton was one of hundreds who lost their jobs after Telstra took over.

Barton, from Auckland's North Shore, took redundancy rather than a changed role that would have been a backward step.

He had been with Clear for 11 years but felt the Telstra person brought in to assess his position had no understanding of past contribution.

"I felt somewhat let down by the company in the way they went about things," he confesses. "They went through this elaborate process of interviewing for jobs, but the people who got them seemed to be preordained.

"It didn't appear that everyone had a fair go. It was disappointing, and the atmosphere in the place was very down."

Cast a glance in another direction to Jenni (who doesn't want her real name used).

A 36-year-old researcher, she says she nearly danced down the street after choosing redundancy rather than a sideways step at a big accountancy firm.

"I had been very unhappy with the organisation and this was a golden opportunity to leave with some money. When I walked out the door I felt fabulous, a huge sense of freedom, of a world of opportunities opening up."

Barton and Jenni are two faces of redundancy in New Zealand in the new century - a phenomenon less prevalent than during the mass restructurings of a few years back but still so common that for younger people it no longer carries social or professional stigma.

The typical redundant New Zealand executive last year was a 41-year-old man who had spent five years with his previous company. At the crunch, his salary was $70,500.

That's the sketch from the recently released Survey of Career Choice and Challenges of People in Transition, by DBM New Zealand. The company offers "outplacement services" - which means it works with companies laying off staff and with workers to help them to make what is often a fraught and upsetting transition. Survey data came from the hundreds of people with whom the company worked last year.

Paul Stevenson is head of the career management team at TMP recruitment, which runs a career transition programme for people who have been made redundant or who are rethinking their career.

He regularly meets people who have been made redundant two or three times. "It's a fact of life these days, and redundancy no longer counts against people in the eyes of employers or society in general," says Stevenson.

Barton hopes not - after five months of unsuccessful job-hunting through the newspaper and internet, he's about to start calling old contacts. TelstraClear paid for a dealing-with-redundancy course, which Barton says provided some valuable tips.

Among them was that jobs are most often gained through who you know. Only 20 to 30 per cent are scored through answering ads.

"It has been hard to go from a job where you're meeting people all the time to mucking around the house by yourself for most of the day. I do feel a bit isolated and cut off," he says.

He looks forward to a fortnightly golf match where up to 30 former colleagues gather to exchange news.

At least money hasn't been a problem - yet. He had a fairly common redundancy package built into his contract - six weeks pay for the first year of employment, plus two weeks for each subsequent year - and his partner, Jane, works as an office manager at a law firm.

However, "its been a bit of a strain for her, suddenly being the sole breadwinner", says Barton.

He's relieved their children are grown up so he doesn't have the worry of providing for a young family.

And he can afford to be choosy. "I want to stay in marketing, but before I accept another job I want to know all about the management structure, and make sure it's worth putting on a tie every day. My main concern is getting a job at the same salary level."

Jenni was back working within three months of being made redundant - in a better-paid research job flagged by a friend.

Between jobs she was a temp in a variety of roles, from reception work to manning an info line at a call centre.

"Seeing a career counsellor helped," she says. "I asked my former employers if they would pay for me to consult one, and they agreed.

"Part of my unhappiness at my former job was due to feeling that my confidence in myself and my abilities had been damaged."

Her career counsellor, Fran Harre, of Auckland company Career Designs, "helped me look at things more realistically".

By the time she left her job, Jenni felt she could turn her hand to anything. Money wasn't an issue - she received a healthy redundancy package, is single, has no children and at that time no mortgage either.

"When I was temping it was great just to be doing something different, and to have people say thanks for doing a good job."

She felt no social stigma as many people she knew had also been made redundant.

"My generation, and those younger, know you don't have a job for life. Most people I've seen go through redundancy have ended up better off, even if it doesn't seem that way to begin with."

But now that Jenni has a mortgage, she admits she would probably feel less positive about being made redundant again: "Temp rates would not cover my mortgage, so I would be more worried."

TMP's Stevenson says redundancies are not as common as three or four years ago as most organisations have already cut out the fat in their structures, and the economy is doing well. They continue, however, driven by the following things:

* Duplication of roles created by mergers and acquisitions, such as Telstra and Clear, Progressive and Woolworths, and Compaq and Hewlett-Packard.

* Australasian organisations centralising functions in Australia to reduce costs and avoid duplication of roles in both countries, a trend visible in Australia as Asian companies do the same thing. Those in banking, insurance and marketing are feeling the effects.

* Ongoing development and introduction of technology. Stevenson says this is hitting the accountancy and finance industry particularly hard, and its workforce continues to taper.

He says IT workers have suffered a shrinking job market over the past three years since the dotcom meltdown, although he's noticed a slight upswing in jobs over the past four months.

Paul Goulter, secretary of the Council of Trade Unions, is keeping an eye on the regions. He notes that there has been a boom in jobs there on the back of export growth, but suspects a cyclical drop as the dollar rises and overseas markets contract.

But job-hunters can end up being winners as a result of redundancy.

Stevenson says companies often find nine months or so after a restructure that they don't have enough people with the right skills.

"They end up rehiring, or getting people in on contract. I know one guy who was made redundant two years ago - he's still working for the same company, on contract."

Stevenson also points to a looming skill shortage as baby-boomers retire. "There will be a shortage of senior managers with experience and generic skills."

Barton is optimistic he will find the job he seeks.

The figures behind the layoffs

* How does redundancy touch New Zealanders?

A recent study of hundreds of clients by DBM, which offers services to companies and workers facing layoffs, found that business reorganisation or restructuring was the reason for 78 per cent of redundancies.

A long way behind, at just 10 per cent, was merger or acquisition. The staffers' average length of service had been five years.

Marketing and sales professionals were worst hit, with almost one-third of survey participants reporting losing jobs in this field. Blamed are the growth of on-line shopping, the booming call-centre industry, and regional headquarters increasingly shifting from New Zealand to Australia or Asia.

The Herald could find no definitive national survey of redundancy, but Statistics New Zealand offers clues on its impact.

Among the categories people could choose when signing up as newly unemployed was one titled "dismissed, made redundant or laid-off".