Redundancy

At the back end of 2009 my company announced they needed to lose about 60 staff out of 150 in the UK on the account I work.

I had a few choices

sit tight and hope I wasn’t selected
put my name down to go
find another role on another account

Moving to another account would mean I’d have to take standard terms and conditions, giving up my final salary pension plan, 4 weeks per year redundancy pay and a 35 hour week. For this I’d get another job more likely than not on the same money and it would be no more secure a job than then one I would be leaving.

I was tempted to sit tight but I expect the company will push to close the final salary pension scheme and I’m expecting more redundancies next year by which time they could conceivably have removed the 4 weeks per year redundancy pay too.

So I decided that if I was going to lose those benefits then I might as well get something for them and opted to put my name down to go. There was a chance the company would not let me go but indications were that they would try to let those go that put their name forward. If they let me go I had the headache of finding a new job but with money in my pocket which meant I could survive 18 months without work if i needed to. Plus the big bonus that if I found a job quickly I could demolish the back of the house and rebuild it with a nice new kitchen.

Early January I found out I’d been selected and was on notice to leave in May.

I’ve had a few sleepless nights since worrying if I made the right choice, it’s a tough market out there and I’ve been re-assessing whether I want to stay in IT management or look for something different. I expect I’ll stay in IT management but it does seem like it would be the easy route, maybe I should jack it in and go and work on the ferries.

I’m still not certain on my future direction which is exciting but I have an updated CV and intend to spend this weekend looking for jobs.

If anyone has any bright ideas for career changes or knows of a job then please let me know!

I have thought of doing photography but frankly I don’t think I’m good enough. I think my ideal job would be one where I could talk crap and make money from it maybe Michael Winner or Tim Leunig can point me in the right direction.