If you’ve been made redundant, you’ll know that it’s not only the loss of your salary, colleagues and routine that affects you – it can also feel as though you’ve lost part of your identity.
A dip in confidence is normal. I’ve worked with many successful clients who’ve questioned their value as the professional identity they’ve built is interrupted. It can even be gone for good, if they go on to pivot to a new career.
Emotionally, you need time to catch up with the rational truth that organisations restructure for many reasons – from changes in strategy and technology to financial pressures or mergers. Excellent people lose their jobs every day.
Work and your identity
Work is woven into your sense of self. You don’t just go to work – you become known as the finance director, transformation leader or service designer. It’s natural, then, to go through stages of grief after redundancy, including denial, anger and uncertainty.
It’s also natural that your Inner Critic voice can get carried away with its negative story line about your future prospects. One antidote is to remind yourself of your strengths and achievements.
Strengths such as your judgment, resilience, creativity, ability to solve problems, build relationships or lead others are still very much part of you. They’re there for you to carry into whatever comes next.
And your achievements are more than those obvious quantifiable things that you add to your CV. As soon as possible, capture information on all of the challenges you dealt with in your role. If you remind yourself about how daunting a project or piece of work might have felt before you started it, it helps you to see it as an achievement.
How else do you begin rebuilding your confidence and identity?
- Start by allowing yourself to acknowledge what you’ve lost. It’s tempting to throw yourself straight into updating your CV and applying for jobs, but giving yourself space to process the experience can make it easier to move forward with confidence rather than simply reacting.
- Next, create some structure in your week. Regular routines, exercise, meeting friends and setting aside dedicated time for job searching can all help restore a sense of stability when life feels uncertain.
- It can also be helpful to reconnect with the parts of you that exist outside work. Spend time with people who value you as a friend, parent, partner or sibling. Return to interests that may have been neglected during busy work phases. These remind you that your identity has always been much more than your job title.
- Finally, use this period as an opportunity for reflection. Redundancy creates the space to ask questions that are easy to ignore when you’re busy: What kind of work gives me energy? What matters most to me now? What do I want the next chapter of my career to look like?
Many people eventually describe rhttps://www.pexels.com/edundancy as a turning point because it prompted them to build a career that was more aligned with their strengths, values and priorities.
If you’ve been made redundant recently, the facts are that you’ve lost a role, not your ability, potential or value. Those remain intact, waiting to shape whatever comes next.
With thanks to Magda Ehlers on Pexels fot the image.
