Redundancy: the end or the beginning?
READ TIME: 2 minutes.
Around 26,000 people in the UK were hit by redundancy between May and June 2025 according to The Office for National Statistics. The data indicates the scale of the issue but does nothing to reveal the real trauma many of those people will endure.Redundancy hits much harder and deeper than just the loss of a job. You lose the stability of a regular income, maybe your social life and even your sense of purpose. Quite soon after, unless you’re one of the lucky ones who walks straight into another gig, you begin to lose your confidence, self-esteem and, ultimately, hope. Psychologists describe the experience as ‘identity rupture’ and believe it provokes an emotional response similar to bereavement.
Much of what we experience emotionally as a consequence of redundancy comes from social conditioning. We feel obliged to accept it as a form of judgement - on our skills, our value and even our personality - and that judgement is negative. No wonder the experience triggers such rawness. Grief, anger, fear and despair will all come to haunt us. The four horsemen of the career apocalypse.
Given the trauma it evokes, when we hear about those rare creatures who turned their redundancy into opportunity it’s not surprising that our first reaction is ‘how on earth did they manage that?’ How did they find the courage to bulldoze through all the negativity and self-doubt to launch that business idea or venture they’ve had percolating for years? How did they find the strength to embark upon an entirely new career path?
Because the reality for most of us is that we have brilliant ideas and then… nothing. We get stuck inside our own heads, seeing the barriers rather than the rewards that lie beyond. So, we forget about the idea for a while until it resurfaces, nagging away but with an added veneer of frustration and self-loathing at our inertia.
But if that sense of being stuck feels familiar, go easy on yourself. People who are able to have brilliant ideas AND possess all the psychological and practical tools to turn them into reality are as common as leprechauns. However, just because we aren’t born with the blunt tenacity of a natural entrepreneur does not exclude us from joining the party. We simply have to learn those skills instead. We have to adapt and grow into the environment we want to create.
It’s what we call ‘The Pivot’.
And the really, really good news is that we can show you how you can do it too! If you’ve suffered redundancy and want to grasp the opportunity for reinvention we are here to help. Follow the link to our home page to discover everything you need to know about our next three-day retreat - ‘The Pivot at Restaries’ - where you’ll be exploring and learning alongside a small but perfectly formed group of people all with a common will and desire to transition from stuck to unstoppable.
Is redundancy an end or a beginning? You choose.
The Pivoteer Partnership