At a glance
Yes. It doesn't matter whether a change affects one person or a hundred. Anyone whose role has been disestablished should be offered career transition or outplacement support, unless they apply for a new role inside the organisation and are successful. The people who stay are watching, and a small change can hit team morale as hard as a big one.
Key Takeaways
The size of the change is irrelevant. Offer career transition support to anyone whose role is disestablished, unless they win a new internal role.
Small changes can affect the remaining team as much as large ones.
When only one or two people go, remaining staff can feel their colleagues were "singled out", get angry on their behalf and fear further cuts.
The same fundamentals apply at every scale: clear, frequent and empathetic communication, real feedback during consultation, and support for change-affected people.
Seeing a colleague treated well eases survivor guilt and helps the team stay productive.
Only one or two roles are going, so surely a full change process and outplacement is overkill? Plenty of organisations think so, and we get why. It feels like something for big restructures with big numbers. Here's the thing: the number isn't what your team is watching. In this post, we’ll cover why even a small change needs a proper process and outplacement support, what it does to the people who stay, and what to keep doing well whatever the size.
Size doesn't change who needs support
Anyone whose role has been disestablished should be offered career transition or outplacement services, unless they apply for a new role internally and are successful. That's true when it's one person and it's true when it's fifty. The person losing their role faces the same questions either way. Where do I go from here? How do I explain this? How do I get job market ready? Their situation isn't any smaller because they're one of only two.
What a small change does to the team that stays
Sometimes the small changes, affecting only one or two people, land on the remaining team just as hard as a large one. When only a couple of colleagues are affected, the people left behind can think those colleagues have been singled out. They can be angry on their behalf, and that affects team morale. It can also create fear. If it happened to them, who's next?
Then there's survivor guilt, which is the quiet kind that nobody names but everyone feels. This is where how you treat the person leaving matters so much. Seeing a colleague who has lost their job treated well helps significantly with survivor guilt, and it helps the team stay productive during and after the change. Seeing them sent off with nothing more than their final pay and a "good luck" does the opposite, and in a small market like New Zealand, people talk.
What good looks like, at any size
All the important elements of managing a change well apply to a small change just as they do to a large restructure:
clear, frequent and empathetic communication
real opportunities for feedback during consultation
listening and responding to that feedback
offering change-affected people career transition support
The good news is that a small change is often easier to support well. With one or two people, support can be fully tailored to each person's direction and needs, and you can keep the rest of the team close and informed as you go.
If you're not sure whether your situation calls for outplacement, our post on the 5 signs your organisation needs outplacement support is a good place to start, and you can see the hidden costs of skipping outplacement support too. To talk through what's right for your team, find out more about our outplacement services in Auckland, or contact us to find out more or book an intro chat.
