Outplacement is generally defined as employer sponsored services provided to retrenched, retiring and remaining employees to help ease career transitions and trauma associated with such processes. These are offered by companies interested in giving their affected employees the support, counselling and motivation to find new careers and new lives.

Organisations are aware of the need to enjoy enduring success and in order to do so, organisations need to have core values and core purposes that remain fixed while business strategies and practices endlessly adapt to the changing world. Outplacement will therefore help organisations reinforce these core values to the remaining workforce. The effects of this management initiative have far reaching implications on employer brand and consequently on corporate brand.  Organisations need to know that any radical change in operating practices, cultural norms and business strategies does not mean losing the spirit of doing business their way. Ideals embodied in an organisational credo remain, but the need to constantly revamp processes is crucial. Core ideologies need to be maintained as these transcend product or market life cycles.

Experience has proved that workplace restructuring can be very traumatic and often very unpleasant for both the employer and employees. Human Resources management working on building employer brand have come to realise that there are a lot of things organisations can offer to separated employees so that they start on a new page. These will include counselling, training on investments, project management, negotiation skills, career evaluation and guidance, CV writing, social networking, personal budgeting etc. The remaining workforce can also be counselled, refocused and multi skilled to work effectively in the new structures.

Offering outplacement can make the termination actions easier to implement in organisations. Outplacement strategies also assist companies in improving post employer relations which also reduce the possibilities of litigation and adverse publicity. Additionally, organisations offering such outplacement services are creating brands of being employers of first choice. When such practices are used in organisations, besides aiding in employer branding, they also help improve the unaffected employees’ moral when they see such help being offered to others. By doing so, a company demonstrates to both current and potential employees that it cares for leaving employees. This employer sympathy also demonstrates that the move to undertake the separation was business driven and not a personal attack but a necessary reality for business survival. Such services reduce the emotional confusion associated with job losses through counselling, training and redirecting the employee focus toward the future. While certain organisations may employ such kinds of outplacements right at the point of separation others have seen more benefits of offering outplacement services way before re-structuring takes place.

These savvy employers saw the need to enter into new covenants under which the employer and employee share the responsibility for enhancing an individual’s employability inside and outside the company. The leaders have realised that with the ever-changing market trends and the unstoppable retrenchments, an employee no matter at what level may find themselves in a different situation. Instead of working with a static workforce with static skills, as their outplacement strategy such organisations have started encouraging employees to manage their careers so that they are highly employable. It has become a core competence for managers at all levels to show that they care about their employees whether or not they stay with the company. What they have realised resultantly is a career resilient workforce that can thrive in an era in which the skills needed to remain competitive keep changing as the market trends change.

When redundancies come, they would have anticipated it and would have made themselves flexible by increasing their employability. Organisations have not made this an employee’s sole responsibility but both the employer and employee assume a shared responsibility. While the employee is working on   flexibility on their part, the employer has the role to provide an enabling environment for this to happen.

While outplacement may sound far – fetched to some, a lot of companies are already moving in this direction especially as they together with Human Resources Departments are working on branding their organisations as employers of first choice. Organisations may have different approaches to outplacements, but the good thing is that they all share a common aim- to give employees the power to assess, hone, redirect and expand their skills so that they stay competitive within organisations and on the job market as well as adjusting to new lives.

Finding a new job can be a daunting task hence the need to equip employees with outplacement strategies so that they do not get stressed when they leave a job. Working for a company that truly care for its employees provides hard working employees who are loyal. With the social media providing real time information such acts on the part of the company will maintain its image and increased customer awareness since everything done by a company is publicised. As organisations vigorously embrace the employer branding fad such strategies or services by an organisation inevitably increase loyalty and satisfaction with current employees.

Emmanuel Jinda is the Managing Consultant of PROSERVE Consulting Group, a leading supplier of Professional Human Resources and Management services locally, regionally and internationally. He can be contacted at Tel: 263 773004143 or 263 242 772778 or visit our website at www.proservehr.com