Five Ways to Remedy Your Job Disruption

Losing your job is a jolt. Whether you are being laid off or you can no longer perform you duties, after the shock wears off you’re left wondering what do you do now? When you are early in your career, making a move back into a similar role at another company is frequently possible after a job loss. However, as you get older or move up the corporate ladder it is not as easy to move into a similar role. Similarly, if the nature of your work as fundamentally changed as technology has changed, you may not be able to bounce back as easy. This is job disruption.

Job Disruption occurs when there is no longer a need for the type of work you do or you are no longer capable of doing the work you did.

To make matter more difficult, job disruption usually happens with little or no warning. An it’s more likely to happen to you than you probably think.

Can It Really Happen to Me?

I’ve seen it happen many times. I had one employee fail to show up for work. It turns out he had a stroke, while he was in in 40s, and was in the hospital. Ultimately, he reached the end of his short term disability period, was put on long term disability and lost his job. During the financial crisis, many people woke up to the new the company they worked for had gone bankrupt and they no longer had a job. Even recently, people who were planning to work on the reboot of the TV show Roseanne where caught off guard when their show was suddenly canceled after the star’s late night Twitter comments.  

We often think about losing out job because of being laid off for one reason or another. In fact about 1 in 10 employees (about 20 million people) in the U.S have that experience each year according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As you can see in the chart, that figure is remarkably steady, even during the most challenging economic times, like the Great Recession.

But job disruptions, as I mentioned, are not just about layoffs. Did you know that about 1 in 3 people aged 35-65 will be out of work for at least 90 days for a health reason? Natural disasters can put you out of work for a while or even forces small business out of business. While perhaps the largest example, Hurricane Katrina resulted in over 100,000 job losses.  While jobs eventually came back they weren’t all the same. But smaller disaster happen all the time. Of course, there are many other reasons you may find yourself out of a job as well.

Are you ready if this happened to you?

When Disruption Comes To You What Do You Do?

There are basically two ways to handle a job disruption – do some preparation before it happens to you or wait until after it happens to you. Of course, you can’t anticipate all possible disruptions and what your response to each would be. However, there is still work you can do to prepare yourself, so you are in a better position if and when it happens to you. Those who are prepared can get through the transition much faster.  I had one client who, when it happened to him, put in action his plan to move across the country and start his own business, a dream he long had but feared taking action on as long as he had a steady paycheck.

If you find yourself losing your job, are five things you need to do to get through the transition as quickly and successfully as you can.  

Five Ways to Remedy Your Job Disruption

1. Mental Shift: At a time like this it is easy to fall into feeling like a victim, feeling anger or both. To successfully move on you will need to find a way change how you look at your situation and move positively in a new direction to build your future. Energy Leadership . . .
2. Get Moving, Stay Social: When your life is disrupted we tend to want some stability, so often we withdraw – physically, mentally and emotionally. This can put you on a spiral in the opposite direction from what you want. So it is more important than ever to get out of the house, move around and interact with people.
3. Stay Relevant: The number one reason the longer you are out of work the harder it is to get another job is you change and your skills and knowledge atrophy.
4. Imagine the Possibilities: You’re free. Free to be anything you want.  Don’t even censor yourself based on any limitation you have, you can come back to that later. Now it the time for expansive thinking and then to ask, “How can I do that?” 
5. Follow the Business of You Blue Print: Successful business follow a disciplined blueprint from founding and throughout their life. Companies stay true to their core, adapting to the outside environment. You can do the same. Learn more about the Business of You

If you’d like to learn more about building your own future proofing strategy contact us or read our free ebook.