ABOUT OUTPLACEMENT

Care for employees at every stage of the employee’s life cycle—and thus for redundancies—should be moved to the forefront of human resource management. Corporate governance demonstrates social responsibility in specific situations. The way enterprises approach redundancies and dismissals, affects how employees understand their job loss responsibility and the reasons for unemployment. Outplacement can therefore positively influence the responses of redundant employees.

Moreover, sustainable human resource management and outplacement provide employees with some safety. This will encourage employees to work harder and optimize risk taking.

Outplacement can be defined as a service that assists a departing employee with obtaining a new job or transitioning into a new career choice. The purpose of outplacement is to reduce the negative effects of career disruption, to ensure systematic job searching, leading to a higher number of potential job offers, to reduce unemployment time and to successfully affect career change.

Outplacement programs are extremely important not only for employees who have been dismissed, but also for those remaining employees and for the organization.

Dismissed employees – benefits:

• Better chances of re-employment than those who have received little or no support
• Maintaining positive relationships with a former employer

Remaining employees and organization – benefits:

• Stabilisation of the atmosphere within the company – outplacing minimizes potential organizational disruption and loss of morale as result of dismissals. This can result in the improvement of employee retention.
• Building a reputation as being a socially sustainable company
• Dismissed employees can become a direct customer of the company in the future being aware of its products and service quality

All those aforementioned benefits of outplacement contribute to the Promising Future of an Organisation.

However, outplacement is still currently underused here in Slovakia. Outplacement is provided by less than 12%
of organizations. This is in stark contrast with the situation in The United States of America, where outplacement is provided by 70% of organizations.

PERCEIVED SERVICEABILITY OF OUTPLACEMENT PROGRAMS IN SLOVAKIA

Research conducted among employees of enterprises in the Slovak Republic has also confirmed that outplacement programs are underutilized in organizations and less than 30% of redundant employees have been provided with outplacement programs. The authors of the research surely recommend to the enterprises management to increase the care of their employees and to show a higher level of responsibility by providing this support, consulting and assistance in outplacement programs.

Research has also shown that:

• Most employees are interested in benefitting from outplacement programs in enterprises.
• Employees of enterprises perceive the potential usability of outplacement programs strongly. Perceived serviceability of outplacement programs services confirms their usefulness in sustainable human resource management.
• Employees who have previously been made redundant are more interested in outplacement programs.
• Redundancies are a very sensitive and unpleasant matter and mostly uncomfortable and frustrating for all stakeholders, dismissed employees themselves and their colleagues but also their superiors.
  

This confirms the usefulness of outplacement services and indicates urgent need of outplacement implementation.*

Adapted from:
Gyurák Babeľová, Z.; Stareček, A.; Cagáňová, D.; Fero, M.; Čambál, M. Perceived Serviceability of Outplacement Programs as a Part of Sustainable Human Resource Management. Sustainability 2019, 11, 4748. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11174748

WHY LIFEWORK

High quality outplacement

The essence of our approach is active support of client throughout the job-search process. We bear the responsibility of full use of available outplacement tools.

Reverse Headhunting

We focus on Reverse Headhunting as the fastest way of finding out hidden job market opportunities.

Predictable and clear outplacement service

You know exactly from the beginning, what is included in the service, time range of each service and corresponding costs.