Supporting Employees Through Redundancy: The Power of Empathy

The Reality of Redundancy: It’s Not Just About Losing a Job

When I talk to people about redundancy through my outplacement work, I always emphasise that it’s so much more than just losing a job. There’s a huge amount of emotion that goes with it. I’ve seen people experience shock, anger, anxiety about the future, grief about what they’re losing and, perhaps most complicated of all, shame.

Shame is particularly difficult because it makes individuals feel less worthy, as though they’re to blame for their situation and like there’s something wrong with them. When I went through redundancy myself, I felt this acutely.

When dealing with these emotions, what people really need is to feel connection to others, to feel heard, valued, supported and respected. This is where empathy underpins supporting employees through redundancy.

Why I’m Such a Big Brené Brown Fan

I first came across Brené Brown’s work in 2015 when I was training to be a coach and I’ve followed her ever since. She explains empathy beautifully and her definition has completely shaped how I approach supporting staff through redundancy.

She says, “Empathy is the brave choice to be with someone in their darkness rather than race to turn the light on so that we feel better.”

This really resonates with me because empathy can be difficult and it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. It’s about really listening and acknowledging someone else’s pain without trying to fix it. It’s normal for us to want to help others, to make that pain go away but in a redundancy situation, that approach can actually distance us from the other person’s experience.

The Subtle But Crucial Difference

Here’s what empathy versus sympathy looks like in practice – and trust me, the difference is everything:

Empathy: “I can see this is really tough for you. I’m here to listen and support you.”

Sympathy: “Oh, I’m really sorry. Well, at least you’ve been with the company for a long time and you’ll get a big redundancy payout. I’m sure you’ll find something soon.”

Now, sympathy comes from a place of kindness and is well-meaning but it can unintentionally invalidate someone’s feelings. As someone who’s been on the receiving end of well-meaning sympathy, it made me feel like, “Oh yeah, okay, well maybe you are right. I have got some money and I’ve got skills and experience. Yeah, it’ll be fine. I’ll just stop talking about it now.”

But people don’t really want to be told to look on the bright side when they’re in the middle of all of that. First of all, they want to be heard and understood. They want to have the space and opportunity to talk about the emotion they’re going through. Otherwise, that leads to suppressing the emotion and adopting that “keep calm and carry on” approach – something I definitely did with both my redundancies.

When Well-Meaning Words Miss the Mark

I’ve heard some well-intended but unhelpful remarks during redundancy situations and I remember them vividly. One was someone saying to me, “Well, you work in HR so you’ll find something quickly. You know what to do.” This assumes that someone’s professional background is going to make looking for a job easy and we know that’s not always true.

When it happened to me for the second time, I remember someone saying, “Oh really, not you again. That’s really bad luck.” I remember thinking, “Maybe it is but that’s really not very helpful.” These statements invalidated my feelings rather than validating what was going on. I loved the job that I had and I wasn’t ready to hear any of those things.

The Four Pillars of Empathy

Theresa Wiseman, a nursing scholar, identified four key attributes of empathy, which Brené Brown further explored in her book, Atlas of the Heart. These are absolutely essential when supporting employees through redundancy:

1. Perspective taking – seeing the situation through someone else’s eyes
2. Staying out of judgement – resisting the urge to critique or solve the problem
3. Recognising emotions – understanding what the other person is feeling
4. Communicating that understanding – expressing that you’re truly listening

Simple Ways to Show You Care When Supporting Employees Through Redundancy

Empathy doesn’t require big actions or grand gestures. It’s often about those small, meaningful bits of support you offer along the way. Here’s what I’ve learned works:

Create that safe space. Allow individuals to express their feelings without fear of judgement. Simply saying “I’m here to listen” can go a really long way.

Acknowledge their experience. Try something like “I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you.” Avoid phrases like “everything happens for a reason” or “this could be the best thing that ever happened to you.” When you’re in the thick of it, people aren’t ready to hear those things.

Really listen. I mean genuine engagement – maintaining eye contact, nodding, using reflective language like “It sounds like you’re feeling uncertain about the future. What’s on your mind?”

Ask what they need. At the end of a consultation meeting, I always suggest asking “What do you need from us right now?” There’s going to be so much going on in their head but this simple question can really open up what someone’s thinking.

The Power of Silence

Sometimes empathy can just be silence, giving someone space to think, to feel and to know you are there with them. Not everyone’s comfortable with silence but empathy can often be in what you don’t say as opposed to what you do.

Preparing Line Managers to Support Their Staff Through Redundancy: Beyond the Paperwork

As an HR professional, I overlooked this when I was managing redundancy situations. I was focusing on the logistics, paperwork and legalities and really not paying enough attention to the human side. Now I run workshops to help prepare line managers for those meetings, going beyond the process to think about emotion and what they might do when it comes up.

The key is helping line managers understand that they don’t have to know everything. If they don’t know the answer to something, they take it away and come back. But listening to the individual is really powerful. It’s a way of displaying empathy because you’re wanting to understand what’s going on for them.

Why This Matters So Much

Empathy, from my perspective, really is the foundation of a compassionate and people-centred redundancy process. When supporting staff through redundancy, we need to remember that empathy is a brave choice. It’s a difficult choice and it can be hard for people to practice, which is why we tend to jump into sympathy.

As Maya Angelou said – and I end lots of my podcasts with this quote because it’s so important – “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

That’s what empathy gives us in redundancy situations. It’s not about having all the answers or making everything better. It’s about being genuinely present with someone during one of the most challenging times in their working life. And that presence, that connection, that feeling of being truly heard – that’s what people remember long after the process is over.

Listen to Brené Brown compare sympathy and empathy.